The idea of a telephone with a screen wasn't really new in 1969, since Ma Bell had been promoting the idea for decades. The Jetsons made fun of it on TV in the early 60s.
Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
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Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends entirely on the voltage. AC won because transformers are relatively simple and can change AC voltage, but we can now build stuff to change AC voltage too.
Don't forget that three phase allows for three conductors to carry the power of three pairs of single phase conductors.
Alternatively, skin effect limits the amount of AC current you can throw over a single conductor. With DC, you can make your conductors arbitrarily thick and you'll use the whole thing.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#33If this quote is from September 1969... The movie 2001 was released in late spring 1968. In it the astronauts are using a color tablet computer laying on a table, no thicker than a modern iPad, to watch video. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-st...
That movie is very special. A lot of it’s predictions like flat LCD screens, personal IFE on airplanes, iPads, and kids messing around on FaceTime are so mundane now it’s easy to overlook them when watching the film with a 21st century set of eyes
Yet its central “prediction”: that human travel into space would progress forward at a comparable rate to what was accomplished in the early 60s, was wildly off.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison.
Edison made money off of selling DC infrastructure though.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends entirely on the voltage. AC won because transformers are relatively simple and can change AC voltage, but we can now build stuff to change AC voltage too.
Don't forget that three phase allows for three conductors to carry the power of three pairs of single phase conductors.
Three-phase AC also allows for very electromechanically simple generators and motors. Industrial electrical loads have traditionally been (and often still are) rotating machinery, putting three-phase at an advantage.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#36At my university there are several ironic and funny posters with quotes about mispredictions on display at the walls of the big lecture hall of the mechanical engineering building. My favorite one is from Gottlieb Daimler 1901: "The global demand for automobiles will not exceed one million - at least because of a lack of available chauffeurs." [1] He is the founder of the predecessor of todays Daimler AG, which owns…
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
Think of data centers as huge mainframes and we will soon come close.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#37“The best way to predict the future is to to create it.”
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#38remimds me of francis ford coppola predicting youtube https://youtu.be/iSePbQVR284
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#39If this quote is from September 1969... The movie 2001 was released in late spring 1968. In it the astronauts are using a color tablet computer laying on a table, no thicker than a modern iPad, to watch video. https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-st...
Those working in the industry often know what's coming. What they often get wrong is how it's economically deployed, when it arrives, or what effects it will have.
E.g. the first articles on capacitive touch screens dates to the 50's, and the "flat-panel" Aiken tube display dates to the early 50's as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiken_tube
Article on the Aiken tube from 1958 with pictures that predicts future models may be flat enough to "hang like picture frames":
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r98DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104&re...
Seing the potential of going from normal TVs to that, it's certainly not a big leap to assume they'll get even thinner and smaller.
Re: Some Day, You’ll Have a Telephone with a Screen and Be Able To Dial a Book
#40Bell had a video telephone demo at the 1964 Worlds Fair in NY[0] some five years prior to this NYTimes story
I think a lot of public ideas of the future sprung out from that
I don't think the quote refers to a portable telephone but rather of the style that was demonstrated at the World Fair
[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/history/long-before-facet...