Comments on: Who invented the camera phone? It depends

Borland founder Philippe Kahn takes credit but CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos begs to differ. In this case a picture tells much less than a thousand words.

[-fjtorres-]

The tech industry is particularly prone to this

The rule of thumb in the tech industry is "the guy with the most publicists on his side gets the credit".

And its not new.
Goes back to at least Edison and almost certainly earlier.
Part of it is the tendency to remember the success stories, not the magnificent failures that paved the way for the latter success.
There are people who think apple invented personal computing, not Altair or the various precursors going back to 1970.
There are people think the iPod was the first MP3 player, never mind that Rio was defending the category in a lawsuit three years earlier or that Compaq was selling an AAC-capable player two years before.
Short memories and lack of critical reporting in the media are most to blame but a lot of it is just human nature. We'll pick the amusing story over the accurate one 99 times out of 100.

Pity the future researchers trying to make sense of the internet flame wars...

[mikesax]

Motorola, not Verisign

Michael, I'm 99% sure that LightSurf was sold to Motorola, not Verisign.

[FrenchiesFlunky]

Motorola AND Verisign

He sold Light surf to Verisign for $400 million, and he sold some
other company to Motorola for $300 million years ago, foo.

Phillippe is rich, beeotch!

Vive la France!