Sunday, December 30, 2018
What's most elegant?
Evocative question from Tesla skeptic Bachman:
What is the most elegant piece of engineering (hardware or software) you know of that is unknown by 99.99% of the population?
That's easy. Telegraphs before Morse. Beautifully elegant in UI/UX terms, usable by ordinary people for real communication. The Morse system reduced the mechanism to key and sounder, which simplified wiring and maintenance but required expert operators.
I've modeled four stages in this development.
(1) Wheatstone's needle.
(2) Breguet's dial.
(3) Gray's Telautograph.
(4) The astonishing Train Describer and related signaling systems, which mixed Wheatstone and Breguet.
Labels: Morsenet of Things
¶ 3:08 PM
