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:
“I waited alone, in the company of orchids, roses and violets who—like people waiting beside you, but to whom you are unknown—maintained a silence which their individuality of living things rendered more imposing and in their chilly manner received the heat from an incandescent coal fire, preciously placed behind a crystal glass, in a white marble tub where it dropped, from time to time, its dangerous rubies.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“... people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I should think that an ordinary copy of the King James version would have been good enough for those Congressmen.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)