Giant scrolling text in 1945??

Sorry, I still say it's not just moving and blinking lights. It's a matrix of light points (pixels) that light up individually in a programmable combination and sequence without the benefit of digital processing. This is different from showing a series of still images. It would be easier if the scrolled text was a permanent one meant to run unchanged for years, but it apparently could be reprogrammed without too much hassle.

See? It's not that obvious even now, is it? :-)

As far as I know, there was one contact and one wire per bulb. The intereference it cause with radios in the area was horrendous.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ 
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) 
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

I read an interview with her some years ago--she said she'd never seen him before or since. He might well have got into deep trouble in 2020.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

Nah, the statue commemorating the encounter is still on display in San Diego, right on the waterfront. Near the navy piers...

-bill m

Either I don't understand, or I disagree.

Here's a crude representation of a capital A from VGA:

x xxx xx xx xx xx xx xx xxxxxxx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

Here's the same character triple wide:

xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx

To me, this means that each column and row intersection can represent a bulb. The bulb is either on or it's off. There is no need to worry about adjacent bulb. The hole pattern on the tape deals with this.

Nope. I'm thinking that if a hole is punched, the light is on. If the hole is not punched the light is off.

Move the tape along through the array of sensors, and the lights will change as the hols move.

I don't see /any/ processing in the method that I'm talking about using.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die

Why can't it be just moving and blinking lights?

Why does the glyph that's displayed matter if it's an "A" or a "+"? Both of them are a matrix of pixels (lights) that are either on or off in a predefined pattern.

Digital isn't needed. Only pure basic DC (or the AC counterpart there of) circuits is needed. Is the switch open or closed resulting in the light being off or on (respectively). There's just a bunch of said switches.

In my first example (copied below), the letter A is 7 pixels wide by 10 pixels tall, thus resulting in 70 pixels.

1234567 x xxx xx xx xx xx xx xx xxxxxxx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 1234567

If you have a sign that's 10 bulbs (pixels) high and 100 bulbs (pixels) long, you have 1,000 discrete bulbs to control. This can be done with something as simple as paper tape either allowing conduction through the hols or not when they are blocked.

As the tape above is drawn through the ""reader, column 1 is turned on for the right most column.

Delay for a brief period of time.

Pull the tape one more pixel through the reader, column 1 is turned on for the 2nd from the right column and column 2 is turned on for the right most column.

Delay for a brief period of time.

Pull the tape one more pixel through the reader....

Delay....

Repeat this process 107 times and the letter A will scroll across the entire display.

Notice how the only ""processing is a simple binary switch that either turns the light on, or doesn't. Holes in a paper tape can easily do that.

I think pulling a tape through would actually be easier than changing between still images.

Changing out the old paper tape for a new one with a new set of images would be about as easy as changing out the film being projected at the movies.

Obviously the tapes used would have considerably more than one letter on them. But that's the beauty. The tape is simply a series of holes punched in the shape of the desired letters / glyphs / symbols / etc. It is literally a sequence of pixels that are displayed. The tape could be as long as you want, probably with a minimum length. Some of that minimum could be blank, all lights off.

I believe the bulk of it is.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die

Most of the time you can't just go around grabbing broads.

You're still not getting my point. I'm not saying that it would be cutting edge *now*. With today's technology as a background, many high school kids could come up with the idea. As could many uneducated people with a creative mind. But 80+ years ago? The principles behind Edison's inventions are obvious now, but not in his time. *That's* my point.

Come on, you're taking this out of context. That was a gentle ribbing in response to George's comment "How they did it might be interesting". See the smiley?

You stated "without the benefit of digital processing". I'm saying that no processing is needed.

What I'm describing is an application of electric switches to the idea behind the Jacquard loom, which dates back to the early 1800s. So sure, the application of the idea to control lights was new in the early

1900s. But a simple switch, or many of them, combined with (then) 100 year old technology, is not a stretch of the imagination. It certainly is not any form of processing or computation or manipulation of anything. It is simply a bunch of independent simple yes (on) / no (off) decisions. There is a direct one to one relationship between the holes in the tape and the lights on the display.

There is no context around your stand alone statement, "See? It's not that obvious even now, is it? :-)" for it to be taken out of. You effectively said "It's not that obvious even now how the ticker signs worked." A statement that I, and I believe others in this thread, disagree with. I believe it is relatively obvious how the signs worked. At least one way that they could have worked.

George's statement that you replied to expressed interest in learning more about how it was done. Interest in something does not imply lack of knowledge about it currently.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die

Hollerith's electromechanical tabulating machines were used for the 1890 US census. The 1896 version could add. The idea of using something like that to run blinkenlights was novel enough to patent 20 years later, but it isn't like it sprang forth from Zeus's brow.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

What you just described is basically what digital processing is about - complex combinations of yes/no, one/zero, on/off. Yes, the electrical switch was not new then, but could the average person with no prior knowledge except how an electric switch works have thought up their applications like the Jacquard loom, scrolling text or other complex applications? Coming up with ideas that most other intelligent persons would not have is what makes the idea innovative.

I believe it is relatively obvious how the signs worked.

Being interested in learning how people do something indicates that there are at least some things one does not know about it. How else do you interpret it? I never said that George didn't understand the principles.

The claw hammer was patented (in the USA) in the early 1900s, yet it was invented 50+ years prior.

When something is patented is not a good judge of how novel it is / was.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die

I disagree. I believe that processing requires more than turning something on or off. Sure, digital processing works by doing exactly that. But digital processing is so much more than that.

Processing in this context would be taking a relatively simple code from a then common stock ticker tape and translating each code to the pattern of lights needed to be turned on to represent that code. Expound that for many additional codes / letters. Then expound that even further by moving that derived pattern through each of the steps of the display. That would be (digital) processing. (I suspect it's possible to do it mechanically too, but extremely mechanically complex.)

Compare that type of processing to pulling a paper tape through a series of electrical contacts / switches.

I expect that FAR MANY MORE people could understand pulling the tape through switches compared to understanding the mechanics involved to decode a character on a ticker tape to letters on a sign.

Could someone that understood the basic concept of a switch and a Jacquard loom deduce the concept of controlling the switch with a loom ~> paper tape? Quite likely. The devil is going to be in the details of how it is done.

Most high school students that have passed basic physics can explain that an internal combustion engine is a controlled explosion directing the force and converting it into rotational motion which is transferred to the wheels. The nuances of how that is done is much more problematic. Yet there are still many high school students that can do it.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die

That's not so. There are certainly poor patents granted, but uninformed blanket cynicism is baseless.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Who holds 44 US patents and has served as an expert witness in 24 patent and trade secret cases in district court and the International Trade Comission, working with both plaintiffs and defendants.)

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com

How many patents have been granted for perpetual motion machines during the last century.?

The USPATO doesn't seem to make much prior art checks and just grants patents. To invalidate a questionable patent (e.g. claiming prior art) one has take the case into court at own expense.

It led to a couple of generations of amazingly klunky BCD computers at IBM.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

Science teaches us to doubt. 

  Claude Bernard

I know of none. Do you have an example?

Anyway there's no need for an invention to work to be patentable. Patent law is based on a quid pro quo: teach your invention to the world, and you get the exclusive right to practice it for 20 years.

If it doesn't work, then nobody could practice it at all anyway, so no harm, no foul.

The PTO has its problems, but that's not one of them.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I read a long time ago that the US patent authority makes an exception in the case of a perpetual motion machine, requiring proof that it actually works. I don't remember the source and my memory could be playing tricks on me, but I don't think so.

Black patented negative feedback several years after Voigt built amplifiers using it - and Voigt's push-pull amplifiers were re-invented and patented by Western Electric.

Western Electric also planned to patent their 45/45 stereo system in the

1950s until it was pointed out to them that Blumlein had already patented it 20 years earlier.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ 
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply) 
www.poppyrecords.co.uk