LETTERS

摘要

Chuck Hull undoubtedly made stereolithography or 3D printing a practical reality (22 October, p 40). But he was not the first to suggest it. New Scientist played a small part. Older readers recall fondly the wonderful inventions of Daedalus, a weekly contribution to your back page by David Jones, a chemist from Newcastle upon Tyne. Daedalus was the archetypal mad scientist, totally amoral and lacking in all common sense. Most of his ideas have, thank goodness, never seen the light of day, but occasionally he came up with a properly feasible scheme by accident. Thus he found himself proposing more or less exactly the same kind of stereolithography that Chuck Hall developed 10 years later (3 October 1974, p 80).