October 2011
Posted October 26, 2011
Disruptive Innovation: The Story of the 1st Digital Camera
For Immediate Release-October 26, 2011
Media Contact:
Kimberly Allen, Director of Development
816-926-8792
DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION: THE STORY OF THE FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA
Kansas City, MO—The question used to be, “Which is better film--Kodak or Fuji?” Today, the question would be, “What is film?” as digital cameras are the new normal. Join Steven Sasson, inventor of the first digital camera, at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26th as he explains this game-changing invention as part of the Linda Hall Library’s “Modern Innovations Lecture Series.”
Sasson joined Eastman Kodak Co. in 1973 as an electrical engineer working in an applied research laboratory in the Apparatus Division. He was given a broad assignment from his supervisor, Gareth A. Lloyd, to build a camera using solid-state imagers, a new type of electronic sensor known as a charge coupled device, which could capture optical information. Sasson went about constructing the digital circuitry from scratch, using oscilloscope measurements as a guide. For the rest of the camera, he made use of what was available to him at the time: an analog-to-digital converter from Motorola, a movie-camera photographic lens made by Kodak, and tiny CCD chips introduced in 1973 by Fairchild Semiconductor. The original prototype was eight pounds and about the size of a toaster! With a resolution of 0.01 megapixels, it recorded black and white digital images to a magnetic cassette tape. With this prototype model, Sasson took the first image in December of 1975 taking 23 seconds to capture it and forever changing the way the world takes photos.
This lecture, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Library’s Main Reading Room. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. This lecture series is made possible through the generous support of the Dwight D. Sutherland family, Tuck and Susan Spaulding, and the Linda Hall Library Annual Fund.
The Linda Hall Library is located at 5109 Cherry, Kansas City, Missouri. Although these events are free, reservations are required. Call 816-926-8772 or email events@lindahall.org to reserve tickets.
The Linda Hall Library, the world’s largest privately funded library of science, engineering and technology, is free and open to the public. The Library is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year. Library hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.; and the second Saturday of the month, 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. for exhibition viewing. For more information visit the Library’s website at www.lindahall.org.
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Posted October 20, 2011
The Man Who Invented the Computer
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: Kimberly Allen, Director
Development Department
816-926-8792
October 19, 2011
Kansas City, MO— Who is John Vincent Atanasoff, and why haven’t I ever heard of him? The story begins (as so many do) in a bar. One night in the late 1930s, in a saloon on the Illinois-Iowa border, Atanasoff, a professor of mathematics and physics at Iowa State University, was unwinding after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations. There and then it hit him that by combining the binary number system with electronic switches in conjunction with an array of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory he would have a computing machine that would make his life and the lives of countless other mathematicians a whole lot easier. Back in the lab he built such a device, which came to be known as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), and it worked! The rest, as they say, is virtual history. So why isn’t the name of John Vincent Atanasoff at least as well known as those of other inventors such as Thomas A. Edison and Alan Turing? The answer lies in the fact that Atanasoff never patented his device and because the developers of the better known ENIAC system (which lifted certain features from Atanasoff’s device) did.
Join Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Jane Smiley, author of the recent biography The Man Who Invented the Computer, at 7 p.m. on October 19, 2011, in this belated homage to this forgotten man who beat the world’s greatest minds in the quest to develop the first true digital computing machine. The lecture at the Linda Hall
Library is the first of three presentations in the “Modern Invention Lecture Series” held in conjunction with the new exhibition This Time It’s Personal: Innovation in Your Home.
Smiley is the author of numerous novels including The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Ordinary Love and Good Will, A Thousand Acres, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, Moo, Horse Heaven, Good Faith, Ten Days in the Hills, and the young adult novel, The Georges and the Jewels, as well as many essays for such magazines as Vogue, The New Yorker, Practical Horseman, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Allure, The Nation and others. She has written on politics, farming, horse training, child-rearing, literature, impulse buying, getting dressed, Barbie, marriage, and many other topics. She is also the author of the nonfiction books A Year at the Races, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel and from Penguin Lives Series, a biography of Charles Dickens. In 2001, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2006, she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. A book signing will follow the talk.
This lecture, which is free and open to the public, requires reservations. Call 816-926-8772 or email events@lindahall.org and leave name, address, phone number, and number of tickets required. The doors open at 6 p.m. and the program will commence at 7 p.m. This lecture is made possible through the generous support from the Dwight D. Sutherland family, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Spaulding, III, and the Library Annual Fund.
The Linda Hall Library, the world’s largest privately funded library of science, engineering and technology, open to the public, is located at 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Library hours are 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Monday through Friday. Tours are available daily at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
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Posted October 12, 2011
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
For Immediate Release-October 12, 2011
Media Contact: Kimberly Allen
Development Director
816-926-8792
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The riots in London during the summer; the Libyan revolution; the continued problems in Iraq and Afghanistan; and, closer to home, the top stories that lead our local news coverage would make most of us believe that our world is still a very violent one. However, Dr. Steven Pinker believes differently. In his most important and provocative book to date, he delves into the nature of human nature to tackle a paradox of modern life: that contrary to what most people believe, violence has been in decline for millennia, and we may be living in the most peaceful era in human history. In The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Dr. Pinker—psychologist, cognitive neuroscientist, linguist, intellectual polymath—pulls out all the stops in this dazzling sweep across centuries of human life.
On Wednesday, October 12, 2011, as part of the Linda Hall Library’s fall lecture series, Dr. Pinker will draw from psychology, history, brain science, war studies, game theory, complexity theory, and popular culture, to explore the following questions:
• What is the source of violence?
• Why it has been so common over the course of history?
• How have we been slowly bringing it under control?
This talk will challenge many widely accepted beliefs about humanity’s moral decline and the nature of violence.
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Steven Pinker is the Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University. He earned a B.A. in psychology from McGill University and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University. Copies of The Better Angels of Our Nature will be available for purchase courtesy of Rainy Day Books and a book signing will follow the lecture.
The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7 p.m. in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library. Doors open at 6 p.m. This lecture was made possible through the generous support of Barbara and Burt Smoliar and the Linda Hall Library Annual Fund.
The Linda Hall Library, the world’s largest privately funded library of science, engineering and technology, is open to the public. It is located at 5109 Cherry Street, Kansas City, Missouri. The Library is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.; and, the second Saturday of each month for exhibition viewing only from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. For more information, visit www.lindahall.org
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