Odd punched cards

Paul Koning paulkoning at comcast.net
Thu Apr 23 15:54:17 CDT 2020



> On Apr 23, 2020, at 3:56 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 23 Apr 2020, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> Aperture cards (piece of 35mm micro-film mounted in card)
>> (As opposed to Emmanuel Goldberg's "Rapid Selector", or Vannevar Bush's "Memex")
> 
> Goldberg's "Statistical machine" (Zeiss Ikon in Dresden, USA patent in 1931) was the use of light and photocells to identify frames of microfilm.
> Google Michael Buckland for lots more!
> http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldbush.html
> Maurer soundtracks for movies had up to 8 parallel variable width optical tracks.  Microfilm with 8 bit parallel metadata would be cool.
> 
> Much better known, Vannevar Bush's proposed/imaginary "Memex" ("As We May Think" 1945, Atlantic Monthly) was based on it, without attribution.

Based on it, or just an independently invented similar idea?  The latter is common throughout history.  Consider the "ship camel" invented in Holland in 1690 and patented by Abraham Lincoln in 1849.  Or frequency modulation, invented in 1919 by Hanso Idzerda, then reinvented around 1930 by Edwin Armstrong (both got patents; the later patent does not refer to the earlier one as prior art).

	paul




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