[HN Gopher] The 1871 Samuel Morse Statue (2014)
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The 1871 Samuel Morse Statue (2014)
Author : goles
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-05-14 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com)
| TheGRS wrote:
| If they erected a statue of Steve Jobs across the pathway I bet
| it would be pretty well travelled again :) I'll have to check
| this out on my next visit, I don't think I've ever noted it
| before, central park has a ton of little discoveries to make.
| eldavojohn wrote:
| It's "inventor's gate" not "shrewd businessman's gate".
| outworlder wrote:
| Woz, then?
| aksss wrote:
| Al Gore
| goles wrote:
| This guys blog is pretty neat, he's written about thousands of
| different buildings and statues in NYC, past and present.
|
| Sort by neighborhood on the left and you can probably find a
| bunch of fun places to see on your next trip!
|
| Another interesting one - John Seward Johnson II's "Double
| Check" https://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/03/john-
| seward-j...
| rmason wrote:
| What about a statue for Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of
| tcp/ip? In its era just as important imho as morse code. I say
| that as a ham who has used morse code for over a half century.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > His son would explain "Morse himself refused to attend the
| ceremonies of the unveiling of his counterfeit presentment, as
| being too great a strain on his innate modesty."
|
| That is a hell of a way to bow out of an event you dont want to
| attend. Way better than my standard "I dont feel like it"
| state_less wrote:
| > Her return message was "What hath God wrought."
|
| I had a vaguely similar feeling going from a 56k dial up modem to
| a campus 10mbps connection.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| That's great - for me that was probably one of the most mind
| blowing tech things I've experienced in my lifetime, but in my
| case I went from 56k dialup modem to DSL (still phone line)
| that I think capped at 1mb/second but it absolutely rocked my
| world.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Not me. My area was the first area in France to be set up
| with ADSL. The problem is that they only upgraded the last
| mile (local exchange->home) but not the pipes from the local
| exchange to the internet. So you were connected at 8mbit but
| in practice it was slower than a 56k. I think it took at
| least 6m to fix it.
|
| Was the same by the way on the introduction of the iphone.
| Wireless data networks were flooded by smartphones. You
| couldn't connect to the internet from a phone in certain
| parts of London.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Or seeing WiFi for the first time. It was Internet . . . with
| no cables!
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> the disconsolate artist focused on discovering a process of
| rapid long distance communication.
|
| Very small point, but there were fast means of communication
| prior to Morse. His invention certainly democratized such
| communication, but a semaphore system was speeding government
| messages across France decades before the telegraph.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph
| bombcar wrote:
| This is played up as the Clacks in Pratchett's work, and is an
| interesting look into non-electrical long-distance
| communication possibilities.
|
| https://wiki.lspace.org/Clacks
| paulrouget wrote:
| The story of the Telegraph is mind blowing. It was such a
| revolution, it changed our world. I can't recommend that book
| enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" The man whose invention was so important that a memorial was
| erected while he was still living is little noticed by passersby
| who do not look up from their cell phones."_
|
| Shame really, perhaps the trees should be thinned out around the
| area or the statue moved.
|
| Trouble is, these days many of the younger generation of
| smartphone users don't even know what Morse Code is let alone
| recognize it.
|
| It seems to me local engineers and engineering history people
| should get involved to make the statue more prominent. New
| sineage explaining its historical background would help.
|
| It's not only Morse who's fallen by the historical wayside, there
| are many others in science and engineering that students of their
| discoveries and inventions know little about or that they have
| never heard of.
|
| I blame both teachers and curricula for this oversight (I recall
| being taught stuff out of textbooks without any reference to its
| historical past only to learn the details decades later--often by
| accident or chance).
| jjulius wrote:
| Ah, the passage of time.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't specifically remember it though I'm sure I've seen it.
| I'll maybe take a look when I'm in Manhattan in a bit over a
| week. It's actually in a pretty trafficked area near the model
| boat pond and a Fifth Avenue entrance.
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(page generated 2024-05-14 23:01 UTC)