[rescue] The Age of Things [was: Re: my point]

[Corda Albert J DLVA]

Projection TV was also an early development that faded
away when picture tube sizes began to increase.  It has
only recently re-emerged because of tube size limitations
and tech. feasibility.

There are many such examples in history. Speech synthesis
was being done before the turn of the century (or possibly
earlier, as my memory is fuzzy on this) using a physical
model of the vocal tract, combined with air bellows and a
piano-like keyboard to control the model. Also, a number
of purely mechanical robotic mechanisms fabricated with
an amazing degree of complexity were built in the 18th century
(if anyone is curious, do a web search on "Vaucanson").

BTW, one if my favorite mags is the American Heritage
"History of Invention and Technology". They come up
with some arcane but interesting, articles (the article
on actress Heddi Lamar's patents for a spread-spectrum
comms system (1930's? 1940's?) comes to mind 8-)

-al-
-acorda at 1bigred.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Hill [mailto:sjh at matrix.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 11:07 AM
> To: Sun Rescue
> Subject: Re: [rescue] The Age of Things [was: Re: my point]
> 
> 
> > > Microwaves were around 30 years ago?
> >
> > Nope.  More like _50_ years ago.  The original Raytheon 
> patents were from
> > 1945, and they started selling commercial microwave ovens 
> ones right after
> > WWII.  Tappan was selling consumer models in the mid 1950s.
> 
> I had something in the back of my mind about experiments with
> microwaves on poeple in WWII, but perhaps that was an X Files episode.
> 
> > A lot of stuff is much older than you think; Farnsworth's 
> first patents on
> > television are from 1927.  People had car phones in the 
> early 50s, etc.
> 
> Farnsworth? Ah, colour TV, wholly electorinic as opposed to Baird's
> mechanical effort.
> 
> Righto, carry on!
> 
> S.
> 
> -- 
> Steven Hill
> Systems Administrator
> 
> www.matrixnetsystems.com
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