Unrelated but I have long held a Jurassic Park Theory of Startups. The easier you can map yourself and coworkers to characters in Jurassic Park the bleaker the prospects of the company.
Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
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Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#22I love stuff like this.
Often films and TV shows have anachronisms in them (like the very first episode, IIRC, of Narcos with the clearly very modern touchscreen photocopier where the screen has been covered with a piece of paper, or the BMW that wasn't released until the mid/late 1990s), but every so often you'll see something that is instead a flash of the future.
Due to #reasons I watched the sentry gun scene in Aliens for the first time in decades the other day. This scene only appears in the director's cut of the film. Anyway, bearing in mind it was released in 1986, imagine my utter shock when Hicks busts out a couple of laptops to monitor and manage the guns. The machines in question are a pair of GRiD Compasses, originally released in, I think, 1984. Imagine that: a laptop computer from 1984. They're not even that big and cumbersome.
Of course, the specs are laughable by today's standards but actually pretty decent for the period, and especially for portables. In terms of memory and raw CPU power they'd certainly have wiped the floor with the average home computer of the day, although graphics capabilities might have been non-existent, and sound would have been PC speaker at best.
So, yeah, Nedry with a tablet? I can buy that. His whole den/lair is like a toy box of the coolest hardware and software from the early 1990s. But for all the times I've seen the film, I've never spotted this before.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#23The circuit breaker from the restoring power scene is real too: https://www.google.com/search?q=westinghouse+spb-100&udm=2
When I was a kid I always wondered why Dr. Sattler had to manually prime/charge the breaker before enabling it. Apparently it is because that model (and others like it) use a spring to quickly close the circuit. When she is priming it puts tension into the spring, and when she presses the button it quickly releases and completes the circuit. This is done to prevent arc flashes due to the high voltage and amperage, since the coiled spring snapping into place can complete the circuit much faster than any human pulling a lever could.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#24In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
They are shown in the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDha7nj4s10
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#25The circuit breaker from the restoring power scene is real too: https://www.google.com/search?q=westinghouse+spb-100&udm=2
When I was a kid I always wondered why Dr. Sattler had to manually prime/charge the breaker before enabling it. Apparently it is because that model (and others like it) use a spring to quickly close the circuit. When she is priming it puts tension into the spring, and when she presses the button it quickly releases and completes the circuit. This is done to prevent arc flashes due to the high voltage and amperage, si…
> it puts tension into the spring
Well it certainly put tension into the scene! Thanks.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#26In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
There is also a reading device with a single page in the 1961 Lem novel "Return from the Stars":
> Lem predicts the disappearance of paper books from the society. Lem even describes a reading device very much like a tablet computer that the main character Hal Bregg gets familiar with when he tries to find paper books and newspapers.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#27The circuit breaker from the restoring power scene is real too: https://www.google.com/search?q=westinghouse+spb-100&udm=2
As is the supercomputer.
It's the Thinking Machine Connection Machine CM-5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine
https://www.jurassic-pedia.com/cm-5-thinking-machine/
The LED panel is gorgeous:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ko4qBkEcBM
A lot of people have replicated or restored these:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qm6w57ZcJZQ
https://www.housedillon.com/posts/resurrected-led-panels/
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I've always hoped the film series would be rebooted back to the original novel. The first film was a masterpiece, and everything that's followed has been increasingly awful. Dinosaurs and cloning are way too cool for that amount of disrespect.
I'd kill for an R-rated horror film (think Alien) based on the book, especially if it were set in 1980 and deeply scientific like the original. That was the only film in the series with believably smart characters, each pursuing complex motivations, with fulfilling character arcs. The plot focused on the people, and dinosaurs were the dressing.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean actually the FSV that you refer to is a clone of the SGI IRIX utility, fsn , that was actually depicted on a live computer in the film. SGI was well-known to the film industry, because their IRIX systems were basically the sine qua non of graphics workstations and powerhouses. SGI invested heavily in the graphical capabilities, including 3D rendering, and therefore when the industry graduated from Amigas with…
Poor SGI. I used to love their website back in the 90s. It's strange to think that alternative architectures were possible though and could get such a foothold in some industries. The specificity is mind-blowng. Everything is "PC"s today.
It does blow my mind that back in the 90's that companies were rolling their own silicon and OS's without being absolute giants.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#29Not a single mention of General Magic or Magic Cap, the software running on the tablet? Smh.
Re: Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk? (2012)
#30In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
The movie itself predates the moon landing - it came out in 1968. It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60 years old now! The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.
Paul Rudd’s computer (~2009?) was to me probably the most accurate prediction regarding genAI (https://youtu.be/a8K6QUPmv8Q)