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It depends how you define "affordable". Daedalus (the late David E.H. Jones) writing in New Scientist in 1974 sketched an idea for a laser-based system and almo

It depends how you define "affordable". Daedalus (the late David E.H. Jones) writing in New Scientist in 1974 sketched an idea for a laser-based system and almost immediately received a notice of complaint from an existing patent holder (plus ca change ...) although unlike patent trolls this patent holder had actual objects made by the process. The system here was based around a minicomputer (or at least a successor patent of 1978 so described it) so we're talking tens of thousands of dollars for the compute involved in that scheme - but that first 1971 patent must have expired in the 90s by which time inexpensive compute was trivially available to match early 70s minicomputer capabilities. Excerpts from the exceptionally excellent book "The Inventions of Daedalus - A Compendium of Plausible Schemes" which is sadly long out of print: https://paperstack.com/img/photos/page%2090.jpg https://paperstack.com/img/photos/page%2090.jpg https://paperstack.com/img/photos/page%2091.jpg https://paperstack.com/img/photos/page%2091.jpg

nonameiguess 2y ago
This history is fascinating as hell. I looked up the name of the person in that excerpt who claimed the original patent. He's apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/463935-first-3d-printing-patent https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/463935-fi... I don't know why they have a record for earliest filing of a 3d-printing patent, but this guy (Wyn Kelly Swainson) was an American graduate student of English Literature who filed the patent in Denmark after teaching himself some basic lithography and chemistry from a library after wondering why no technique existed to make copies of sculptures. He ended up doing research for DARPA and founding an engineering company. Also, for any random reader who isn't familiar with the cultural history of the west, Daedalus was the mythical designer of the labyrinth of Crete made to contain the minotaur, and also the father of Icarus, who crafted the artificial wings he and his son used to escape Crete after King Minos tried to keep them trapped there after he helped Ariadne help Theseus to kill the minotaur. He was also somewhat responsible for creating the minotaur in the first place, as he built the fake cow costume King Minos' wife used to mate with a bull and birth the minotaur. I guess it became a popular pen name in the early to mid 20th century, because it was also the name (Stephen Dedalus) of James Joyce's self-insert character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.

nonameiguess 2y ago

This history is fascinating as hell. I looked up the name of the person in that excerpt who claimed the original patent. He's apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/463935-first-3d-printing-patent https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/463935-fi... I don't know why they have a record for earliest filing of a 3d-printing patent, but this guy (Wyn Kelly Swainson) was an American graduate student of English Literature who filed the patent in Denmark after teaching himself some basic lithography and chemistry from a library after wondering why no technique existed to make copies of sculptures. He ended up doing research for DARPA and founding an engineering company. Also, for any random reader who isn't familiar with the cultural history of the west, Daedalus was the mythical designer of the labyrinth of Crete made to contain the minotaur, and also the father of Icarus, who crafted the artificial wings he and his son used to escape Crete after King Minos tried to keep them trapped there after he helped Ariadne help Theseus to kill the minotaur. He was also somewhat responsible for creating the minotaur in the first place, as he built the fake cow costume King Minos' wife used to mate with a bull and birth the minotaur. I guess it became a popular pen name in the early to mid 20th century, because it was also the name (Stephen Dedalus) of James Joyce's self-insert character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.