Talk:Richard Adams (inventor)

The Reason
The Reason I am creating this page is because Richard Adams demonstrates an ongoing inventive creativity that has inspired others. For example, the home built 16 bit computer he made in 1974 inspired his brother Scott to write the first graphics game ever written on a home computer, and Scott soon went on to found Adventure International. Both of these are wiki listed. More coming. Eggzactly (talk) 01:11, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I first met Richard Adams in 1983 when I purchased one of his products. Although we don't live in the same area anymore, over the years I have kept in touch with him because he's always working on interesting projects. Recently, I interviewed him so I could create this Wiki page. I am preparing to post neutral sources to fix the page, and I want to thank you for pointing out the glaring original shortcomings. I am new to creating Wiki pages, but I understand the objections and the need for accuracy and neutrality. Eggzactly (talk) 21:30, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

COI tag
I have replaced the COI maintenance tag on the article as the sole content contributor is a personal friend of the subject as confirmed by comments made on this talk page. Nancy talk  08:09, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

re: COI
I stated that I am a customer. There is no conflict of interest. I know about him from his products. Eggzactly (talk) 08:32, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * .... and you "interviewed him so you could write his Wiki page" - if that's not a conflict of interest I don't know what is.... not to mention a primary source and original research to boot! As regard to the cited sources, they don't really help to verify the claims - the first one for example does not even mention Richard, the second verifies that he did a student project but in no way supports the claim that he was the first "to build and publicly demonstrate" such a device,  the third again does not mention him at all,  the fourth is a trivial mention of the student project again, and the last is self-published. All adds up to an failure to meet the requirements of the notability guidelines for biographies, so much so in fact that I am mindful to send it to articles for deletion and let the community decide.  Nancy  talk  09:19, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Thank you Nancy. Toddst1 (talk) 13:45, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

re: notability
I completely re-wrote the article, and added neutral references for all 3 notable items Eggzactly (talk) 08:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nothing notable here. It looks like a promotional piece and WP:OR. Toddst1 (talk) 13:46, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I added the timeline section back in that I removed last night, to help show that the page has merit to stand on its own rather than being merged into Happy computers. I have sources for each item that is listed in the timeline that are taking time to get citations for. I also removed the "1st of" claims. More to come. Eggzactly (talk) 22:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Question
The Antic product review doesn't mention Richard Adams by name, but I found a link to the California Secretary of State showing him as the business owner in 1983. Can this be used as a 2nd footnote to tie the two together, or is there a more proper way to do this? Eggzactly (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Major re-write
This is another substantial change to this article I started.

With regard to the prior AFD voting, if you were voting for deletion before, please consider the new article and this discussion and then change your vote. If you previously voted to keep the article, thanks for complying with WP:BITE and giving me a chance to improve it.

In my new re-write, I begin with the following:

Everything is sourced and I neither analyzed nor originated anything.

The article is based on the following list of neutral sources. When you consider notability, please consider the fact that all of the articles below thought that Adams’ innovations were sufficiently notable to publish them for their readers. So even if you are not familiar with the topic or that era in our history, understand that people that were familiar do think it was notable. An EE (a peer) already posted in the AFD talk section that Adams was notable.

TV camera in 1967 – Miami Herald article Computer controller music – Melbourne Evening Times article 1974 16 bit computer notability – Orlando Business Journal 1985 article Adams is Happy Computers Founder – State of California corporate records Video Meter - TV Technology Magazine 1991 review County online records shows Happy Computers owns Plateau Digital HDTV recording device - Stereophile Guide to Home Theater June 2003

Items 4 and 6 above are provided as neutral sources to connect Adams to the notable things that were not specifically in his name. He was the person behind the innovation.

The article is about Richard Adams to the extent of the events of those innovations. Things in between those innovations are not included since there is no sourced neutral biography of him that could be cited about things in between. The material included from Adams’ self published page is allowed because the article is based primarily on the innovations in the neutral source, and all of the seven asserted innovations are from a neutral source. This meets the requirements of WP: SELFPUB as far as the inclusion of self published information. No tag for this is needed, as all references to neutral as opposed to self published sources are clearly delineated.

Regarding the Codec item, his symposium paper is considered self published. Although the paper was published in a collection of the IEEE, there was no editing or verification by a neutral party. Mention of the codec testing innovation is referenced by a trade magazine published by his employer. It’s not unusual that Adams is not specifically credited since every innovation an employee does becomes property of the employer. Adams’ claim that he invented a method is mentioned as unverified, though clearly he was so sufficiently knowledgeable of this innovation that he was the one specifically tasked by the employer to introduce this to the relevant technical community, and to do so world wide. It is not unusual that the originator would be the one so tasked. There is a lack of neutrality of the source of the publication, i.e. the Fairchild company’s own publication. Although the Fairchild publication is certainly not neutral with regard to itself, it could be considered to be at least partially neutral with regard to Adams, since it is not as non-neutral as self published material.

I was thinking to exclude the Codec section, but then I would have nothing to say about Adams while he worked for others in Silicon Valley. This article is therefore based primarily on the six verified innovations from neutral sources and this seventh source is included because this is generally a biography about Adams’ projects, this clearly was something he was working on, and I made a point to say that his claim of inventing it is unverified.

Eggzactly (talk) 22:39, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Complete re-write
This article is still a mess. It's full of non-neutral statements and unverified claims. Things like claiming the first 16 bit home computer as extremely dubious: it was a computer, it was 16 bit, it was in a home - but to call it a home computer is rather iffy as it wasn't a commercially available product. Other people has built 16 bit computers in their homes before this, so the best claim that could actually be made is that it was one of the first 16 bit personal computers made. Even the 16 bit part is somewhat shaky as it depends on a definition of 16 bit that's quite narrow (what's the data bus width? address bus? etc).

He may well have been an innovator of the particular methods used in his codec circuits, but he didn't invent them and there's no evidence that his work influenced others or impacted on the industry. And so on. His major successes seem to have been his video camera and his disk interface systems (via Happy Computers). His electronic music interface is pretty interesting, but needs more source material to make that section notable. It's also incorrect to compare it to MIDI, as MIDI was notable for being a unified and compatible system, whereas dozens of such systems had existed since the 1970s but were incompatible with each other.

There's no doubt that Richard Adams is a clever chap and he's certainly been involved in a lot of technologies prior to them becoming mainstream, but he's not the pioneer and innovator that this article currently casts him as. Over the next few days, I'm going to completely rewrite this article from scratch. I welcome a discussion. Kodabar (talk) 21:08, 22 December 2010 (GMT)

I've now re-written the page so that it's more clear and I've removed all non-notable and unverified information. I'm a little disappointed to see that the website exoticscience.com that is given as a source for much information is owned by Richard Adams himself and seems to exist only to host the clippings used as citations. Also, the writing style on that site is exactly the same as used in the article here, leading me to think that Adams wrote this article himself.

I have tried and failed to find any information about Adams' 16 bit computer, which is a shame as it's one of the most notable aspects of his life (if true). There is some problem when defining a 16 bit computer, as there is no consensus as to what one is. For example, the Zilog Z80 chip, generally considered to be 8 bit (and used in many 8 bit home computers) actually supports 16 bit memory addressing, so could be regarded as 16 bit. This would repudiate Adams' claim to have invented the first 16 bit home computer.Kodabar (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2010 (UTC)


 * As the person who first created the wiki page over 2 years ago, I'm sorry I wasn't around for a discussion of your complete re-write, and have a couple of comments.


 * The author of the referenced article didn't mention any lack of consensus on what defines a 16 bit computer. Calling the computer 16 bit is straight from the neutral reference.


 * Also, I think you deleted some sections that were notable.


 * As time permits, I'll be looking over the re-write to see if I can improve it. Eggzactly (talk) 20:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I hope you'll have the time to review my changes and makes some of your own. I did what I could, but it's far from perfect.
 * There are a couple of things worth noting, especially regarding what defines a 16 bit computer. Whilst I'm sure the author of the referenced article did report the computer as being 16 bit, I'm quite certain that they were merely reporting what they were told and were not expert enough to make their own determination. They also fail to mention, and thus help substantiate, the claim of it being the first 16 bit home computer. A reference in a computing or technology publication would be more desirable.
 * If there is doubt about the notability of a section, it ought to be discussed on this "talk" page. This is something that I ought to have done myself.

Kodabar (talk) 18:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Re: Complete re-write
I am the Richard Adams that this page is about. Thank you for the hard work that goes into these things. This is my first post on wikipedia.

I hope it is okay with the rules for me to post here in talk. If not, please accept my apology, and I won't do it again.

You are correct that I own exoticsciences.com domain. This is easy to find in who.is and always visible. Older newspaper clippings are a treasure no matter where they are hosted. It would be great if I could search all the published newspaper and magazines online.

That exoticsciences.com page's front end is primarily to support the youtube video about my brother's game that he wrote in 1975, and contains information about the computer I started building in 1974 on a sub-page there, and my electric organ I first connected to my college's computer and later to my own computer. Richardkadams (talk) 20:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's absolutely fine for you to comment on the article. Wikipedia has guidelines about writing your own entry (which do not preclude you from doing so), but talking about it is definitely okay.
 * Thanks for clarifying the situation regarding the exoticsciences site. That will be very helpful to anyone editing this article.
 * I'm sorry for suggesting that you wrote the article yourself. I accept that I was wrong in that assertion.
 * I'm sure we'd all welcome any information and help you are able to offer.

Kodabar (talk) 18:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)