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It’s pretty common that “breakthrough inventions” are arrived-at pretty much simultaneously by apparently disparate sources at approximately the same moment in
by qubex 4y ago
It’s pretty common that “breakthrough inventions” are arrived-at pretty much simultaneously by apparently disparate sources at approximately the same moment in time.
Consider the telephone, which is attributed to Alexander Graham Bell in most of the world and to Antonio Meucci in my native Italy. Or radio, which is broadly attributed to Marconi or Tesla. In hindsight it seems like one person triumphed upon others, but really if you look at it from their point of view they work with urgency and secrecy because they perceive themselves to be in neck-to-neck competition with their cohorts. They perceive their technological environ very differently from how we do ex post facto.
- stevenjgarner 4y agoAgreed. Definitely makes you wonder about the fairness of intellectual property.
- jaclaz 4y ago>which is attributed to Alexander Graham Bell in most of the world and to Antonio Meucci in my native Italy. The US congress did vote a resolution that cleared the matter (in 2002, a bit late I would say): https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-148/issue-76/house-section/article/H3308-1 https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-148/iss... But in this case Bell and Meucci weren't much disparate sources.
- qubex 4y agoI’m honestly stunned because I had no idea this issue had been raised, much less addressed.
- jaclaz 4y agoYep, the US somehow cleared the matter, but Canada swiftly affirmed the opposite in a one liner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_telephone https://web.archive.org/web/20141222093046/http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=hansard&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=37&Ses=1#SOB-291991 https://web.archive.org/web/20141222093046/http://www2.parl....