Electronic Calculator Invented 40 Years Ago

TrafficProducer · #1 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 03:35 AM

Electronic Calculator Invented 40 Years Ago

Listen to Engineer Jerry Merryman as he talks to Andrea Seabrook about his memories of designing the portable computing device.

thehappysmoker · #2 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 08:01 AM

Incredible. Even harder to believe, I read yesterday that Copying to hard-disk was invented 80 years ago, by John Logie Baird, but no-one paid it any attention before the 1950s, when TV companies started using video.

**ctabuk** · #3 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:05 AM

There were fax machines before WW2

And the helicopter was invented by the Chinese Before Christ -they had flying models

**wige** · #4 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:19 AM

My favorite - most people who know of Hedy Lamar know her as a film actress in the 40s and 50s. What most people do not know is that in 1942 she received a patent for "Secret Communication System" which could switch radio frequencies. First used by the US military in 1962 in the blockade of Cuba to secure intership communications, this technology now forms the basis of all modern wireless communications technology.

**ctabuk** · #5 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:23 AM

My dear old Dad helped to invent the Acoustic Torpedo - Ironically because his own ship (No he did not own it

) was the HMS Queen Elizabeth sunk in Alexandra Harbour by a two man sub. The first time one had been used.

He built our first TV by hand. 1953 - I was 4 but I sort of remember it.

thehappysmoker · #6 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:23 AM

Christ claimed to have invented helicopters ????

**ctabuk** · #7 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thehappysmoker

Christ claimed to have invented helicopters ????

Somethings never change - thank goodness - I'll go and hide in my fridge

**ctabuk** · #8 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 09:59 AM

Actually I must have heard it wrong - here's what I found
* The basic idea of a helicopter -- flight through rotating horizontal wings or "rotors" -- goes back at least 1,500 years, through a simple invention known as the "Chinese top" that still survives today in various forms. This is a toy with a rotor blade mounted on a stick, and spinning the stick between the palms of the hands or by pulling a string wound around it causes it to soar into the air. The toy eventually made its way from China to Europe, where it appeared in paintings dating as far back as 1463. Not long after that, in 1483, Leonardo da Vinci illustrated a more sophisticated "rotary-wing" toy in his famous notebooks. However, building a rotary-wing aircraft that was any more than a toy was beyond the technology of the time, and remained so for centuries.

Martinscholes · #9 (**permalink**) 10-12-2007, 05:30 PM

And John Logie Baird demonstrated colour and 3-D TV in the 1940s. But the equipment was destroyed by a bombing raid in WW2.

And a Mr Wright, a cinema owner in Wellington, Shropshire invented a 3-D cinema system (which did NOT require special glasses to view the screen). Sadly it did not catch on as Cinescope just came out and his invention was, sadly, overlooked.