Ahead of their time

June 21, 2006 2:17 AM

ASCII-art 1940s-style, flatscreen TV in the Fifties, a video phone from 1964. Articles scanned from classic mechanics and science magazines and blogged here. The future used to be so cool. (Via b3ta)
posted by featherboa (24 comments total)

I love how the video phone looks like the one from 2001: Space Oddysey.
Funny to think now that one of those things can fit in your pocket (and other voids).

As for the magazines, New Scientist is currently printing articles from various times in its history. For example- the first newspaper to print stories on the internet were met with almost panicked "is this the end of printed news!?", and comments that pretty much guaranteed that withing ten years we would be reading the newspapers from screens every day.
Just thought I'd share that.
posted by D J Robertstein at 2:24 AM on June 21, 2006

I don't know if I buy the story about why that picture tube never caught on, though.
posted by Jimbob at 2:50 AM on June 21, 2006 [1 favorite]

Yeah that is stupid especially since TV manufacturers have embraced all sorts of different technologies. Of course times were different back then - having a single TV with a small screen was a big deal and the voracious "upgrade to the next gizmo" probably wasn't has big as it is now.
posted by evilelvis at 3:32 AM on June 21, 2006

Odyssey.

*zips away in personal helicopter*
posted by quonsar at 4:00 AM on June 21, 2006

Aiken's patent on the flat screen picture tube is US Patent No. 2,795,731. You can look it up and view it here (although you will need a TIFF viewer to see it - instructions are found on the link). He also had similar patents nos. 2,864,033, 2,88,0341, and 3,313,970. I doubt the licensing story. It probably just didn't work, was too expensive, too hard to manufacture etc.
posted by caddis at 4:58 AM on June 21, 2006

They predicted webforums!
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:34 AM on June 21, 2006

DJ Robertstein: and they were right. I get all my news from the screen. I haven't read a newspaper in many many months.

Maybe it won't die out completely, but it's not exactly a growth industry anymore....
posted by Malor at 5:38 AM on June 21, 2006

ASCII typewriter art used to be the domain of the shut-in.
posted by smackfu at 6:29 AM on June 21, 2006

well if you figure that in the late 40's early 50's the "millions of dollars" spent developing the "wrong" tube was a hell of a lot of money. Especially to the stock holders and Board members. Easily multiply by 10 to get today's numbers. But remember back then a dollar was a dollar.
posted by Gungho at 7:24 AM on June 21, 2006

The typewriter art article is almost too good to be true. If they didn't have so many scanned pages of this stuff, I'd have thought they were making it all up. Too funny.
posted by GuyZero at 7:51 AM on June 21, 2006

From an interview with the inventor, linked on the flatscreen TV page:

COBLEIGH: Was there anyone you were working with?

AIKEN: I had other engineers.

COBLEIGH: Anyone of note?

AIKEN: No.

Well.. The entire interview has to be read to be believed, actually.
posted by Chuckles at 7:54 AM on June 21, 2006

But remember back then a dollar was a dollar.

Sure. And for $4500 you could buy an electronic desktop calculator, or a brand, spanking new Porsche 911.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:25 AM on June 21, 2006

early lsd paper

Dr. Funkenstein has shown convincingly that people who repress their anger liberate an abundance of the adrenalin-type substance and become depressed, while those who act out their anger release more nor-adrenalin.

further research indicates that if you free your ass, your mind will follow
posted by pyramid termite at 8:27 AM on June 21, 2006

It's interesting how some technology caught on, where others are just flights of fancy.
posted by quin at 9:52 AM on June 21, 2006

Ack, the 'on' link should go here.

/stupid linky things.
posted by quin at 9:55 AM on June 21, 2006

That interview with Aiken is really cool! What a neat guy...
posted by Afroblanco at 10:24 AM on June 21, 2006

Outstanding interview with Aiken. And I completely believe the story about why the tube didn't take off. Corporate culture was completely different back then (at least, in that industry).
posted by tadellin at 10:31 AM on June 21, 2006

Corporate culture is still the same here. Look at Sony and how they dont embrace easier technologies yet stick with their propriatary formats. This is also my counter point, because Sony is one of the companies who embrace new technology because it is better.

Anyway, Sony has stuck to their memory sticks even though they could have gone with SD or Flash when it is so much cheaper.
posted by subaruwrx at 10:37 AM on June 21, 2006

Cool isn't a word that popped into my mind after reading that interview..

Anyway, his arguments don't make much sense. At the very least, he is a shameless self promoter. Nobody is going to turn down an exclusive on a superior technology ready to ship, no matter how much they have already spent. They might decide not to spend all that money again, to develop some new prototype technology into a manufacturable design. I mean, you have a product ready to go, or you can spend a couple of years and a pile of money to develop something new.. Actually, he pretty much admits that this is what RCA decided, he just pretends not to understand the business decision.

Most likely there were performance and/or manufacturability problems too. If it was obviously superior people would have cloned it once the patent expired. Well.. That is a little unfair though, once traditional tubes got a head start of 10-20 years it would have been hard to catch up.
posted by Chuckles at 11:27 AM on June 21, 2006

What a great post -- I cant' get enough of this stuff. I love this guy, what a maniac.
posted by undule at 1:14 PM on June 21, 2006

Anyway, Sony has stuck to their memory sticks even though they could have gone with SD or Flash when it is so much cheaper.

That's not a technology diffrence, that's a format diffrence.
posted by delmoi at 3:15 PM on June 21, 2006

Anyway, his arguments don't make much sense. At the very least, he is a shameless self promoter. Nobody is going to turn down an exclusive on a superior technology ready to ship, no matter how much they have already spent.

Of course not, and he doesn't say that that's what happened. What he said is that RCA wouldn't let him use their method of displaying color, which was a bunch of little dots. RCA also threatened to fight anyone who used a competing, interlaced color method either. So there was no legal way to colorize his screens without at least getting into a big patent fight with RCA.
posted by delmoi at 3:25 PM on June 21, 2006

Oh, also IBM developed a similar CRT system a few years ago. Who knows why, but they did. I think they thought it was practical with todays techology.
posted by delmoi at 3:34 PM on June 21, 2006

RCA also threatened to fight anyone who used a competing, interlaced color method either.

The first competing method he mentions sounds remarkably like Trinitron to me..

But to your objection:

Well, Kaiser looked at it and said, "It’s going to cost millions of dollars to develop production models, set up a production plant and get into production." At that time, after World War II, there wasn’t much of a market in the military, and they said, "We can’t put up the money."

Very unlikely.

So, Kaiser went to RCA and said, "Would you like to use our tube with your color method. Would you like to go ahead and use this thin tube?" Well, they liked it. That is, I was told by Kaiser, at the time. I don’t know if I remember it accurately, but here’s what I understood: RCA was ready to go ahead and sign a license agreement with us. Well, RCA didn’t like the license. They wanted to control things.

They finally agreed to a license. But, at the last minute, I guess at a Board of Directors’ Meeting for the final approval, somebody on the Board of Directors’ of RCA said, "Wait a minute, we’ve forgotten something. How are we going to explain to our stockholders that we wasted millions of dollars on the wrong tube?" And there was silence. And that did it. They said, "No, we will not take a license."

Exactly how I characterized it before, I think..

Any links to the IBM system? I bet they patented it :P
posted by Chuckles at 5:37 PM on June 21, 2006