17 Oct
2008
17 Oct
'08
12:05 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Fri, 17 Oct 2008, Jules Richardson wrote:
The actual 'invention of the telephone' entry makes pretty interesting
reading, and thankfully doesn't take the easy way out and credit everything to
Bell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone
(I suspect the entry for the lightbulb is similarly convoluted!)
Spot-on. Inventions normally stem from someone
hacking away in a corner; it
takes marketing and a fair amount of polishing to make a product and bring it
to peoples' attention, but the way I see it the hacked prototype still does
what it does 'first'.
Yes. That is the funadmental flaw in any discussion of "first".
Occasionally, there will be some sort of official recognition of which is
"first" - but ask Elisha Gray about the telephone patent! And, without publicity of "first"s, the
discussion will ALWAYS be towards
the one that achieved public notice, NOT the one that was earlier. Many
writers in the industry will dismiss anything that came before they got
involved.
Not only that, but after the fact no amount of evidence to change peoples'
minds seems to do any good - they either outright don't believe, or they'll
put endless provisos on their definition or order to come up with the same
answer that's already been published.
(I find these 'first' discussions completely fascinating - just when you think
you know all there is to know, someone always seems to come up with something
that nobody's yet mentioned)
Color displays are made up of discrete dots that are
red, green, and blue.
if the computer is closely matched and linked with the display, then each
pixel contains one red, one green, and one blue dot. And, unless the
computer attempts to exceed the capabilities of the display (ah, such
wondrous artifacts!), every pixel is a block of many of those RGB dots.
It might be possible to argue that a 'block' is a rectangular shape, I suppose
- maybe within a CRT context we should be talking about triad graphics :-)
To Richard: I bet all you can do is trawl physical Whirlwind archives -
papers, (dated) photographs etc. and you might come across evidence to satisfy
your curiosity (and I'm curious, too). I bet there are answers lurking there
that haven't been scanned in, published in books, or exist sufficiently in the
public conscious for someone on this list to be able to give a definite anwser
:-(