From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 22:37:54 -0800 (PST)
To: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: ITAR and Paper ROM
In-Reply-To: <199702051939.LAA03422@toad.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970205222643.0061e5a0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 09:26 AM 2/5/97 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:
>I'm not sure if what I did in the 80s, trying to create what I called
>'paper ROM, is applicable. [....]
>to replace diskettes for inexpensive mass data distribution.  
> Although a technical success, I abandoned the effort
>when I discovered someone had patented (4,488,679) something similar a 
>few years earlier.

Yeah, our patent office is so helpful - granting a patent for
	"Storage of Information By Making Marks On Paper" :-)
You'd think they'd recognize a few thousand years of prior art.....

Xerox also has a similar patent; their method uses little diagonals
to encode data in. ///\\\///  It really _isn't_ called "cuneform".

More practically, sort of, there was the Cauzin Softstrip Reader,
which cost about $200 and held enough data to distribute programs
back when computers and programs were much smaller; a few PC magazines
tried distributing programs by printing them in the back that way.
Cute, but not cute enough to stick around very long.


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)