Tag: Patient things
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Reprint on computing history
Linked in previous. Also, this 2012 item continues to draw occasional readers or bots, so maybe it’s worthwhile at least to bots. = = = = = START REPRINT: Via uCatholic.com: The computer was originally invented to do just that: compute. Numerical calculations were its sole intended purpose, and words were never in the realm…
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Better choices
Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Look, if you really want to honor ancient women in technology, Ada is getting tired. She didn’t invent anything, she was just a writer who explained Babbage’s invention and saw some of its potential. Babbage wasn’t the main source of modern computing anyway. Calculators with decimal dials were widespread a…
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Kedit is still alive
Every now and then I check the webpage of Mansfield Software, the maker of Kedit. For 18 years they’ve been trying to give up the ship, and each time they decide to keep supporting and selling just a little bit longer. I’ve never needed support because Kedit has never shown a single bug or defect…
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The Hughes Typograph
Found in Tangible Typography, or how the blind read, published in England in 1853. The Typograph was invented in 1851 by William Hughes, head of the Blind Institution at Manchester. It was demonstrated at one of the Crystal Palace exhibitions of new inventions, and was produced and used in small quantities. Several of the earliest…
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Bootstrapping a language
Okie blogger K. Latham posted an interesting brief feature on the Cherokee Advocate, a weekly paper in Tahlequah that was first founded in 1844. I had noticed several early tribal newspapers in the Ayer newspaper lists but hadn’t stopped to think about the alphabet and fonts. I asked some questions about the source of the…
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Bachelor stoves
Ran across this while reading up on the Pratt typewriter. This is described as a bachelor’s stove. It was supposedly invented by James Watt himself. One specimen was donated to a museum by a Watt descendant in 1863. The relative claimed this was the same teapot Watt was using when he was inspired to make…
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Pratt’s Pterotype, 1 of 3
First a story about John Pratt and his invention. This was found in a 1927 issue of Typewriter Trade Journal. = = = = = START QUOTE: Mrs Worl recently gave to the Wenatchee Daily World of Wenatchee, Washington, the following story of the invention of the Pratt typewriters, one of the earliest writing machines.…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 2 of 3
Pratt’s US patent, issued in 1868, is titled Mechanical Typographer but he normally called his machine the Pterotype for unknown reasons. It wasn’t notably wingy. Here’s how it looked in operation: Each key had a long lever pivoted in the middle of the machine, and each lever activated three separate horizontal bars. All letters were…
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Pratt’s Pterotype 3 of 3
Returning to both Sholes and Hammond. Sholes and Glidden didn’t use Pratt’s keyboard at first. Like most early typewriters they followed the piano model. They also used an entirely different way of getting each letter to the paper, with individual hammers bearing each letter. Oddity: Glidden and Sholes sold their idea to gunmaker Remington, but…
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Zenith set released
I’m done with the expanded Zenith topic. Here’s the set at ShareCG as usual. ShareCG wouldn’t let me upload the set titled as ‘Zenith expanded’. I finally figured out that their algorithm is tuned to reject small variations. I changed the title to ‘Wincharger’ and it uploaded properly. = = = = = List of…
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Zenith + Wallace, part 1 of 3.
I decided to continue having fun with Zenith, since it seems to bring out the best in my craft. So far all the Zenith items I’ve ‘drawn’ have turned out nicely, above the standard of other recent output. Write what you know. Write what you love. Randomly looking through old radio journals for more material,…
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Zenith + Wallace, part 2 of 3.
When FDR took office, he had to fix two parallel legacies of the booming speculative 20s, both of which caused busts in the 30s. There were cross-ties between the two legacies, so he couldn’t fix either one by itself. He had to fix them in a cross-linked way. One boom was initiated by huge government…
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Tired of Platonists
More point-missing by Platonists: = = = = = START QUOTE: In his new book, Science After Babel, David Berlinski expands on his explanation of the development and significance of algorithms, a subject he first examined in The Advent of the Algorithm. Berlinski writes, “The calculus and the rich body of mathematical analysis to which…
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Zenith origins
Earlier this year I modeled some of Zenith’s more famous and interesting products. How did Zenith start? It was a classic garage inventor story. Ralph Mathews had a unique talent for mechanical invention, and he also had pretty good connections and luck. He started the right business at the right time. Mathews was building and…
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Where the ice goes
[Redated after several addendums…] I’ve got a brief break in courseware, so decided to do some ‘fun’ graphics. The Ice Plant piece earlier this year didn’t include the destination of the ice. So here’s a condensed version of the original set, with the destination added on. = = = = = How did the ice…
Polistra's Mill 