Slashdot Mirror
Thomas Edison's Kindle
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."
Pages 1/20,000th of an inch thick? What exactly keeps you from lopping off your fingers?
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.
Sounds kind of like Ayn Rand's slashdot.org. Oh wait, we already have that.
... and then they built the supercollider.
In France, by a guy named Caselli, called a Pantelegraph:
http://www.telephonecollecting.org/caselli.htm
The author of TFA seems to have misunderstood what he has posted:
Even the pages of books may be made of steel, though Edison regards nickel as a better substitute for paper”Why not?” asks Edison. “Nickel will absorb printer’s ink. A sheet of nickel one twenty-thousandth of an inch thick is cheaper, tougher, and more flexible than an ordinary sheet of book-paper. A nickel book, two inches thick, would contain 40,000 pages. Such a book would weigh only a pound. I can make a pound of nickel sheets for a dollar and a quarter.”
Hereis a prospect of real culture for the masses Forty thousand pages in a volume! A single volume the equivalent in printing space of two hundred paper-leaved books of two hundred pages each! What a library might be placed between two steel covers and sold for, perhaps, two dollars!
He wasn't talking about having a small device that could 'download' content remotely. He was just talking about using nickel as a substitute for paper, but the book would still essentially be a printed one and the content would be 'hard coded' in ink, albeit you'd still get a lot more pages in there.
Either that or I'm missing something.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...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."
Using Slashdot to hype your own damn blog!
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Hellscrhreiber was used in the 1930's. It uses a font to send text over a wire (or radio) link, as off-on pulses for pixels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellschreiber
Some hams still use it, for kicks. It's got good performance in noise (weak signal mode).
Edward waits impatiently for the letter carrier to arrive. "Where is he?", Edward musses, checking his watch.
Every day this week, Edward had rifled through the mail as soon as it had arrived, hoping to see that special envelope. And every day this week, the postman brought only bills and grocery store circulars.
But today - certainly today - would be the day he would receive the results of his climate modeling simulation. It just had to come today!
Edward sees the postman coming down the street. His mailbag seems a bit heavier today ... Could it be? Why doesn't he walk faster!?
Finally, the mailman reaches Edward's house and pulls out a bundle of letters. Edward anxiously grabs the lot from the hands of the postman. One of the envelopes is notably thick; Edward pulls it out and checks the return address. "YES!", he exclaims, seeing it was from Popular Science. He hands back the rest of the pile and dashes up the stairs with his precious packet.
Edward gives himself a paper cut opening the envelope, but is oblivious to the pain. His mind is focused on one thing - the test results: "Is global warming real?" Surely these results will show it beyond any reasonable doubt!
Examining the first page, Edward's heart sinks...
"FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...."
First thought that popped into my mind when I read about the Edison book was the Orange Catholic Bible.
Which brings up a related question for me. A bible the size of the OC Bible couldn't be physically thumped, so you can't call Orange Catholics "bible thumpers." "Bible plinkers" maybe?
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
That's not entirely accurate. Variations of "fiche" technology were quite common in university libraries. When doing reports with newspaper citations, "Microfiche" (flat film plates) and/or "Microfilm" (scrolled film) were quite common into the mid 1990's. This was cheaper than storing gajillion actual newspapers and magazines, especially in bigger cities where floor-space is a premium.
Thus, "the trend only lasted a few years" is off because it had about a 25-year run and was quite successful in its heyday.
An interesting variation that allows computerized retrieval is the aperture card. However, it's not as compact.
Table-ized A.I.
That or there was a little lack of Google skills after all. The article completely neglects portable CRT TVs over LCD ones. Took me 5 minutes to find a more verbose list.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
"Um..yeah, I'd like to return this book. I was making a cake, and the recipe spreads over opposite sides of a page, and as you can clearly see, the pages stick together from 'Mix dry ingredients together in large bowl' all the way through to the Book of Revelations. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until after I'd already added the brimstone and the lake of burning sulphur, and it was the worst birthday my five-year-old ever had."
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion