Incandescent Lamp Version
Multiple segment alphanumeric displays are nearly as old as the use of electricity. A 1908 textbook describes an alphanumeric display system using incandescent lamps and a mechanical switching arrangement. Each of 21 lamps was connected to a switch operated by a set of slotted bars, installed in a rotating drum. This commutator assembly could be arranged so that as the drum was rotated, different sets of switches were closed and different letters and figures could be displayed. The scheme would have been used for "talking" signs to spell out messages, but a complete set of commutator switches, drums and lamps would have been required for each letter of a message, making the resulting sign quite expensive.
Read more about this topic: Fourteen-segment Display
Famous quotes containing the words incandescent, lamp and/or version:
“Don’t think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.... Think if Tiffany’s made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 5:15.
See Exodus 22:8 for a different version of this fourth commandment.