POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Welcome to the future Server Time
3 Sep 2024 15:13:15 EDT (-0400)
  Welcome to the future (Message 21 to 30 of 77)  
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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 15:48:18
Message: <4da4ac82$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 06:25 PM, Stephen wrote:
> I remember reading an article in the late 50's or early 60's saying that
> flatscreen monitors would be impossible. Of course it was talking about
> CRTs

Our lab *had* several flat CRTs. (We recently got rid of them. They were 
quite old by now.)

Of course, the glass was flatter than the actual tube, to give a greater 
impression of flatness than actually exists. The monitors were huge, so 
the radius of curvature is lower anyway. And by twiddling knobs, you can 
adjust which part of the image is out of focus. ;-)

I'm still looking forward to the day when they invent a way to have 
high-resolution images at the cinema. Currently they can't even seem to 
get all of it in focus...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 15:50:22
Message: <4da4acfe$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 08:37 PM, Warp wrote:
> Alain<aze### [at] qwertyorg>  wrote:
>> The bad:
>> Most of those components are cm sized, or monstrously huge compared to
>> electronic parts.
>
>    Guess what the size of the first transistors (well, the equivalent of
> transistors used in the first electronic computers) were.

Indeed. I gather people currently make chips for use in projectors that 
flip microscopic mirrors around, so certainly making micro-scale optics 
isn't impossible...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Orchid XP v8
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 15:52:18
Message: <4da4ad72$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 07:50 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/12/2011 11:35, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> I meant optical computing specifically. Nobody talks about it any
>> more. So
>> what happened to it?
>
> I hear about it pretty regularly, as research. People are still trying
> to figure out how to get it interfaced to the electronics efficiently
> and so on.

OK. So, in the words of that awful TV advert, "I'm not dead babeh. I'm 
just, uh, havin' a break".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 16:17:30
Message: <4da4b35a$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 6:29 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It's news to me that DAT was ever intended as anything other than a
>> >  studio format.
> That's why it sucks so hard as a backup medium - it was only intended to
> be used for lossy data (ie, audio), and was adapted for use for backup
> medium.

Are you sure about that, Jim?
I seem to remember that in the mid 70s I used DAT tape to load 
programmes and data into a Burroughs mini computer.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 16:22:58
Message: <4da4b4a2$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 6:35 PM, Warp wrote:
> Stephen<mcavoys_at@aoldotcom>  wrote:
>> On 12/04/2011 5:52 PM, Warp wrote:
>>> and flatscreen monitors:
>
>> I remember reading an article in the late 50's or early 60's saying that
>> flatscreen monitors would be impossible. Of course it was talking about CRTs
>
>    Ironically, there exists a technology to make flatscreen CRTs, with all
> the advantages of CRT (such as contrast) with less of the disadvantages
> (such as distortion, misalignment, etc). The basic idea is that there's
> one (static) electron ray per pixel. (Well, three, one for each color
> component.)
>
>    For some reason the technology has never been commercialized, even though
> it could potentially be feasible.
>

I think that idea would have been beyond the ken of man at the time. 
Nice to have heard it though.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 16:24:05
Message: <4da4b4e5$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 7:48 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/12/2011 10:25, Stephen wrote:
>> On 12/04/2011 5:52 PM, Warp wrote:
>>> and flatscreen monitors:
>>
>> I remember reading an article in the late 50's or early 60's saying that
>> flatscreen monitors would be impossible. Of course it was talking
>> about CRTs
>
> There's also a version where the guns are at the bottom and the beam
> gets curved as it passes up the back of the plate. IIRC, they had two
> guns, one for purplish and one for greenish, so the colors weren't as good.
>

Never heard of that, very interesting.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen


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From: nemesis
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 16:24:30
Message: <4da4b4fe@news.povray.org>
see, your blog would be much more active if you reserved such texts for 
it. ;)

You know you're in the future when you have your telephone, stereo, book 
library, TV set, bank account and games right with you all the time in 
your pocket.  And Space Invaders looks better than Star Wars.

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 17:03:41
Message: <4da4be2d@news.povray.org>
Stephen <mcavoys_at@aoldotcom> wrote:
> >    Ironically, there exists a technology to make flatscreen CRTs, with all
> > the advantages of CRT (such as contrast) with less of the disadvantages
> > (such as distortion, misalignment, etc). The basic idea is that there's
> > one (static) electron ray per pixel. (Well, three, one for each color
> > component.)
> >
> >    For some reason the technology has never been commercialized, even though
> > it could potentially be feasible.
> >

> I think that idea would have been beyond the ken of man at the time. 
> Nice to have heard it though.

  What do you mean "at the the time"? It's a modern invention.

  I didn't remember the name of the technology, but I found it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Stephen
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 17:20:39
Message: <4da4c227$1@news.povray.org>
On 12/04/2011 10:03 PM, Warp wrote:

>
>> I think that idea would have been beyond the ken of man at the time.
>> Nice to have heard it though.
>
>    What do you mean "at the the time"? It's a modern invention.
>

What I meant was in the 1950/60s the thought of having a matrix of tiny 
cathode ray tubes, would be beyond belief.

>    I didn't remember the name of the technology, but I found it:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display
>

Thanks for the link.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Welcome to the future
Date: 12 Apr 2011 17:28:27
Message: <4da4c3fb$1@news.povray.org>
On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:17:28 +0100, Stephen wrote:

> On 12/04/2011 6:29 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> It's news to me that DAT was ever intended as anything other than a
>>> >  studio format.
>> That's why it sucks so hard as a backup medium - it was only intended
>> to be used for lossy data (ie, audio), and was adapted for use for
>> backup medium.
> 
> Are you sure about that, Jim?
> I seem to remember that in the mid 70s I used DAT tape to load
> programmes and data into a Burroughs mini computer.

I'm pretty sure about that.  "Digital Audio Tape" is what DAT stands for.

You aren't thinking about standard cassettes?  I used to use those on 
Commodore PET and C64 computers, and they also had occasional issues with 
data loss.

Jim


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