Quote:
In 1968, when Charles Hall tried to apply for a patent on the waterbed he thought he had invented, he found he was unable to do so because Heinlein had already described one in sufficient detail in Double Star (and other places). This impressive bit of technological pre-empting sits neatly alongside the fact that the book is generally cited as the first to use the abbreviation "ET" (or at least, eetee). [snip]
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I've heard this before, too. But apparently it's not true:
Quote:
General Background
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Hall is the named inventor and current co-owner of U.S. Patent No. 3,585,356 (the '356 patent), entitled "Liquid Support for Human Bodies." Hall filed the application that matured into the '356 patent in 1969, and the patent itself issued in 1971. Upon issuance, the patent was assigned to Innerspace Environments, Inc. (Innerspace), a waterbed manufacturing and sales company that Hall co-founded in 1968 or 1969. Waterbeds became very popular and, as their popularity grew, Innerspace grew also. Indeed, Innerspace soon became the largest retail seller of waterbeds in the U.S., owning and operating over 30 retail stores with annual sales over $5 million. The company's primary focus was on promoting the popularity of waterbeds; during the period from 1969 to 1975, Innerspace spent approximately $1.5 million on retail sales advertising in the California market alone.
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From a 1996 patent case.
http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/...1.96-1014.html
Also, according to wiki, waterbeds were actually invented in the 1800's and used for therapeutic purposes.
Re: Asimov, etc. -
Unfortunately, I think our appreciation of sf of the 40's and 50's (and to some extent the 60's) is hampered by the fact that it was predominantly a literature of short stories. There were a few novels produced, but they were very much in the minority. The real action was in the short stories published in the magazines.
Unfortunately, in the late 60's/ early 70's, the economics changed and the novel became the primary form, with short stories becoming increasingly marginalized. Once consequence of this is that the works we tend to be most familiar with from the 40's-50's are the novels, not the short stories; this gives a very limited view of sf in this period. (Of course, some of the sf novels from this period were made up of short stories.)
This explains some of the attributes of Asimov's work pretty well - a brief character sketch is often enough for a short story where the main focus is on a particular idea and its consequences. In novels, though, there is a lot more room and we tend to prefer characters to be more fleshed out.