Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Whither SmartBoard

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 14:20:47 03/02/98

Go up one level in this thread


On March 02, 1998 at 16:53:54, David Fotland wrote:

>On February 24, 1998 at 14:51:25, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On February 24, 1998 at 12:21:58, Steven Schwartz wrote:
>>
>>>On February 24, 1998 at 12:07:18, Bert Seifriz wrote:
>>>
>
>>
>>
>>Of course this is only about 13 years after the technology was
>>displayed by Ken Thompson in Washington DC, 1978, at the ACM event
>>that year.  :)
>>
>>It's a shame no one took up the gauntlet and challenged the patent
>>based on widely-known prior work by Ken.
>
>Do you know that this patent uses the same technique as Ken did?
>The patent describes a scheme with two set of parallel wires, orthogonal
>to each other, and not touching, multiple frequencies on the wires, and
>resonators in the pieces.
>
>Anyone who wants to read the patent can look it up at the IBM patent
>site, http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/
>

that is *exactly* what Ken did.  He even talked of doing this using a
standard "roll-up" vinyl board because it would be so easy to stick the
"antennas" on the back...


>Just do a search for the patent number (5129654).  I found it with a
>search for the inventor's last name, but searching by number is faster.
>
>He didn't patent the idea of a game board that detects pieces.  He
>patented
>a specific method of detecting pieces.
>
>David Fotland



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.