Talk:Richard F. Lyon

Autobiography

I'm adding the "notable wikipedian" template, which includes a link to WP:AUTO, but for the record I think this article is just fine, devoid of original research, maintaining a neutral point of view, etc. --jacobolus (t) 20:31, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

And for the record, I did not write it myself, though I did make the original stub, remove an inaccuracy, and add a reference for an unsupported claim; and I did remove the (incorrect) children's names that someone added. I've otherwise avoided improving it, since I don't want to violate that autobio guideline. I did write the one on my namesake Richard F. Lyon, making sure to include suitable evidence of notability; for the record, he was my great-great-grandfather. Dicklyon 20:34, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Richard F. Lyon which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:44, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

The record of that (now closed) discussion is now at Talk:Richard F. Lyon (judge). —BarrelProof (talk) 20:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

The optical mouse

The article says that Lyon "invented the optical mouse" and similarly that he "built the first optical mouse, at Xerox". The article says that "Although several people at PARC had filed invention proposals for an optical mouse, no one had built one or filed a patent for one", but the article does not mention Steve Kirsch, who was working at MIT, not PARC. A cited source says that Lyon and Kirsch "independently built completely different optical designs within days of each other". Both of them applied for patents in mid-1981. The Optical mouse article mentions both Lyon and Kirsch. The article about Kirsch just says "He invented and patented an early version of the optical mouse." It does not say his was the first or the second, and does not mention Lyon. I do not see any sources clearly saying that Lyon's device was the first (although I don't have easy access to some of the cited sources, such as the CMU conference paper). Should some mention of Kirsch be added to this article? I wonder how the relationship between Lyon's invention and Kirsch's invention should be treated in the article. Perhaps the article should be changed to say that Lyon was one of the two people who independently developed the first optical mice, rather than just saying he "invented the optical mouse". —BarrelProof (talk) 18:34, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Definitely Steve Kirsch should be mentioned. For some perspective on how our devices differed, see my recent retrospective chapter here or here, which includes a comment from mouse maker Jack Hawley via technology writer John Markoff. Kirsch's approach was closer to the other ideas that had been proposed but not built at PARC (with separate x and y patterns in the mouse pad). When HP/Agilent re-invented optical mice years later, their approach was closer to mine. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say which was first, since they were concurrently developed. Kirsch started a company and made a lot of money off of his, while I left Xerox to fumble the future is their usual way. Dicklyon (talk) 19:20, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Also, it would be more accurate to say that I "built the first optical-mouse chip". Kirsch didn't make a chip, and I didn't actually make a mouse (though others at Xerox did, using my chip and its successors). Dicklyon (talk) 19:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Last year you linked somewhere to a long interview you had which goes into the history and the steps you took. That interview, if I recall it correctly (watched the entire thing soon after you linked), would be a good addition for the External links section of this page. Can you point out where the link was? If I may ask a few questions (for what better place), when you say "mouse 'chip'" did you envision, at the time or even the exact moment you came up with the idea, the overwhelmingly widespread use that would be made of the chip, and did the ensuring product look close to what you saw in your mind's eye during that stage? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:22, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Various places. Dicklyon (talk) 17:58, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

It was very clear at the time, when Xerox was almost the only place using mice, that making mice cheaper and more reliable was going to be a necessary part of getting them to proliferate. So we did that, but it didn't overcome their various other barriers to proliferating their technology. A sort of spinoff was Sun Microsystems, founded by our friends at Stanford, who built lower-cost computers with Unix software and Steve's mice. The mice weren't as simple or inexpensive or usable, but they did the job, at a time when Sun and Xerox were unable to come to terms on a deal for them to use my design; by bro Bob was at Sun and had one of mine on his machine, but it never got past this experimental evaluation stage. Mice weren't standard on IBM PCs, so when that took off, mice still didn't quite, though Steve got quite a lot of business from that segment. It wasn't until the Macintosh intro in 1984 that mice became known to the masses, but Apple had a low-cost mechanical design and didn't want to deal with Xerox either. Dicklyon (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

In this 1985 view of the world, Xerox and Sun were insignificant compared to Mac and PC use of mice. Dicklyon (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. You were right in the thick of things, seeing the computer advancements as they occurred, and knowing the people who innovated so many of them. Nice work, and memories. Will do an External links addition with the youtube vid, that was quite the extensive and interesting interview. Randy Kryn (talk) 19:32, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Subsection titles

It feels like there should be two or three subsections in the 'Career' section, one of them "The Optical Mouse". Does that make sense, and what would be a good subtitle or paragraph break for the second or third subsection. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:50, 5 June 2018 (UTC)