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Author Archives: GilPress
From the Archives: “My God, it Talks!”
Today in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell gave a public demonstration of his new invention, the telephone, at the Centennial Exhibition, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Steven Lubar in InfoCulture: “Bell demonstrated three induction telephones to a select jury that included Sir William Thomson, perhaps the best-known … Continue reading
Posted in Telephone, This day in information
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Keeping America Informed
Today in 1860, the United States Congress established the Government Printing Office. Congress passed the Joint Resolution (No. 25) which directed the Superintendent of Public Printing “to have executed the printing and binding authorized by the Senate and House of Representatives, the executive and judicial … Continue reading
Posted in Print, This day in information
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The Probability of Common Sense
The Great French mathematician Laplace wrote, “The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus.” Voltaire, his much older contemporary, added, “Common sense is not so common.–John Allen Paulos, Once Upon a Number
Posted in Quotes, Statistics
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Big Data in Egypt Around 3100 B.C.E.
King Narmer’s Macehead at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, records the capture of 120,000 prisoners, 400,000 captive oxen, and 1,422,000 goats. I. Bernard Cohen in The Triumph of Numbers: “Perhaps the numbers are exaggerated, but we can, even so, learn from this … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Museums, numbers
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Imagining Television, 1908
Today in 1908, Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton published a letter in the journal Nature titled “Distant Electric Vision” in which he envisioned television as it was developed three decades later. He wrote: “Possibly no photoelectric phenomenon at present known will provide what … Continue reading
Posted in Innovation, Television, This day in information
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The Future of Mobile
Posted in Infographics, Mobile, Predictions, The InfoStory Quant
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How Wikipedia Writers View the World
Quentin Hardy reports in The New York Times that Kalev Leetaru, a researcher at the University of Illinois, has mined Wikipedia to reveal the connections between cities around the globe over time, focusing on the type of language used to talk … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Textual Analysis
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First Sound on Film Demonstration
Ninety years ago today, Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner publicly demonstrated for the first time a motion picture with a soundtrack optically recorded directly onto the film. In the first sounds ever publicly heard from a composite image-and-audio film, Helena Tykociner, the inventor’s wife, … Continue reading
Posted in Film, This day in information
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The Story of Information 