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From: fiddler%concertina@Sun.COM (Steve Hix)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Babbage Sues Computer Industry!!
Message-ID: <129481@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 20 Dec 89 19:08:54 GMT
References: <3458@husc6.harvard.edu>
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In article <3458@husc6.harvard.edu>, siegel@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel) writes:
> In a completely unexpected move today, Charles Babbage, creator of the
> "Babbage Numerator", widely recognized to be the prototypical computer,
> announced that he and his heirs will be suing all makers of computer
> equipment, computer peripherals, computer-driven equipment (cars, 
> microwave ovens, etc) for royalty fees retroactive to December 1, 1880.

After hearing preliminary arguments, the judge threw the case out, claiming
that Babbage's analog computer did not directly prefigure current digital
practice.

Babbage counters by suing manufacturers of various analog computers, such as
naval gun directors and some analog flight simulators.

In a related move, Babbage himself is being taken to court by Blaise Pascal,
inventor of an early census-tabulating computer.

------------

"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."

		Plato, _Phaedrus_ 275d