> On Apr 3, 2024, at 6:32 PM, Rick Bensene <ri...@bensene.com> wrote:
>
> I wrote:
>
>>> The digits are among the nicest looking digits that I've ever seen
>>> on a CRT display, including those on the CDC scopes as well as IBM >>
>>> console displays.
>
> To which Paul responded:
>
>> I have, somewhere, a copy of a paper that describes analog circuits > for
>> generating waveforms for digits along the lines you describe.
>> Might have been from MIT, in the 1950s, but right now I can't find > it.
>
>> Found it (on paper): "Generating characters" by Kenneth Perry and
>> Everett Aho, > Electronics, Jan 3, 1958, pp. 72-75.
>
>> Bitsavers has it in the MIT/LincolnLaboratory section:
>> https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/lincolnLaboratory/Perry_and_Aho__Generating_Characters_-_Electronics_19580103.pdf
>
> Very interesting. Here's a link to the patent for the display system on the
> Wyle Labs calculator:
>
> https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/17/51/58/89c19cee6c60e2/US3305843.pdf
>
> The concepts are very similar to the paper written up in ELECTRONICS magazine
> in early 1958 that you found. Your memory is incredible to have been able to
> have this pop into your mind when you read my description of the way the
> calculator generates its display.
>
> Thank you for looking up this article! It'll provide some nice background
> for the concepts of generating characters this way when I finally get to
> documenting the Wyle WS-01/WS-02 calculators in an Old Calculator Museum
> exhibit.
>
> I wonder if the inventor of the display system for the calculator (in fact,
> the inventor of the entire Wyle Labs calculator architecture) had read this
> article at some point prior?
>
> I scanned through the patent for the calculator display system looking for
> any reference to the article or any document from MIT relating, and I
> couldn't find anything.
I didn't see any either, and the patent examiners didn't cite any. Then again,
it's amazing how often patent examiners miss relevant prior art. One example I
like to mention is Edwin Armstrong's patent for FM radio, which doesn't cite an
actual earlier US patent, 1,648,402 from 1927, actually filed 12 years before
Armstrong's. Or the prior art centuries preceding US 6469...
On the other hand, while the concept is similar the details are rather
different, and the Wyle design is clearly a whole lot simpler.
> The inventor is still alive, and I have talked to him on the telephone a
> couple of times. For his advanced age, he is still quite sharp, and
> remembers a lot of the challenges involved with trying to make a solid-state
> electronic calculator that would fit on a (large) desktop using early 1960's
> technology.
It would be neat to ask him about that MIT article.
paul
