*HDTV = High Definition Television*. You can now be a 10th Dan HDTV couch potato [join the Dan Quail tomatoe spelling club - it is potato here and there. Imagine learning English as a second language! Especially the way Japan tortures their young with absurd grammatical teaching as a result of which almost none of them can use English.]
Anyway, here is the dinkum oil on HDTV and Q! This is the history as I know it before it disappeared in the early 1990s. As did the cinema transmission technology to suddenly reappear full-fledged.
Haul out the December 1991 IPO document and read on page25.
BUSINESS
Introduction
QUALCOMM is a leader in digital wireless communications technologies. The Company develops, manufactures, markets, licenses and operates advanced communications systems and products based on digital wireless technology. The Company's principal product is OmniTRACS, a satellite based mobile communications system, and its primary development program is a proprietary implementation of CDMA for use in digital cellular telephone systems and products. The Company is also developing airborne data links, VLSI circuit components and HDTV signal processing components.
...it continues on other subjects...
Under the section [pg39]:
Government Contracts
QUALCOMM performs a variety of prime and subcontract work for various departments and agencies of the U.S. Government directed towards communication-related technologies. The contracts are largely research and development efforts and allow the Company to build on the expertise and experience of its technical staff in sophisticated communications techniques. In fiscal years 1989, 1990 and 1991, U.S. Government contracts and subcontracts accounted for approximately 13%, 18% and 11%, respectively, of the Company's total revenues.
...it lists some nonclassified contracts, some of which should appear in "The Red, White and Blue, Spy and Crookbook" as they fit nicely with Richard Bliss using GPS technology. The last of 4 listed is...
High Definition Receiver System Processor. The Company has entered into a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ["DARPA"], a U.S. Government Agency, to develop a high definition receiver system processor which is a part of the system generally known as HDTV. The Company will apply its digital processing and transmission techniques in the development of compression and signal processing components for the program [Ed: 'programme' in English]. The Company plans to develop a VLSI chip set to implement its approach. The three contractor teams which were selected from a large number of applicants for signal processor technology development contracts were Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Adams Russell Electronics; David Sarnoff Research Center with Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments; and QUALCOMM.
So there you have it Mr 10th Dan! Notice the orthogonality of the CineComm and HDTV links. Out of these concatenations appeared CineComm. I don't know much about TV, but I'm sure the average sort of Yankee See Yankee Do type would spring for one of these things to watch Babe score some touchdowns at QUALCOMM stadium in the SuperBowl.
While we are all chanting WWeb, cdmaOne and wave functions, I doubt that the average couch 5th Dan could care less. I think they will order another load of beer, a HDTV and remote with tailfins and racing stripes.
Maybe Q! will spring another on you.
In May 1992, Bear Stearns were still reporting this HDTV stuff. Sometime after that it stopped being mentioned much at all. I don't believe it simply went away.
People are having a little laugh at Al's expense since he said he helped with the internet. Well, Al is right! The USA government took taxpayer money, gave it to QUALCOMM who invented the contracted stuff, but while doing that, used the cash flow to invent cdmaOne, which is the harbinger of the WirelessWeb.
We might disagree with the taxpayer funding, but the political impetus will certainly help build the internet. Al Gore appears to have been instrumental. I might have to go and kick the Gilder crowd while they are down!
Al awarded Irwin the Technology Medal. Al is aware of WWeb shenanigans and I think Al is a Pal.
There you have it!
Mqurice |
