Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Thomas Edison's Kindle

Posted by kdawson on from the mister-bezos-come-here-i-want-you dept.

harrymcc writes "In 1911, Thomas Edison bragged that he could make a 40,000-page book by printing the pages on thin pieces of metal. In the mid-1930s, newspapers experimented with transmitting special editions into homes via early fax machines. In 1956, Chrysler tried to sell Americans on buying 7-inch records that could only be played on a tiny turntable built into its cars' dashboards. Over at Technologizer, I rounded up these and a dozen other fascinating, forgotten gadget ideas that didn't work out — but which foreshadowed products and technologies that eventually became a big deal."

11 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Success is timing as much as great ideas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Success is timing as much as great ideas. Your customers have to be ready for it. It happens on the macro level, with mass produced products, and on the micro: I learned long ago that if my clients aren't ready to adapt a new technology, it is a waste of time to push it on them. Usually they come around to it a few years later. :)

    'Ready' usually means that it is a small mental step forward and they see a pressing need for it.

    1. Re:Success is timing as much as great ideas by socz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I completely agree. I once told my friends about an idea I had called "a home server - a server for your home." It could be used for controlling what time the AC or heating kicked in, turns lights on and off, and even opened windows blinds! Of course, the latest technology offered video playing, but it wasn't an easy feat nor practically affordable for anyone who was a professional.

      Of course I was laughed at and told "if it was such a good idea, someone would have thought of it and made it by now." So a few years pass by and technology made some awesome advancements. So now we have linux boxes that run your pool at optimum points in time to help you save money, HTPC's and gaming PC's. And that's just what a little reading will get you. The true beauty comes with taking the time to learn the systems more in depth so you can create whatever you please.

      I still await amassing enough of a fortune to start my manufacturing plant to create, patent and produce my own designs. But in the mean time I have to fight off those who say "if it was such a great idea, someone would have made it by now..."

      --
      My abilities are only limited by my imagination
  2. Another invention that didn't work out by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...was breaking up your article into four arbitrary pages on the web.

    Or at least, I *hope* that's what people will think in the future.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  3. Re:hmmm by Trogre · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do you lop off your fingers when handling Christmas tinsel? How about aluminium ("tin") foil?

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  4. Re:There was an early fax machine in the 1860s by TBoon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A torpedo that comes back if it misses? What could possibly go wrong? This man was clearly a genius!

    The genious part would be to sell it to your enemies!

  5. Re:hmmm by TBoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd imagine it to be so thin it would be quite soft. In fact so soft that it would either tear, or get crumbled up and unsuable.

  6. Re:hmmm by SpinyNorman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nowadsys Tinsel is made of plastic.

  7. Re:Another Idea that will not catch on (hopefully) by isomer1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately the Slashdot story submission process almost requires you to post the stories on your own site. The problem is that the main url for the story must be unique among all story submissions, but the writeup must also be decent (yes that second point is debatable). So if any of the bagillion other slashdot readers submits the story before you, you're out of luck. And if they write a crappy one sentence description the story gets rejected and that original url is permablocked but the submission process. The process naturally selects the autobloggers that provide a unique url (typically to their own site) and provide a good (read inflammatory) description.

  8. Re:TFA gets it completely wrong on the 'Kindle' by m.ducharme · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Either that or I'm missing something.

    Just an ear for metaphor and simile.

    --
    Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
  9. Re:TFA gets it completely wrong on the 'Kindle' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The author is saying that Edison's idea could give you a lot of books in one object

    reader's digest invented that, except they used a lossy compression format over a new storage medium.

  10. Re:There was an early fax machine in the 1860s by vegiVamp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, no, no. You have to look at the bigger picture. This technology will help us evolve a breed of near-infallible marksmen.

    --
    What a depressingly stupid machine.