Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Television is 100 years old today

diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 283 posts

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#161

Post by gcanyon »

WalterBright wrote: post #130
gcanyon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting question (to me) is how directly a line can be drawn from the original invention to what we in modern times think of as “the thing”? As an example, the Wright brothers built a biplane that had wing warping instead of ailerons and a canard design. That bears little resemblance to most modern airplanes, but people have little trouble crediting it as “the invention of the airplane” —- questions of whethe…

The invention of the "airplane" is just a simplified term for "controlled and sustained powered flight". Which the Wrights did with both controlled and powered in the 1903 Flyer. (The Wrights invented the first 3-axis control system, and designed & built the first aviation engine capable of sustained flight.) While the Wrights were first, by several years, its invention was inevitable.

> The invention of the "airplane" is just a simplified term for "controlled and sustained powered flight"

Maybe? But most people think of it as "invented the airplane," and the two terms have different connotations in common use. Likewise, the title here says "television," not "real-time capture, transmission, and display of moving images" -- and similarly, I think the terms have different connotations.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#162

Post by ihaveajob »

ortusdux wrote: post #99
sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

One summer odd-job included an afternoon of throwing a few dozen CRTs off a 3rd floor balcony into a rolloff dumpster. I'da done it for free.

People pay for that these days in smash rooms.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#163

Post by jasonfarnon »

Xirdus wrote: post #148
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1940-1990 era of technology can't be beat. Add hard drives and tape to the mix. What happened to electromechanical design? I doubt it would be taught anymore. Everything is solid state

Solid state is the superior technology for almost everything. No moving parts means more reliable, quieter, and very likely more energy efficient since no mass has to move.

Do modern hdd's last as long as the old platter ones? For me, when the SSDs fail it's frustrating because I can't open it up and do anything about it--it's a complete loss. So I tend to have a low opinion of their reliability (same issue I have with old versus new electronic-everything cars). I don't know the actual lifetimes. Surely USB sticks are universally recognized as pretty crappy. I can leave those in the same location plugged in and they'll randomly die after a couple of years.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#164

Post by jasonfarnon »

avadodin wrote: post #157
tzs wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also hard to be sure if early memories are actually memories from the actual event or are memories your brain constructed from later hearing people describe the event. There was one experiment where researchers got a man's family at a holiday gathering of the extended family to start talking about funny things that had happened to family members when they were children. In particular the man's parents and siblin…

The memories are probably nothing like how they were at the time, but I vividly remember running away from my parents with my elder sister, getting bullied by an extremely blond girl at day care, and falling and literally eating dirt including that it was salty around 2-3.

But at some point don't you lose the direct memory, and only retain remembering it? Eg I don't know that I directly remember the fight I got in with the neighbor kid at age 4, but I can definitely remember thinking about it for a something we had to write in school around age 8. Or at least I could when I was in high school. That's when I thought about the time I had to write that essay when I was 8. At some point all I remember are the like the layers of subsequent thoughts about the original event, and I don't really access the original event any more, or it's just a stub.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#165

Post by crystal_revenge »

josalhor wrote: post #53

On the one hand I look at some tech lifecycles and feel everything moves so slow (cars, energy and train infrastructure etc..). And then I look at other stuff and I cannot phantom that someone who was born 100 years ago saw a TV (or media electronic screen) from conception to modern miracle. As someone in his 20s I can't imagine what I'll see in the next 80 years!

> As someone in his 20s I can't imagine what I'll see in the next 80 years!

All of these rapid technological advancements are a function of tremendous increases in energy available .

We passed peak conventional oil years ago and only see proven reserves increase because we redefined 'shale oil' as included under proven reserves. But shale oil has much lower EROEI than traditional oil. We can already see geopolitics heating up before our eyes to capture and control what remains, but to continue to advance society we need more energy.

On top of this we are just now starting to feel the impacts of the effects of the byproducts of this energy usage: climate change. What we are experiencing now is only a slight hint of what is to come in recent years.

In the next 80 years we'll very likely see an incredible decline in technology as certain complex systems no longer have adequate energy to maintain. The climate will continue to worsen and in more extreme ways, while geopolitics melts down in a struggle for the last bits of oil and fossil fuels (interestingly these combine in the fight for Greenland because a soon-to-be ice free arctic holds lots of oil, not enough to advance civilization the way it has been going, but enough to keep yours running if you can keep everyone else away).

I sincerely suspect within the next 80 years we will see the full collapse of industrial civilization and very possibly the near or complete extinction of the human race. You can see the early stages of this beginning to unfold right now.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#166

Post by iberator »

NL807 wrote: post #143
thomassmith65 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high school science teacher used to share anecdotes from his days in electrical repair. He said his coworkers would sometimes toss a television capacitor at each other as a prank. Those capacitors retained enough charge to give the person unlucky enough to catch one a considerable jolt.

lol I did this with my mates. Get one of those 1 kV ceramics, give it some charge and bob's your uncle, you have one angry capacitor.

This can be deadly :/ just wow

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#167

Post by lifeisstillgood »

retrac wrote: post #128
sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

There's a synchronous and instantaneous nature you don't find in modern designs. The image is not stored at any point. The receiver and the transmitter are part of the same electric circuit in a certain sense. It's a virtual circuit but the entire thing - transmitter and receiving unit alike - are oscillating in unison driven by a single clock. The image is never entirely realized as a complete thing, either. While s…

>>> The image is not stored at any point.

The very first computers (Manchester baby) used CRTs as memory - the ones and zeros were bright spots on a “mesh” and the electric charge on the mesh was read and resent back to the crt to keep the ram fresh (a sorta self refreshing ram)

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#168

Post by rapfaria »

kleiba wrote: post #123
sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

What do you mean "had"? I just turned mine off a minute ago. I am yet to make the transition to flat screen TVs but in the mean time, at least no-one's tracking my consumer habits.

Not through your TV, but they see you driving to the last Blockbuster tho

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#169

Post by usefulcat »

blauditore wrote: post #142
rm445 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fascinating post but I don't believe it reflects (most) human memory development, which has a pronounced forgetting phase called 'childhood amnesia'. When your kid starts to talk, it's startling what a two-year-old can remember and can tell you about. And it's kinda heartbreaking when they're 4-5 and you realise that those early memories have faded.

Note that your memories might not be accurate, as your brain may have skightly altered them over the years, over and over. There is generally no way for yourself to know (except for some external proof). This is not just the case for early childhood memories, but for anything - the more time passes, the less accurate. It's even possible to have completely "made-up" memories, perceived as 100% real, e.g. through sugge…

I can relate. I often feel like my earliest memories are now more like memories of memories, and I dimly recall that it wasn’t always like that.

Re: Television is 100 years old today

#170

Post by lebuffon »

sosomoxie wrote: post #64

CRTs are peak steam punk technology. Analog, electric, kinda dangerous. Just totally mindblowing that we had these things in our living rooms shooting electric beams everywhere. I doubt it's environmentally friendly at all, but I'd love to see some new CRTs being made.

I was on a course at Sony in San Mateo in the 1980s and they had a 36" prototype television in the corner. We all asked for it to be turned on. We were told by the instructor that he was not allowed to turn it on because the 40,000V anode voltage generated too many X-rays at the front of the picture tube.

:-))))

Post reply on HN