CNN's top 25 innovations

[Jim Thompson]

That came out before 1980, about 8 years before.

Try around 1968-69

...Jim Thompson

 

[Anthony Fremont]

Try around 1968-69

I can clearly remember other manufactures making them in the mid 70's
and the datasheets having similar but somewhat different formulae for
calculating the time constants. I also had a radio-shack darkroom timer
kit that used a 555 (or was it a 556?) that I got in probably 73 or 74.
According to this article the 555 came out in 1972 at US $0.75 each.

http://www.eetimes.com/special/special_issues/millennium/milestones/camenzind.html

Interestingly enough (according to another source) the design was not
patented.

 

[Joerg]

Hi Jim,

But a natural gas machine needs no gasoline station ;-)

True, but so far I have only seen propane versions. These fell from
grace a bit when propane became more costly than gas per BTU. So I
haven't heard about these for at least a couple years now. Often the
conversion from propane to NG is simply done via fuel to air ratio
adjustments (new injectors etc.).

If your father's heating system is a real central heat furnace you need
something serious, like a big industrial strength UPS. These sometimes
show up for cheap at computer scrap dealers after mainframes were taken
down. It would have to be hard-wired in per code and probably needs to
generate 240V. On our central heat even the circulation fan runs 240V.
It is almost the size of an oil barrel.

Regards, Joerg

 

[Keith Williams]

What about the Copmmodore VIC-20? Peek and Poke to the graphics page
using the built in BASIC. Dare you to try that with Winders!

Umm, Winders <> PC. It was rather trivial to peek/poke to the IBM PC's
hardware with its built-in BASIC. It was trivial enough to write to
the hardware that many (literally) smoked their monocrome displays.
Ooops!

 

[Tim Shoppa]

That came out before 1980, about 8 years before.

Most of the things on the list were around before then.

Some (like the hybrid car) were around 100 years ago.

I think, in many cases, they are talking about particular
implementations of an old idea. In that respect, maybe it
should be a CMOS 555...

Tim.

 

[Michael Black]

The Signetics 555.
(Sorry, Jim, the MC1488 comes close, but doesn't quite make it.)

Tim.

You're looking at the wrong one of his creations. The MC4044P phase
detector made for much better PLLs' compared to the limited lock
detectors used before (such as in the analog Signetics PLLs which
helped bring the concept to the masses and whic came out about
the same time). While I'm not so sure the rest is traceable to
the 4044, but you had a long period when PLLs were known but little
used due to complexity when using tubes, and then after the 4044
came along we had a blossoming of synthesized equipment. Everything
from two way radios, toss out those multi-crystal synthesizers, to
digitally tuned tv sets and radios.

The 4044 might not have been used in all those designs, it was too
bulky for a lot of mass produced equipment, I gather, from Jim's posts,
that the basic design appeared in other ICs. Certainly, Motorola
integrated it into various ICs that included more of the synthesizer.

And they were even used in disk controllers. I've taken apart some
early "IBM PC" boards, I can't remember if they were floppy or hard
drive controllers, and gotten some 4044's that way.

Micahel

 

[Ian Stirling]

The World Wide Web and web browser, which made the Internet a
point-and-click app instead of command-line driven (and Unix based)
was started circa 1990.

Point and click had been around a while by then.
Gofer was for a fair while a lot bigger than the web.
Basically the web - in text.
Gofer was essentially as easy to use as the web. (of the time)
There was little innovative about HTML.

There was nothing really to stop gofer adding images before HTML
came out, and overtaking it.

I'd say that the web is half, or maybe a quarter of the whole, the
rest is the search engine.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ian Stirling
reader04.plus.net>) about 'CNN's top 25 innovations', on Mon, 10 Jan
2005:

There was little
innovative about HTML.

Wordwise, the most popular word-processor for the BBC Micro, used a
similar 'tag' system to HTML, to do primitive formatting and to pass
control codes to the dot-matrix printer, and I don't suppose that
Wordwise was the first app to do so.

 

[David Lesher]

I figured out something I need to buy for MY father. A few weeks ago,
during a big snow storm in WV, they were without electric power for
about five hours in the middle of the night. Got VERY cold.

Natural gas furnace, but no electric to drive the blower :-(

I suspect there's a motor-generator set made that runs on natural gas?
Just rig it up to run the furnace blower and some emergency lighting.

Anyone know where to look for such an animal?

Sure! I helped a friend install his. Most Generator mfgrs sell
"triple fuel" [gasoline, lpg, pipe gas] versions...

 

[David Lesher]

Why bother with natural gas? Gasoline in a small tank is so much safer
to handle, and it's a thoroughly experienced and understood application.

And spoils when left unused; and runs out when you most need it,
and is a major fire risk to store in quantity.

Natural gas is a great answer anywhere outside of earthquake territory.

 

[Ian Stirling]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ian Stirling
reader04.plus.net>) about 'CNN's top 25 innovations', on Mon, 10 Jan
2005:

Wordwise, the most popular word-processor for the BBC Micro, used a
similar 'tag' system to HTML, to do primitive formatting and to pass
control codes to the dot-matrix printer, and I don't suppose that
Wordwise was the first app to do so.

Tex comes to mind, which was written in 1978, there may well be earlier ones.
Markup languages were old hat by the time HTML came along.

 

[Keith Williams]

Tex comes to mind, which was written in 1978, there may well be earlier ones.
Markup languages were old hat by the time HTML came along.

Yep. IBM used "Script" and GML for all their publications (second only
to the US government for killing trees) long before '80.

 

[YD]

Point and click had been around a while by then.
Gofer was for a fair while a lot bigger than the web.
Basically the web - in text.
Gofer was essentially as easy to use as the web. (of the time)
There was little innovative about HTML.

There was nothing really to stop gofer adding images before HTML
came out, and overtaking it.

I'd say that the web is half, or maybe a quarter of the whole, the
rest is the search engine.

Gopher is still alive and well. There's a bunch of die-hards out there
trying to revive it.

gopher://gopher.quux.org:70/1/Software/Gopher/servers
gopher://gopher.quux.org:70/0/Software/Gopher/whygopher/gopher-manifesto.txt

- YD.