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Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

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Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#161

Post by edm0nd »

pk-protect-ai wrote: post #79
themafia wrote: post #28

Why Steve Jobs and not the Apple II? Or even the iPhone? Alternatively why not Seymour Cray instead of the Cray-1? Or why not use one side for the inventor and the other side for the invention? Jobs sitting there in an empty field just throws the whole set for me.

Why not Wozniak (probably still alive), or Shannon (I'd vote for him), Convey, Knut, Reed, Solomon, Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, etc? Why it is a CEO? Why Jobs and Edison? It is just how it is...

I'd vote for a Stallman coin and its him eating his foot flesh

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#162

Post by contrarian1234 »

lossyalgo wrote: post #97
contrarian1234 wrote: post #17

weird design for steve jobs.. without context it looks like the depiction of some spiritual leader (which maybe is a bit funny given the early apple fanbase). I get he was a bit of a hippie, but that's not exactly his claim-to-fame > His posture and expression, as he is captured in a moment of reflection i dont associate "reflection" with him. not to disparage him in the slightest, but its just not in the top ten of…

If you scroll down there is a description explaining the pose: > This design presents a young Steve Jobs sitting in front of a quintessentially northern California landscape of oak-covered rolling hills. His posture and expression, as he is captured in a moment of reflection, show how this environment inspired his vision to transform complex technology into something as intuitive and organic as nature itself. Inscrip…

sometimes I'm really flabbergasted by the replies and reading comprehension on HN. I'm genuinely curious what's going on. Are you a last-gen AI or something? Did you read the first sentence and hit reply?

I'm literally quoting the passage you're citing and talking directly about it. And then you quote it back to me.

mind = blown.

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#163

Post by nozzlegear »

jmclnx wrote: post #125
overflyer wrote: post #55

Steve Jobs was an absolut malignent narcissist and a copycat. Why not Dennis Ritchie for example? This is ridiculous.

Yes, I think this is an insult to our profession. All I can say about Jobs is he made lots of $. Dennis Ritchie revolutionized an industry.

> Yes, I think this is an insult to our profession.

I don't think the Mint's goal is to celebrate developers and computer scientists with the new coins. They're celebrating famous innovators and innovations from each state.

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#165

Post by microtherion »

engeljohnb wrote: post #120
dbish wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woz is awesome and as an engineer I understand the urge to say he’s the main one who should be honored but we have to be realistic. Jobs ushered in 2 eras, only 1 with Woz. The personal computer and the computer in everyone’s pocket. That’s not touching any of the other areas like helping to drive Pixar. Woz did not have a second act, which is perfectly fine and I deeply respect him but he doesn’t have quite the same…

Woz is a genius who invented the personal computer as we know it. Jobs was a celebrity who was good at branding himself as a genius. I don't consider a clever UI idea like a touch screen to be a work of brilliance, especially since he did zero engineering work, both for early and later Apple devices. Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later. It should've bee…

Woz was one of many people who designed microprocessor based computers in the 1970s (I recently started reading back issues of Dr. Dobb's Journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01_201710, and the variety is astounding), and far from the first one, though he was very good at what he did.

What really set apart the Apple II from many of its peers is that it came preassembled, in a neatly designed case (though the Commodore PET and TRS-80 were pretty much released at the same time), and those esthetics were due more to Jobs than Wozniak.

Jobs did not write product code, or design boards, but he had a constant presence in the design of Apple's products and many (though by no means all) of his inputs changed the products for the better.

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#166

Post by throw0101d »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #150
boringg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably should - California has a lions share of all the innovations. I would guess that it would be even more concentrated than just the correlation to population given the research institution / market structures. Other states should most certainly promote their successes.

I just decided to pull mine up... I live in Florida, and I had no idea of the following: * Air conditioning: In 1851, Dr. John Gorrie invented a machine to cool air, which laid the groundwork for modern air conditioning and refrigeration * Gatorade: The sports drink was developed at the University of Florida to help the football team rehydrate. * Sunscreen: Benjamin Green invented the first commercial sunscreen in 19…

> Air conditioning: In 1851, Dr. John Gorrie invented a machine to cool air, which laid the groundwork for modern air conditioning and refrigeration

And modern cooling was invented by Carrier, with the original use case to actually control humidity to help the publishing/newspaper industry:

> On December 3, 1911, Carrier presented what is perhaps the most significant document ever prepared on air conditioning – Rational Psychrometric Formulae – at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It became known as the "Magna Carta of Psychrometrics."[8][9] This document tied together the concepts of relative humidity, absolute humidity, and dew-point temperature, thus making it possible to design air-conditioning systems to precisely fit the requirements at hand.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier

The idea of temperature (first in cinemas and theatres) came later. People under-estimate how much humidity control is needed for comfort: many building codes are adding language to have a standalone whole house dehumidifier.

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#168

Post by tylerflick »

shevy-java wrote: post #159

Shall we forget that Steve Jobs conspired with other companies to pay developers less? This is well-documented in courts (and also on many other websites, by the way): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo... See: "[...] Steve Jobs orchestrated an elaborate scheme to prevent poaching and drive down wages."

For real. Where is my Dennis Ritchie coin?

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#169

Post by _fat_santa »

throw0101d wrote: post #65

> Mobile Refrigeration — Minnesota The logistical chain for keeping products products is really interesting: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain Besides food, another area where it is critical is pharmaceuticals.

Planet Money did a an excellent podcast on the topic[1]. Highly recommend a listen for anyone interested.

[1]:https://www.npr.org/2025/09/26/nx-s1-5553615/gustavus-swift-...

Re: Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to be featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 coin

#170

Post by microtherion »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #98
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $1 dollar notes are very economically inefficient (they don't last all that long, haven't had enough value to justify notes for a long time), and the mint has been trying to get people to stop using them and switch to coins for a long time. However, there is significant popular opposition to that, people seem to massively prefer notes. At one point you could order $1 coins from the mint at face value and with fre…

The single biggest problem with $1 coins, is that they are of similar size to quarter-dollar coins. 26.50 mm (1.043 in) - $1.00 24.26 mm (0.955 in) - $0.25 They feel almost identical, in your pocket, and the $1 coin is small enough to get stuck in many vending machines. I am not exactly sure of the reason that the mint is so resistant to making the coins a bit bigger (they used to be).

Another, NSFW, problem with $1 coins is that their universal adoption would lead to a lot of bruised strippers.
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