Talk:Kia Silverbrook

prolific inventor

"Kia Silverbrook (born 1958) is an Australian inventor, scientist, and serial entrepreneur. He is the most prolific inventor in the world"

Apart from inventing patents, are there any products or devices manufactured for sale under his patents. For instance, what was his contribution to VLSI.Merp607 (talk) 23:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Gender

This article never uses a pronoun to refer to Silverbrook, and in fact never makes it clear he's male (and his name doesn't help there). Seems a bit odd. --70.183.167.81 (talk) 20:49, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Fixed this. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 05:48, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Redirect

This article was redirected to Memjet Printer, one of Silverbrook's areas of invention. This is inappropriate - you can't redirect a person to something they did. This is like redirecting "Thomas Edison" to "light Bulb", or "Igor Sikorsky" to "Helicopter". Should we redirect all inventors to one of their inventions? Obviously not. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 23:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

It is appropriate and allowable under Wikipedia guidelines to redirect biographical article names to associated topics if the person in question is not notable enough for a separate article (see, for example, Al Gore III, Noelle Bush, Juan Gallardo). Thomas Edison and Igor Sikorsky are both notable for a wide variety of inventions and innovations they pioneered. Mr. Silverbrook's only claim to fame is a whole lot of patents and, apparently, the memjet printer. Uncle Dick (talk) 23:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Silverbrook is notoriously reclusive, does not give interviews, and does not promote his company publicly. For the first 13 years of its existence (1994 - 2007) his company (Silverbrook Research) didn't even have a web-site. This may be because it is not a consumer-facing company - it develops technologies that it licenses to other companies. These companies typically want to imply that technologies are developed in-house, so don't publicize the source.

I have been looking through a lot of Silverbrook's patents, and they cover a very broad range of technologies, including MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems), chip fabrication, flat panel displays, computer graphics, digital photography, computer architecture, cell phones, organic chemistry, digital audio, digital video, text display, chip packaging, 3D digital fabrication, manufacturing technologies, interactive paper, and so on. Printers are only part of the portfolio. I will add some of this information to the article shortly.

Each patent is, by definition, a new idea that has not been thought of before worldwide. If you use a computer, a cellphone, a printer, an LCD display, listen to music created digitally, or watch a movie that includes CGI, then chances are you are using some ideas and technology first developed by Silverbrook. It certainly looks that way from an investigation of the patents.

Wikipedia has nine separate articles relating to Paris Hilton! It would be a shame if Wikipedia's idea of 'Notable' just amounts to the degree of self-promotion someone engages in.AlexBartlett4 (talk) 09:15, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

The reason I made the redirect in the first place was because I couldn't find any sources to make it clear that Kia Silverbrook meets WP:BIO and WP:GNG. The sources at the moment are nothing like sufficient. If no one has written about him, then neither should we, regardless of how apparently important his patents are. I'll wait for a few days to see if you can find anything to satisfy the notability guidelines, but if not I guess we need to go to WP:AFD to seek a consensus whether to redirect or delete the article. Smartse (talk) 10:04, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget that the USPTO is one of the largest repositories of public documents, with over 7 million patent documents, each verified by trained patent examiners.

I became interested while writing a Wikipedia article List of prolific inventors after seeing an article in Portfolio magazine. Silverbrook is the founder of Australia's two largest technology development companies (CiSRA in 1990 and Silverbrook Research in 1994). Also, if you have a look at what Memjet is, it is not 'just a printer'. It is a new printer technology that spans applications from desktop printing through to industrial printing, to 3D printing and printed electronics. There are a number of these shown in Memjet's website, and many more are revealed in the patents. From the patents, it is evident that Silverbrook considers this to be a new type of digital manufacturing, with printed pages just being the simplest example.

I checked WP:BIO, and it says: "The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice"; that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded." Notable in the sense of being "famous", or "popular"—although not irrelevant—is secondary."

I did not initiate this article, or add the potentially COI information to it. However, I do find the topic interesting. Perhaps people don't write about Silverbrook because he evidently prefers not to be written about, so perhaps you are right, and we should leave him alone. I just hate to see Wikipedia become progressively more vacuous. Do we really want Wikipedia to fill up with Justin Bieber articles? (I've nothing against Justin, I'm just more interested in things that actually change the world) AlexBartlett4 (talk) 10:57, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd never heard of memjets until yesterday so I admit that I have no idea how important they or their inventor is. I agree with you about the Paris Hilton and Justin Bieber articles, but I think that's more of a reflection of society in general, rather than wikipedia (anyway not important). As a tertiary source, we should only be repeating what others have written about, rather than doing original research. Every topic should meet the general notability guideline and our own personal likes/interests and dislikes/disinterests shouldn't influence our opinions as to whether an article belongs here or not. Saying that, I have found this which may be enough to satisfy the GNG, and this from the NYT about a patent. Smartse (talk) 11:09, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

There are videos of various Memjet printers at their website. A prototype of the cellphone printer mentioned in the NYT article is the fifth video along, so this is not just a 'concept' patent. Silverbrook's website doesn't show other technologies they have developed, perhaps due to licensing restrictions. However, another Silverbrook technology is shown at Hyperlabel, so I think it is inappropriate to redirect Silverbrook to a single product. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 11:39, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Now that the article has been up for a most of a year, it does appear inappropriate to redirect Kia Silverbrook to Memjet printer. Silverbrook had 6648 page views in August 2011, versus 1738 page views for Memjet printer and 6001 page views for List of prolific inventors. List of Inventors lists hundreds of inventors, none of whom appear to have been redirected to one of their inventions. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 04:22, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that it is relevant. The actual question we have is "is Silverbrook notable enough to have his own page per WP:N?". And given the list of publications about him in major mainstream media, IMHO he is, end of story (at least for me). Ipsign (talk) 05:10, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, end of story. It's just that the original redirection and subsequent discussion seemed really weird to me, but I was new to Wikipedia then. I've just noticed that List of Inventors was missing heaps of important inventors, such as Elihu Thompson. I think I'll focus my efforts there for a while. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 08:29, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

COI

The article now seems to be sufficiently NPOV, so the COI flag can be removed. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 23:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

• Well. Drmies (talk) 12:04, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Expand

I added an expand template to this article. It is difficult to find much information on Silverbrook, as he is notoriously media shy. However, I have accumulated some, and will add it shortly. AlexBartlett4 (talk) 23:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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Prune

I just trimmed this highly promotional article a bit; content lacked proper secondary sourcing and was promotional in tone. Below, I'm pasting a set of "subject was discussed in these articles" links--such sections are of course unacceptable, but perhaps the links can be used to improve the sourcing in this BLP. Drmies (talk) 12:06, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Media coverage

• On 13 December 2005 USA Today published a list of "the top 10 living U.S. patent holders". At the time, Silverbrook was ranked third, with 801 U.S. patents.
• On 15 October 2007 Condé Nast Portfolio Magazine published an article about "the world's most prolific inventors alive". At the time, Silverbrook was ranked second, with 1646 U.S. patents.
• On 7 January 2011 The Washington Times published an article titled: "Inkjet, laser, Memjet? Fast color printers on tap". This article discusses the announcement of Memjet printers for the office market at CES 2011.
• On 10 January 2011 IFI Claims published an article: "Top Global Companies Ranked By 2010 U.S. Patents". This article ranked Silverbrook Research at number 34 in U.S. patents for 2010, amongst all global companies.
• On 6 May 2011, Business Insider published an article titled: "The Ten Greatest Inventors In The Modern Era". At the time, Silverbrook was ranked first, with 3847 U.S. utility patents.
• On 9 June 2011 PC Magazine published an article titled: "The Best Inventions of 2011 ... So Far". One of Silverbrook's inventions ("Point and Print", US 7878646 ) is one of ten listed inventions.
• Strutpatent.com has published a list of the top ten inventors for every week, month, and year since 2007. Silverbrook is listed first for each year.
• Silverbrook was invited by Singapore's A*Star to speak as the 5th Distinguished Technopreneur Speaker (DTS) on September 2012