The old guys were smarter than most give them credit!

[Tom M King]

I fix things that were done poorly a century and a half, to two and a half centuries ago almost every day.

[steven c newman]

Let's try this out.....A large group of people came upon a river that they needed to cross. Too deep to just wade across, and the wagons and other stuff they were hauling along wouldn't take the wet trip across. They were also other people lurking over there....

The leader of the group comes up to the river bank, turns around, and tells the rest to....just build a bridge. Which they did, in about...48 hours, IIRC......it was strong enough for everything they were hauling to go across with dry feet.

The leader of this group? Julius Gias Ceasar. The river was across the Rhone, if I remember correctly. Those same Roman soldiers build the bridge with just the basic tools they carried along everywhere. No plans were needed, just build the bridge, and carry on.

Try that sort of thing today...lawyers and others will lock it down so fast....you might get the same bridge done today, but it would take 3 years to do...regulations to save us...from us.

[Frederick Skelly]

We've had this shown before, but it's always fun and inspirational:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5OxVgH-T1I&app=desktop

That was neat!

[Frederick Skelly]

Let's try this out.....A large group of people came upon a river that they needed to cross. Too deep to just wade across, and the wagons and other stuff they were hauling along wouldn't take the wet trip across. They were also other people lurking over there....

The leader of the group comes up to the river bank, turns around, and tells the rest to....just build a bridge. Which they did, in about...48 hours, IIRC......it was strong enough for everything they were hauling to go across with dry feet.

The leader of this group? Julius Gias Ceasar. The river was across the Rhone, if I remember correctly. Those same Roman soldiers build the bridge with just the basic tools they carried along everywhere. No plans were needed, just build the bridge, and carry on.

A great reminder Steven. The Romans were one of the leading cultures of their time (along with India, China and several others).

[Patrick Chase]

Yes, a daylight viewable display is a solved problem, one which was solved by the transflective display on my ST4121.

I may be biased because I did image quality and image processing for a long time, but transreflective displays are a disaster from just about any perspective *but* brightness and IMO a technological dead-end.

I think you have good points about NeXTStep/MacOS and especially FreeHand. I remember using FreeHand 1.0 on Mac in 1988 and being completely blown away. Of course the way they got those results was by embedding a complete PostScript interpreter and running it interactively, some time before NeXT did the same thing (with Display PostScript).

Way OT though...

[Patrick Chase]

Let's try this out.....A large group of people came upon a river that they needed to cross. Too deep to just wade across, and the wagons and other stuff they were hauling along wouldn't take the wet trip across. They were also other people lurking over there....

The leader of the group comes up to the river bank, turns around, and tells the rest to....just build a bridge. Which they did, in about...48 hours, IIRC......it was strong enough for everything they were hauling to go across with dry feet.

The leader of this group? Julius Gias Ceasar. The river was across the Rhone, if I remember correctly. Those same Roman soldiers build the bridge with just the basic tools they carried along everywhere. No plans were needed, just build the bridge, and carry on.

Try that sort of thing today...lawyers and others will lock it down so fast....you might get the same bridge done today, but it would take 3 years to do...regulations to save us...from us.

Military engineers do the same thing in similar contexts all the time, and have done so in every modern conflict. There's a huge difference between building something in peacetime that will be used by civilians for decades to come, and building something in wartime that only needs to service (inherently expendable) soldiers for a matter of days or weeks.

[William Adams]

Transflective displays suit my need to have a machine which functions as a map reader, Ebook, CNC controller, &c. when traveling, or working on my back deck. Nothing else meets my needs.

Freehand is pretty limited in its on-screen PostScript support compared to Altsys Virtuoso on a NeXT Cube w/ Display PostScript. In particular PS fills and strokes don’t render until printed to .ps.

[steven c newman]

Those same soldiers back then were required to build the roads they walked on ( some are in use even today) every evening, they had to build a fortified camp. Hadrian's Wall was built by those same soldiers, and the outposts and towns along it. When they weren't fighting, they were building. Romans also perfected the use of concrete. They built things fast, yet strong. They also used a fancy form of hand plane, as well. You ight check that one out.....

Napoleon's Engineers were some of the best in their day. Might check out the operations in and around Lobau Island on the Danube river.

[Jim Koepke]

Transflective displays suit my need to have a machine which functions as a map reader, Ebook, CNC controller, &c. when traveling, or working on my back deck. Nothing else meets my needs.

Freehand is pretty limited in its on-screen PostScript support compared to Altsys Virtuoso on a NeXT Cube w/ Display PostScript. In particular PS fills and strokes don’t render until printed to .ps.

I remember back when I was knee high to a grasshopper my great grandpappy saying, "back in the day those transflective displays were driving everyone nuts."

jtk

[allen long]

In fact, Dick Tracy had a radio watch back in the 1950s. The biggest change that allowed all the digital devices we have was miniaturization..

DickTracy was a fictional comic strip character and the radio watch did not actually exist.

[Bob Glenn]

I fix things that were done poorly a century and a half, to two and a half centuries ago almost every day.

Tom, all due respect, however, I wonder how much stuff made today will be around and in use in a couple hundred years. Bob

[Frederick Skelly]

DickTracy was a fictional comic strip character and the radio watch did not actually exist.

It does now. They call it a cell phone.

[allen long]

Honestly how much stuff is in use today from 200 years ago? Similar finer furniture, tools, and musical instruments made today will be around 200 years from now. There were cheaply made items then as there are now.

[Stewie Simpson]

http://timkastelle.org/blog/2014/04/...tand-the-past/

When we look at the history of innovation, it becomes clear that we can’t create valuable new ideas without building on old ones. Think about the example of computers – the device that you’re reading this on is part of a line of ideas that actually goes back thousands of years.

To innovate, we need to be able to imagine a better world. But at the same time, we have to be aware of what has come before.

To create the future, we must understand the past.

[Pat Barry]

The way i see it progress is made by building on existing ideas and designs. Make improvements to an existing design by changing and optimizing certain weak links, etc. That's evolutionary development in a nutshell. The problem is that this is also a process that follows the laws of diminishing returns. True innovation on the other hand involves paradigm shifts in ideas. Examples such as vacuum tube to transistor or steam engine to internal combustion or battery to solar cell. Leveraging these paradigm changes is where true progress is made.