Capacitive touchscreens are the essential technology not just in the iPhone but in all smartphones. Without them we’d still be using flip phones and BlackBerry chiclet keyboards. I think it’s fair to call Johnson the father of the smartphone!
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AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 5 months ago
Calling her “the Mother of Wifi” because she invented FHSS is like crediting Thomas Edison with the invention of everything that used incandescent indicator lights because he invented the lightbulb.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Marcbmann@lemmy.world 5 months ago
How about father of the touch screen? There’s a fuck ton of technology in smartphones.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There is, but most of that technology was in phones and other devices before smartphones came along.
Marcbmann@lemmy.world 5 months ago
And touch screens were in devices other than smart phones before smart phones came along.
So again, father of the touchscreen, sure. But he did not make smartphones happen. He has nothing to do with 99% of the technology in smartphones.
praise_idleness@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Father of Chat GPT, Issac Newton.
someguy7734206@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Father/mother of computers, the person who first controlled fire.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
i’m pretty comfortable with calling him that. capacitive touchscreens are a big deal sounds like he deserves the praise.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You could always call him “the father of the capacitive touchscreen”.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
that’s what the word “inventor” is for
luciferofastora@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Would that make him the grandfather of smartphones?
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Shout out also to John Underkoffler who was the technical advisor on Minority Report (and later Iron Man). The gesture controls in that movie heavily inspired the first smartphones.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
this is crazy cool info, do you have further reading?
CitizenKong@lemmy.world 5 months ago
He did a TED talk in 2010 and there are several articles about him. Not much news in recent years, I guess he wasn’t very succesful in turning his motion control concept into a viable product. I interviewed him about eight years ago.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 5 months ago
Capacitive touchscreens are a big deal but it kind of minimizes the work of the other technology that goes into a smartphone, like wireless internet, low power mobile CPUs capable of 3D graphics, lithium-ion battery packs, etc., to say nothing of the design engineers that worked on the exterior, the hardware, and the operating system. Crediting the holder of a patent from over 40 years before the iPhone hit the market with the creation of the iPhone is stretching the truth at best.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
children generally are able to have multiple parents.
if i give credit to Alice for being Bobby’s mother, i’m not minimizing the parenthood of any of Bobby’s other parents. just giving credit where due.
i would not hesitate to give a couple dozen people the title of father/mother/parent of the iPhone. seems quite appropriate and fair.