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"In WWII, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Screensaver (Inventor of) | ||
| Screen savers are used to prevent phosphor burnout in CRTs, and to provide restful entertainment on computer screens. |
As far as I know, this is the first reference to what later became known as "screensavers." The current implementation of the aquarium screensaver is pretty good, but only in two dimensions.
| They went to the living room; Jill sat at his feet and they applied themselves to martinis. Opposite his chair was a stereovision tank disguised as an aquarium; he switched it on, guppies and tetras gave way to the face of the well-known winchell Augustus Greaves. |
| From Stranger in a Strange Land,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Putnam in 1961 Additional resources -
|
For those who have already forgotten, "screen savers" received their name because they were used on computers that used cathode ray tubes as output devices. A CRT uses an electron gun to shoot particles at the phosphor on the back of the screen, causing tiny points of light to appear; constantly varying the images prevents the screen phosphor from being permanently marked if the electron gun points at the same point of the screen.
Today, of course, screen saver is a term for something entertaining to put on your computer screen while you are not doing anything with it.
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Additional
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and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Stranger in a Strange Land
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Screensaver (Inventor of)-related
news articles:
- Electric Sheep Distributed Screen-Saver: Collective Computer Unconsious
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| Tetraplegics Dominate Avatar Races |
| IBM's Grain Of Sand Computer |
| Can An Entire Brain Be Simulated In A Computer? |
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