Patents are generally used to document who invented what first. Commercial
success building on old research and patents tends to be what is remembered.
So what if some guy in 1761 heated up a wire until it glowed releasing
light, it took many people over a long time to come up with a usable cheap
light bulb design and the inventions that brought electricity into cities
and peoples houses to power those bulbs that people will remember.
The only reason Apple sold so many Apple II's was because some software
designer came out with Visicalc. So many machines were sold that they ended
up cheap enough and useful enough to end up in schools and homes where
before they were only sold to corporations. IBM's release of the PC with
open architecture and all the people who cloned it and made software and
hardware for it that IBM never envisioned is the reason X86/X64 is so
dominant not that is was the first or the best.
The people who invented something epic tend to not have commercial success
because pretty much most ground breaking patents tend to expire before they
truly become useful and because of the need for other inventions to make
them commercially usable.
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Guzis via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:18 PM
To: Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
Subject: Re: First Internet message and ...
On 11/26/19 12:48 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
On 11/26/19 1:32 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
I figure the record will finally be set straight after all of the people
involved at time cited are dead.
Such is history.
You mean like how history says Columbus discovered America...
And Edison invented the incandescent lamp.
--Chuck
