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When was the first electronic bitmap sign invented?

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SL4P:
I’d guess that one of the earliest ‘computerised’matrix signs would have been an electromagnetic ‘flip disc’ arrangement.

The power needed in the old days to get daylight readable illuminated pixels would have been enormous...?

Nusa:
https://www.edn.com/motograph-news-bulletin-debuts-in-new-york-city-november-6-1928/


--- Quote ---The Motograph News Bulletin, or “zipper” as it was known informally, was an impressive sight when it was first unveiled in the fall of 1928. It extended 380 feet around the fourth floor of what was then the Times Tower at One Times Square—the second tallest building in Manhattan when it opened in 1904. With a band five-feet tall, the moving letters, comprising 14,800 light bulbs, were visible from a distance of several city blocks.


The zipper displayed updates on the D-day invasion on June 6, 1944.
November 6, 1928, also happened to be election day in the United States, and the zipper's first message was “Herbert Hoover defeats Al Smith.”

The zipper, also known at that time as the “Motogram” sign, was installed for The New York Times by Frank C. Reilly, who is credited as being the inventor of electric signs with moving letters.

According to a New York Times article , “Inside the control room, three cables poured energy into transformers. The hookup to all the bulbs totaled 88,000 soldered connections. Messages from a ticker came to a desk beside a cabinet like the case that contained type used by old-time compositors. The cabinet contained thin slabs called letter elements. An operator composed the message letter by letter in a frame.

The frame, when filled with the letters and spaces that spelled out a news item, was inserted in a magazine at one end of a track. A chain conveyor moved the track, and each letter in the frame brushed a number of contacts. Each contact set a light flashing on Broadway.

There were more than 39,000 brushes, which had to undergo maintenance each month. The frame with the letter elements passed up and overhead, forming an endless circuit. Mr. Reilly calculated that there were 261,925,664 flashes an hour.”

The zipper was updated in 1997 with 227,200 amber-colored LEDs, expected to last up to 100,000 hours—30 times as long as the bulbs they replaced and using only about one-tenth the electricity. Dow Jones currently holds the lease to the operate the sign. Headlines are now auto-published with feeds from The Wall Street Journal Online, the Associated Press, and AccuWeather.com.
--- End quote ---

There's a picture in the link.

Also see Frank C Reilly's patent, filed in 1913:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US1119371A/en
The list of related patents of later state of the art is also interesting.

SL4P:
Without reading that article, the consumption of that sign-wall must have been staggering -especially with the inefficient technologies of the time...

Even multiplexed (incandescent?) would have been a huge undertaking, and the RF switching noise would have blocked radio reception for many blocks around!

Non-multiplexed would have used more power than Las Vegas in the 80s !!

Nusa:

--- Quote from: SL4P on February 08, 2020, 12:30:32 am ---... would have used more power than Las Vegas in the 80s !!

--- End quote ---

Having been to Las Vegas in the 1980's, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. Most of major casinos, individually, likely beat that power budget with their exterior incandescent bulbs keeping the night away. Yay for the nearby Hoover Dam!

SL4P:

--- Quote ---... keeping the night away.
--- End quote ---
Shrewd observation.

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