

Google Glass: Dyson designed smartglasses 10 years before Google - maddisc2
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/02/google-glass-dyson-designed-smartglasses-10-years-before-google

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maddisc2
A comment by one of the readers on the guardian website:

"Thats nothing, Michael Knight had a self driving car years before Google."

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jacquesm
This raises an interesting problem with respect to what really is 'inventing'
things. For instance according to the public record Arthur C Clarke invented
the telecommunications satellite. But if that's true then Da Vinci invented
the submarine and the helicopter and Jules Verne spaceflight.

To me inventing something means you build a first working version, not just to
say what _could_ be done, but that's a definition that is not going to be
helpful when an invention requires the cooperation of a large number of people
to solve all the nitty gritty little details.

So, maybe whoever wrote the script for that series really did invent the self
driving car...

The line between 'inventor' and 'visionary' is quite blurry, especially when
the visionaries live in times when realization is still impossible due to
limited technological knowledge.

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georgemcbay
Well even getting to the 'visionary' stage is an iterative process.

Long before KITT (from Knight Rider) there was Sally:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_(short_story)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_\(short_story\))

And for all I know there could have been earlier examples, that's just the
earliest one I'm aware of off the top of my head and perhaps somewhat
coincidentally relevant since the oldest car character in the story was
created in 2015 which is pretty impressive ball-park estimating (though the
cars in the story are general purpose AI, which obviously is still a ways
off).

Anyway, there's been lots of other self-driving cars in fiction like Herbie
(The Love Bug), though they are generally more "magical" than technical, like
KITT and Sally.

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jacquesm
Christine!

