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Memories of VideoDisc - The Final Days

• "Memories of VideoDisc" concludes with a quote from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address stating  "The world will little note, nor long remember...". Lincoln was using these words to emphasize the insignificance of his speech in contrast to the sacrifice of those who died at the Battle of Gettysburg. But as everyone knows, the 268 words of the Gettysburg Address have gone on to be one of the most acclaimed deliveries in the history of elocution. In an interesting historical irony, RCA used Lincoln's words in their original meaning, thinking the CED system would soon be forgotten, unaware that 10 years later the explosive growth of a little thing called the Internet would prevent that from happening.

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

- Abraham Lincoln - November 19, 1863

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