KT3000
12-19-2007, 01:06 PM
Barry Margolin wrote:
> In article
> <06639063-e8c6-4ab4-b613-e71db6a741bd@w40g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
> David Chesler <chesler@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>> I don't think reverse engineering would help much. Moore's Law had
>> been observed by 1984; it was predictable that stuff was going to get
>> smaller. Field Effect Transistors are practical now, and have allowed
>> significant advancement in hand-held electronics; we can posit he had
>> Li-Ion or NiMH batteries in the camera. But without seeing the masks
>> and the rest of the factory, I don't know how much it would help.
>> There might be some directions the technology could go in (they would
>> never develop BetaMax, or alternatively, BetaMax would be tweaked to
>> make it more attractive to consumers than VHS) that would be
>> different, avoiding dead ends. By 1984 Ken Olsen had probably
>> realized that there _was_ a reason for an individual to have a
>> computer in his home.
>
> I was thinking much the same thing. There's no revolutionary technology
> in a modern digital camera, it's just the product of the miniaturization
> trend of electronics that has been going on since the 60's. The hard
> part isn't the components of the camera, it's the manufacturing
> techniques that allow for creating it. You can't reverse engineer this
> from the end product, any more than you could tell what kinds of
> utensils were used to mix the ingredients in a cake by examining the
> final cake.
>
Who says it was reverse engineering that led to the timeline changes? It
could just have been the inspiration seeing the camera provided. Backed
up with the massive venture capital funding demoing that camera would
have landed.
> In article
> <06639063-e8c6-4ab4-b613-e71db6a741bd@w40g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
> David Chesler <chesler@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>> I don't think reverse engineering would help much. Moore's Law had
>> been observed by 1984; it was predictable that stuff was going to get
>> smaller. Field Effect Transistors are practical now, and have allowed
>> significant advancement in hand-held electronics; we can posit he had
>> Li-Ion or NiMH batteries in the camera. But without seeing the masks
>> and the rest of the factory, I don't know how much it would help.
>> There might be some directions the technology could go in (they would
>> never develop BetaMax, or alternatively, BetaMax would be tweaked to
>> make it more attractive to consumers than VHS) that would be
>> different, avoiding dead ends. By 1984 Ken Olsen had probably
>> realized that there _was_ a reason for an individual to have a
>> computer in his home.
>
> I was thinking much the same thing. There's no revolutionary technology
> in a modern digital camera, it's just the product of the miniaturization
> trend of electronics that has been going on since the 60's. The hard
> part isn't the components of the camera, it's the manufacturing
> techniques that allow for creating it. You can't reverse engineer this
> from the end product, any more than you could tell what kinds of
> utensils were used to mix the ingredients in a cake by examining the
> final cake.
>
Who says it was reverse engineering that led to the timeline changes? It
could just have been the inspiration seeing the camera provided. Backed
up with the massive venture capital funding demoing that camera would
have landed.