Steve Jobs and Cray-1 to Be Featured on 2026 American Innovations $1 Coin

This is delightful.

I used to be a coin-collector as a kid. Kinda outgrew the hobby as I grew older. But I still love new/old/unusual coins (among other things). I think I might get my hands on some of these.

Concurrent dismay and delight.

But cash register drawers usually do not have a space for them, they’re relatively heavy, and people don’t use them because they don’t use them.

Vending machines famously went ham trying to use them which annoyed people.

It didn’t help that the old Susan B dollar coins were almost a quarter shape and size if you weren’t paying attention.

The dollar coin SHOULD be small, a bit bigger than a dime, imo.

Or just skip the dollar coin and go right to a three dollar coin.

We have a dollar bill

In the US, change is already an annoying factor because sales tax is rarely included in eg, 4.99. So no one is jumping up and down to go from five slices of paper to five rattling coins.

just out of pure curiosity.. what's the context of this? He wrote a poem.. to email to himself? and.. how did he get access to his private emails?

I can't think of any other example of people writing and mailing poems to themselves

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*l85kSwZf...

It always reminds me of Manet's Olympia.

I'm literally quoting the passage you're citing and talking directly about it. And then you quote it back to me.

mind = blown.

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/steve-jobs-stereo-sy...

Wired summarized that discussion into a photo gallery:

https://www.wired.com/2014/04/steve-jobs-stereo-system/

- Michell MK1 Gyrodec turntable

- Denon TU-750s tuner (Sitting atop Threshold pre amp)

- Threshold FET-One pre amp

- Threshold STASIS-1 amp (Not in photo, seems to be an educated guess. Some debate whether the speakers are powered and maybe an external amp wasn't needed.)

- Acoustat Monitor 3 speakers

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/nexstar_media_wire/5554660-dont...

Anyway, at least I'm happy the Nobel prize committee isn't based in the US. Otherwise we'd soon see the Nobel prize for advertising.

"So, meanwhile, Steve’s friend Wozniak comes in the evenings. He would be out there during burn-in tests while these Tank games were on the production line, and he’d play Tank forever. I didn’t think much of it; I didn’t care. He was a cool guy.

I found that what really had happened was that Jobs never designed a lick of anything in his life. He had Woz do it [redesign Breakout].

Woz did it in like 72 hours nonstop and all in his head. He got it down to 20 or 30 ICs [integrated circuits]. It was remarkable… a tour de force.

It was so minimized, though, that nobody else could build it. Nobody could understand what Woz did but Woz. It was this brilliant piece of engineering, but it was just unproduceable. So the game sat around and languished in the lab."

I had someone pocket a Susan B. Anthony $1 coin and put their own money in the register to replace it, but that was because it was a rare coin, not because they thought it was fake.

One of the most important features for cash is that it actually be accepted widely, and if I recall, that is a significant problem for $1 coins. I expect the majority machines that accept cash don't accept them, and trying to use them with a cashier is likely to result in amusement or confusion at best, rejection as a very possible outcome, or even accusations of fraud. That there were few instances where an individual would ever get these in normal activities probably made recognition and use even worse, especially as the instances I cam remember often seemed like attempts to push them inconveniently; I seem to remember that some government machines, I think in post offices, would insist on giving change with enormous numbers of one dollar coins, which would likely generate some resentment for users expecting change that would actually be accepted elsewhere.

It likely doesn't help that the design is rather large, eg, it is wider than a two euro coin and almost as heavy, and that one dollar notes are still being produced. For some reason, the US seems far less willing to be decisive in these changes.

    26.50 mm (1.043 in) - $1.00
    24.26 mm (0.955 in) - $0.25

I am not exactly sure of the reason that the mint is so resistant to making the coins a bit bigger (they used to be).

The dollar coin has been the same size since 1979, and the same colour since 2000.

Jobs was a celebrity who was good at branding himself as a genius.

I don't consider a clever UI idea like a touch screen to be a work of brilliance, especially since he did zero engineering work, both for early and later Apple devices. Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later.

It should've been Woz.

I don't think the Mint's goal is to celebrate developers and computer scientists with the new coins. They're celebrating famous innovators and innovations from each state.