Thanks for expressing your interest in the Dead Media Project. The Dead Media Mailing List consists of occasional email to that stout little band of souls who have declared some willingness to engage in this recherche field of study. The list-editor is Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) and the list emanates from a mail exploder at fringeware.com. Traffic on this list should remain light == if I have any choice in the matter, that is *8-/. If at any time you want to be removed from this list, send me email and I will liberate you pronto. Contributions to the Dead Media database should be sent to me as list editor. These contributions should be considered as copyright-free texts abandoned to the howling wastes of cyberspace for the good of the net.community. We are not looking for polished commercial-quality articles, but for raw data that is easily fact-checked and designed for intellectual digestibility by other Dead Media researchers. The citation of sources is especially important. To date, the Dead Media Mailing List has consisted mostly of raw research notes with occasional theoretical venturings and general updates on the progress of the Project. Dead Media Working Notes generally appear in the following format: >Subject: Dead Media Working Note 00.7 >Dead medium: the cyrograph >From: drabin@taurus.apple.com (Dan Rabin) >Mr. Sterling, >I just attended your talk at Apple, and I thought I'd try >to get this to you before you get home. >The Dead Medium in question is the CYROGRAPH. It was a >form of authentication for duplicate documents used in >the Middle Ages. The document was written in duplicate >on a piece of vellum (or parchment); the copies were cut >apart and retained by two different parties. Sometimes >the cut was deliberately irregular in order to make >spurious matches unlikely. In addition, lettering would >be placed where the cut was to be made so that both the >shape of the cut and the lettering would have to match >in order to authenticate the copies. >References (from Library of Congress online catalog): >92-131963: Brown, Michelle. A guide to western historical >scripts : from antiquity to 1600 / London : British >Library, 1990. 138 p. : ill. ; 29cm. > LC CALL NUMBER: Z114 .B87 1990 >92-160830: Brown, Michelle. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts / >Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1991. >80 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm. > LC CALL NUMBER: Z8.G72 E53 1991 >Enjoy, > Dan Rabin (drabin@taurus.apple.com) Mr Rabin's submission is brief and to the point. It offers intriguing avenues for future research. It describes a weird and deeply obscure technique that 99.995% of the human race has never heard of. If you send me something with these qualities, I can pretty well guarantee you that it will make the Dead Media Mailing List. Keep in mind that successfully contributing to this list is a deeply prestigious act. Contributors to this list are formally known as "Dead Media Necronauts." Others have the somewhat less stellar title of "Dead Media Lurkers." On occasion we have been known to tangibly reward Necronauts, with "official" swag such as Dead Media T-shirts, fridge magnets, snow globes, bumper stickers, pennants, monogrammed pencils, and adhesive floppy disk labels. Keep watching this space. If you are a collector of mechanical antiques, dead software, dead computers, dead playstations, dead recordings, PixelVisions, Teddy Ruxpins, or books on same, then you will want to be on our cousin list, the Dead Media Collectors' List. This list is run by Seth Carmichael (scarmike@well.com). To join the list, send mail to majordomo@lists.tmn.com with the message "subscribe collectorz [your email-address]" in the body. The Collectors' List has been established expressly for the sake of trading, bartering, want-ads, and other forms of netiquette-shattering dead media entrepreneurism. Under no circumstances will commercial announcements be run on the Dead Media Mailing List itself. Mailing List notes will be posted onto my topic on WELL.COM, the "Mirrorshades Postmodern Archive," and pretty much anywhere else anyone else wants to run them. Dead Media Working Notes come in "bound volumes" of twenty at a time. I've been known to snailmail the complete works on floppy disk to helpful Necronauts. The notes and associated Dead Media material are also available (at least temporarily) on that highly unstable medium, the World Wide Web. The First Official Dead Media Project Web Site http://www.multimedia.edu/~deadmedia Other Dead Media material on the web: http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/dm.html (Canada) http://www.peg.apc.org/~alonsdale/media/dedmedia.html (Australia) http://www.mediahistory.com/dead/archive.html (USA) I can't promise these websites will last, but they've been handy, and since they are run by volunteers at least the price is right. If you'd like to start your own Dead Media web site, send me email. Email serves the central purpose of keeping subscribers aware of "dead media." Since this field of study has never been a scholarly discipline and is not logically archived, it shows up mostly in the nooks and crannies of the arcane, the forgotten and the technosocially repressed. The likeliest way to discover examples of dead media is to learn to recognize it through repeated exposure, then to stumble over examples of it in daily life. One then alerts other Dead Media students by writing a Working Note for us. Here are the table of contents of the first three volumes: Dead Media Working Notes, 1-20 0.01. The Incan quipu 0.02. Chaucerian virtual reality 0.03. The Incan quipu 0.04. Kid media: viewmasters, filmstrips, portable projectors, Teddy Ruxpin 0.05. Dead personal computers 0.06. Dead mainframes; early computation devices 0.07. The cyrograph 0.08. The scopitone 0.09. Dead computer languages 01.0 The magic lantern 01.1 The magic lantern 01.2 Clockwork radio 01.3 The magic lantern 01.4 The term "Dead" 01.5 Silent film, the diorama, the panorama 01.6 The magic lantern 01.7 The Comparator; the Rapid Selector 01.8 Bibliography: Magic lanterns, Photography, Optical Toys, Early Cinema 01.9 The Experiential Typewriter 02.0 The magic lantern Dead Media Necronauts: Trevor Blake, Paul Di Filippo, Stefan Jones, Bradley O'Neill, Dan Rabin, Bruce Sterling Alan Wexelblat Dead Media Working Notes 02.1-04.0 02.1 Canada's Telidon Network 02.2 Dead Cryptanalytic Devices of World War II 02.3 The Stenograph 02.4 Canada's Telidon Network; Australia's Viatel and Discovery 40 02.5 The Copy Press, the Hektograph, Edison's Electric Pen, Zuccato's Trypograph, Gestetner's Cyclostyle, Dick-Edison Mimeograph, the Gammeter aka Multigraph, the Varityper, the IBM Selectric 02.6 Military Telegraphy, Balloon Semaphore 02.7 Mirror Telegraphy: The Heliograph, the Helioscope, the Heliostat, the Heliotrope 02.8 Schott's Organum Mathematicum 02.9 The Voder, The Vocoder, the Cyclops Camera, the Memex 03.0 C. X. Thomas de Colmar's Arithmometer 03.1 Toy telegraphy; toy telephony 03.2 Phonographic Dolls 03.3 The IBM Letterwriter 03.4 the Zuse Ziffernrechner; the V1, Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 program-controlled electromechanical digital computers; the death of Konrad Zuse 03.5 Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon 03.6 Karakuri; the Japanese puppet theater of Chikamatsu 03.7 Dead memory systems 03.8 the Kinetophone; the "Kinetophone Project" 03.9 Clockwork wall animation -- "living pictures" 04.0 Skytale, the Spartan code-stick Dead Media Necronauts: Nick Montfort, Bradley O'Neill Andrew Pam, Darryl Rehr, Jack Ruttan, Geoffrey Shea Andrew Siegel, Bruce Sterling, Bill Wallace Dead Media Working Notes 04.1-06.0 04.1 The pigeon post 04.2 The pigeon post 04.3 The pigeon post 04.4 The pigeon post 04.5 The pigeon post; the balloon post 04.6 The pigeon post 04.7 Vidscan 04.8 Miniature Recording Phonograph, Neophone Records, Poulsen's Telegraphone, the Multiplex Grand Graphophone and the Photophone 04.9 Kids' Dead Media 1929: The Mirrorscope, the Vista Chromoscope, the Rolmonica, the Chromatic Rolmonica 05.0 The Speaking Picture Book; squeeze toys that 'speak' 05.1 SHARP, a microwave-powered relay plane 05.2 Refrigerator-mounted Talking Note Pad 05.3 The Experiential Typewriter 05.4 Kids' Dead Media 1937: the Auto-Magic Picture Gun 05.5 The 'writing telegraph;' Gray's Telautograph; the military telautograph; the telewriter; the telescriber 05.6 The Heliograph, the Heliotrope 05.7 The Heliograph 05.8 Russolo's Intonarumori 05.9 The Agfa Geveart "Family Camera" 06.0 The CED Video Disc Player Dead Media Necronauts: Trevor Blake, Adrian Bruch, Charlie Crouch, Frank Davis, Dan Howland, Stefan Jones, Matthew Porter, Marcus J. Ranum, Jack Ruttan, Larry Schroeder, Bruce Sterling, Bill Wallace You can see by this that the Dead Media Project is a loose networking effort by independent scholars to establish a common source of public knowledge. It's a kind of Invisible College of archeological media illuminati. There is no money in this for anybody, except of course for the fabulous CRISP FIFTY DOLLAR BILL that I am offering to the first personage to publish the "Dead Media Handbook," which I imagine to be the eventual upshot of this research effort. If you would like your own emailed copy of the original Dead Media manifesto, let me know. (It originally appeared in BOING BOING magazine as "The Dead Media Project: A Modest Proposal and a Public Appeal.") At the moment, our most pressing theoretical difficulty remains a working definition of "medium." (The term "dead" is also considerably troublesome.) Consider for instance the Babylonian cuneiform tablet. A dried (fired?) clay brick covered with wedge-shaped pictographs. Dead graphic instrument (stylus). Dead recording device (clay tablet). Dead language (Babylonian). Dead alphabet (combination syllabary/pictography). Is it a dead "medium"? And if it is,then is a papyrus scroll also a dead medium? How about a Latin incunabula work on medieval theology? How about a plastic-bound manual for the Osborne computer? I hope you grasp the difficulty in drawing hard and fast lines here -- and that perhaps you can help draw a few that make sense. Here is the current (highly fragmentary) master-list of extinct forms of media: ****************************** THE MASTER-LIST OF DEAD MEDIA ****************************** DEAD PRELITERATE MEDIA Prehistoric etched-bone mnemonic devices and lunar calendars. Preliterate clay tokens of Fertile Crescent area. The Luba Lukasa mnemonic bead-tablet. The Inuit Inuksuit. String and yarn-based mnemonic knot systems: Incan quipu, Tlascaltec nepohualtzitzin, Okinawan warazan, Bolivian chimpu, Samoan, Egyptian, Hawaiian, Tibetan, Bengali, Formosan; American wampum, Zulu beadwork. DEAD SOUND-TRANSFER NETWORKS Drumming, stentor shouting networks, alpenhorns, whistling networks, town criers. SMOKE DISPLAYS AND NETWORKS Signal fires, smoke signals (still in use by Vatican), fire beacons. Skywriting. DEAD PHYSICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Mongol, Roman and Chinese imperial horse posts. Extinct mail and postal systems: Thurn and Taxis (1550 AD), Renaissance Italian banking networks, early espionage networks, German butcher's-post, Chinese hongs, Incan runners, etc etc. Balloon post (France 1870-1871), Russian rocket mail (1992). Pneumatic transfer tubes: Josiah Latimer Clark stock exchange pneumatic system London (1853); R.S. Culler/R. Sabine radial pneumatic telegraph/mail system London (1859); Paris pneumatic mail system (1868) Pigeon post: Egyptian Caliphate 1100s, Mameluke Empire 1250's, military sieges of: Acre (11--?), Candia 1204, Haarlem 1572, Leyden 1575, Antwerp 1832, Paris 1870-1871; Reuter's pigeon stock-price network 1849, military pigeoneers of World War 1. Chinese kite messages, 1232 AD DEAD OPTICAL NETWORKS Roman light telegraph; the torch telegraph of Polybius ca 150 BC Moundbuilder Indian signal mounds Babylonian fire beacons Amontons' windmill signals (1690) OPTICAL TELEGRAPHY: Johannes Trithemius's Steganographia (ca 1500?) Dupuis-Fortin optical telegraph (France 1788) Chappe's "Synchronized System" and "Panel Telegraph" (France 1793) Claude Chappe's French Optical Telegraph (France 1793) The Vigigraph (France 1794) Edelcrantz's Swedish Optical Telegraph (1795) British Admiralty Optical Telegraph (1795) Bergstrasser's German Optical Telegraph (1786) Chudy's Czech Optical Telegraph (the Fernschreibmaschine) (1796) Van Woensel's Dutch system (1798) Fisker's Danish Optical Telegraph (1801) Grout's American Optical Telegraph (1801) Olsen's Norwegian Optical Telegraph (1808) Abraham Chappe's Mobile Optical Telegraph (1812) Parker's American Optical Telegraph (ca 1820) Curacao Optical Telegraph (1825-1917) Watson's British Optical Telegraph (1827) Australian Optical Telegraph (Watson system) (1827) Lipken's Dutch system (1831) O'Etzel's German Optical Telegraph (1835) Schmidt's German Optical Telegraph (1837) Ferrier's optical telegraph (1831) Russian Optical Telegraph (1839, Chappe system) Spanish Optical Telegraph (ca 1846) San Francisco Optical Telegraph (1849) Ramstedt's Finnish Optical Telegraph (1854) Heliography: The Mance Heliograph (Britain 1860s) The heliostat, the heliotrope, the helioscope. The Babbage Occulting Telegraph (never built) Semaphore and flag signals: Byzantine naval code (Byzantium AD 900), Admiralty Black Book code (England 1337), de la Bourdonnais code (France 1738), de Bigot code (France 1763), Howe code (Britain 1790), Popham code aka Trafalgar Code (Britain 1803, 1813) US Army Myer Code semaphore (USA 1860). Military balloon semaphore (France 1790s). Early 20th Century electric searchlight spectacles. DEAD ELECTRICAL TRANSFER NETWORKS ELECTRICAL CURRENT TRANSFER George Louis Lesage / Charles Morrison electric telegraph (1774) Francisco Salva's Madrid-Aranjuez electric telegraph (1796) Soemmering's electrolytic bubble-letter telegraph (1812) Henry's electromagnetic telegraph (1831) Baron Schilling's Russian magnetized needle telegraph (1832) Gauss/Weber mirror galvanometer telegraph (1833) CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER Samuel Morse telegraph (patented 1837) Karl August Steinhill paper ribbon telegraph (1837) Charles Wheatstone / William Fothergill Cooke Five-Needle Telegraph (1837) The Alphabetical Telegraph Foy-Breguet Chappe-code Electrical Telegraph The Bain Chemical Telegraph (1848) Alexander Bain automatic perforated-tape transmitters (1864). Telex. CODED ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF IMAGES Elisha Gray's telautograph (1886); the telescriber. The Vail telegraphic printer (1837), the House telegraphic printer (1846) Frederick Bakewell's shellac conducting roller (1848) Giovanni Caselli's fascimile pantelegraph (Paris-Lyon 1865-1870); Arthur Korn's telephotography (1907), Edouard Belin's Belinograph (1913), Alexander Muirhead's 1947 fax. ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND Unorthodox telephony networks and devices: The Bliss toy telephone (1886), Telefon Hirmondo, Cahill's Telharmonium (1895), Bell's photophone, the Telephone Herald of Newark, Electrophone Ltd. wire broadcast Telephonic Jukeboxes: The Shyvers Multiphone, the Phonette Melody Lane, the AMI Automatic Hostess, the Rock-Ola Mystic Music System ELECTRICAL TRANSFER OF SOUND AND IMAGE (Dead Telephony) The AT&T Nipkow disk picturephone (1927), Gunter Krawinkel's video telephone booth (Germany 1929), Reichspost picturephone (Germany 1936), AT&T Picturephone, AT&T Videophone 2500, etc (Dead Mechanical Television) Baird Television; Baird Noctovision; The General Electric Octagon; the Daven Tri-Standard Scanning Disc; the Jenkins W1IM Radiovisor Kit, the Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, Jenkins Radio Movies; the Baird Televisor Plessey Model, the Baird Televisor Kit; the Western Television Corporation Visionette (Dead Color Television Formats): Baird Telechrome, HDTV, etc (Dead Interactive Television) Zenith Phonevision, the first pay-per-view TV service (1951). AT&T wirephoto (1925) DEAD DIGITAL NETWORKS Teletext, Viewtron, Viewdata, Prestel, The Source, Qube, Alex (Quebec), Telidon (Canada), Viatel and Discovery 40 (Australia) etc. TRANSFERS BY ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION (Dead Television) Nipkow disk (1884), Zworykin iconoscope (1923), Farnsworth Dissector. Hugo Gernsback's Nipkow television broadcasts (1928) (Microwaves) Microwave relay drone aircraft (Canada 1990s) (Radio) RCA radiophoto (1926) DEAD INK-BASED MEDIA (dead text production devices and systems) Typewriters: Henry Mill's device (1714) Pingeron's machine for the blind (1780), Burt's Family Letter Press (1829), Xavier Progin's "Machine Kryptographique" (1833), Guiseppe Ravizza's "Cembalo-Scrivano" (1837), Charles Thurber's "Chirographer" (1843), Sir Charles Wheatstone's telegraphic printers (1850s), J B. Fairbanks' "Phonetic Writer and Calico Printer," Giuseppe Devincenzi's electric writing machine (1855) Edison electric typewriter (1872), Bartholomew's Stenograph (1879) Schulz Auto-typist punch-paper copier typewriter (1927) Weir's pneumatic typewriter (1891), Juan Gualberto Holguin's 'Burbra' pneumatic typewriter (1914), etc. Dead copying devices: James Watt's ink copier (1780) The aniline dye copy press The hektograph Edison's Electric Pen stencil (1876) Zuccato's Trypograph (1877) Gestetner's Cyclostyle (1881) The Edison Mimeograph (1887) The Gammeter, aka Multigraph (circa 1900) The Vari-Typer Chinese imperial court printed newspaper (circa 618 AD); Beijing city printed newspaper (748 AD) Bi Sheng's clay movable type (1041 AD) DEAD SOUND-CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES Extinct forms of dictation machine. Poulsen's telegraphon wire recorder (1893) The Wilcox-Gay Coin Recordio (1950?) DEAD SOUND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES Extinct phonographic formats: Leon Scott de Martinville phono-autograph, Edison wax cylinder, the telegraphone, Bell's graphophone, wire recorders, 78s, 8-track, the Elcaset, Soviet "bone music," aluminum transcription disks, etc. DEAD SOUND REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES: The AT&T Voder (1939) The Bell Labs Vocoder Talking dolls and cassette dolls (von Kempelen's "talking" doll (1778), Robertson's talking waxwork (1815), Faber's talking automaton (1853), Teddy Ruxpin, dolls linked to television programs, realistic sound-producing squeeze toys, etc). DEAD STILL-IMAGE CAPTURE TECHNOLOGIES Extinct photographic techniques: Niepce's asphalt photograph (1826), daguerrotype, talbotype, calotype, collodion, fluorotype, cyanotype, Pellet process, ferro- gallic and ferro-tannic papers, albumen process, argenotype, kalliotype, palladiotype, platinotype, uranium printing, powder processes, pigment printing, Artigue proces, oil printing, chromotype, Herschel's breath printing, diazotype, pinatype, wothlytype, etc. DEAD STILL-IMAGE TO TACTILE IMAGE TECHNOLOGY Naumburg's printing visagraph and automatic visagraph. DEAD STILL-IMAGE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGIES The stereopticon, the Protean View, the Zogroscope, the Polyorama Panoptique, Frith's Cosmoscope, Knight's Cosmorama, Ponti's Megalethoscope (1862), Rousell's Graphoscope (1864), Wheatstone's stereoscope (1832), dead Viewmaster knockoffs. Medieval and renaissance magic-glass conjuring. Alhazen's camera obscura (1000 AD), Wollaston's camera lucida (1807). Magic lantern, dissolving views, phantasmagoria. DEAD STILL-IMAGE WITH SOUND The GE Show 'N Tell DEAD STILL-IMAGE "3-D" WITH SOUND The Talking View-Master. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION TECHNOLOGIES Joseph Plateau's phenakistiscope (1832), Emile Reynaud's praxinoscope, Ayrton's thaumatrope or "magic disks" (1825), Stampfer's stroboscope, William George Horner's zoetrope or "wheel-of-life" (1834), L. S. Beale's choreutoscope (1866), the viviscope, Short's Filoscope, Herman Casler's mutoscope and the "picture parlor" (1895), the Lumiere kinora viewer, the fantascope, etc. Dead cinematic devices, including but not limited to: Muybridge's zoogyroscope, E J Marey's chronophotographe and fusil photographique, George Demeny's Phonoscope, Edison kinetoscope, Anschutz's tachyscope, Armat's vitascope, Rudge's biophantascope, Skladanowsky's Bioscope, Acre's kineopticon, the counterfivoscope, the klondikoscope, Paul's theatrograph, Reynaud's Theatre Optique, Reynaud's Musee Grevin Cabinet Fantastique, Lumiere cinematographe, Kobelkoff's Giant Cinematographe, Lumiere Cinematographe Geant (1900), the vitagraph, Paul's animatograph, the vitamotograph, the Kinesetograph, Proszynski's Oko, the Urbanora. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND TECHNOLOGIES the Photo-Cinema-Theatre sound film system (1900), Gaumont's Chronophone (1910), Messter's Biophon (1904), The Mendel-Walturdaw cinematophone (1911), The Jeapes- Barker Cinephone (1908), Hepworth's Vivaphone (1911), Edison kinetophone (1913), Ruhmer's Photographon optical sound recorder (1901), the synchronoscope, the cameraphone, phonofilm, the graphophonoscope, the chronophotographoscope, the biophonograph, DeForest Phonofilm (1923), Warner Bros/ Western Electric Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927), Vocafilm, Firnatone, Bristolphone, Titanifrone, Disney's Cinephone, Hoxie / RCA Photophone (1928), General Electric Kinegraphone (1925), Cinerama (1951), CinemaScope (1952), Natural Vision (1952), etc. The Scopitone. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, IMMERSIVE Raoul Grimoin-Sanson's Ballon-Cineorama ten-projector circular screen (1900) DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL Odorama, Smell-O-Vision (1960), Aromarama (1959) etc. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, SMELL, IMMERSIVE Morton Heilig's early virtual reality. DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, "3-D" 3-D projection systems: d'Almeida's projected 3-D magic lantern slides (1856), Grivolas's stereoscopic moving pictures (1897), the Fairall anaglyph process (1922), Kelly's Plasticon (1922), Ives and Leventhall's Plastigram, aka Pathe Stereoscopiks, aka Audioscopiks, aka Metroscopix (1923,1925, 1935, 1953), Teleview (New York 1922), polarized light stereoscopic movies (1936), Ivanov's parallax stereogram projector (Moscow 1941), Savoy's Cyclostereoscope (Paris 1949), the Telekinema (London 1951), Space Vision (Chicago 1966). DEAD MULTIPLE-IMAGE, PERSISTENCE-OF-VISION, SOUND, ARCHIVAL Dead video: Baird Phonovisor wax videodisk (1927), Ives/Bell Labs Half-Tone Television (1930s) Eidophor video projector (1945), PixelVision, Polavision, Philips Laservision videodisk, Panasonic HDTV (1974), analog HDTV (1989), RCA SelectaVision CED videodisk, Telefunken Teldec Decca TeD videodisk, TEAC system videodisk, Philips JVC VHD/AHD videodisk Dead videotapes: Ampex Signature I (1963), Sony CV B/W (1965) Akai 1/4 inch B/W & Colour (1969), Cartivision/Sears (1972) Sony U-Matic (197?), Sony-Matic 1/2" B/W (197?) EIAJ-1 1/2" (197?), RCA Selectavision Magtape (1973) Akai VT-100 1/4 inch portable (1974), Panasonic Omnivision I (1975) Philips "VCR" (197?), Sanyo V-Cord, V-Cord II (197?) Akai VT-120 (1976), Matsushita/Quasar VX (1976) Philips & Grundig Video 2000 (1979), Funai/Technicolor CVC (1984) Sony Betamax (???) DEAD VIRTUALITIES Physical display environments (non-immersive): Dioramas (no sound), de Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon (sound and lighting) (1781), the Stereorama, the Cosmoramic Stereoscope, Japanese karakuri puppet theatre (non-immersive mechanical drama). Immersive physical display environments Panoramas, Poole's Myriorama, the Octorama, the Diaphorama, Cycloramas, the Paris Mareorama (1900), dead thrill rides. Defunct digital VR systems. DEAD DATA-RETRIEVAL DEVICES AND SYSTEMS accountant tally sticks Card catalogs: The Indecks Information Retrieval System, Diebold Cardineer rotary files, etc. Vannevar Bush's Comparator and Rapid Selector Scott's Electronium music composition system DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (ANALOG) Extinct computational platforms: abacus (circa 500BC Egypt, still in wide use) saun-pan computing tray (200 AD China) soroban computing tray (200 AD Japan) Napier's bones (1617 Scotland), William Oughtred's slide rule (1622 England) Wilhelm Schickard's calculator (1623 ?) Blaise Pascal's calculating machine (1642 France) Schott's Organum Mathematicum (1666) Gottfried Liebniz's calculating machine (1673) Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (built 1990s) (1822 England) Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (never built) (1833 England) Scheutz mechanical calculator (1855 Sweden) The Thomas Arithmometer Hollerith tabulating machine (1890) Vannevar Bush differential analyzer (1925 USA) DEAD COMPUTATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (DIGITAL) The Cauzin Strip Reader (archival) Extinct game platforms: Actionmax Video System, Adam Computer System, Aquarius Computer System, Atari: 2600/5200/7800, Colecovision, GCE Vectrex Arcade System, Intellivision I/II/III, Odyssey, Commodore, APF, Bally Astrocade, Emerson Arcadia, Fairchild "Channel F," Microvision, RCA Studio II, Spectravision, Tomy Tutor, etc. DEAD BINARY DIGITAL COMPUTERS Konrad Zuse's Z1 computer (1931 Germany) Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1939 USA) Turing's Colossus Mark 1 (1941 England) Zuse's Z3 computer (1941 Germany) Colossus Mark II (1944 England) IBM ASCC Mark I (1944 USA) BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) (1946-1949 USA) ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) (1946 USA) Dead mainframes. Dead personal computers: Altair 8800, Amiga 500, Amiga 1000, Amstrad Apple I, II, II+, IIc, IIe, IIGS, III Apple Lisa, Apple Lisa MacXL, Apricot Atari 400 and 800 XL, XE, ST, Atari 800XL, Atari 1200XL, Atari XE Basis 190, BBC Micro, Bondwell 2, Cambridge Z-88 Canon Cat, Columbia Portable Commodore C64, Commodore Vic-20, Commodore Plus 4 Commodore Pet, Commodore 128 CompuPro "Big 16," Cromemco Z-2D, Cromemco Dazzler, Cromemco System 3, DOT Portable, Eagle II Epson QX-10, Epson HX-20, Epson PX-8 Geneva Exidy Sorcerer, Franklin Ace 500, Franklin Ace 1200 Gavilan, Grid Compass, Heath/Zenith, Hitachi Peach Hyperion, IBM PC 640K, IBM XT, IBM Portable IBM PCjr, IMSAI 8080, Intertek Superbrain II Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, Kaypro 2x Linus WriteTop, Mac 128, 512, 512KE Mattel Aquarius, Micro-Professor MPF-II Morrow MicroDecision 3, Morrow Portable NEC PC-8081, NEC Starlet 8401-LS, NEC 8201A Portable, NEC 8401A, NorthStar Advantage, NorthStar Horizon Ohio Scientific, Oric, Osborne 1, Osborne Executive Panasonic, Sanyo 1255, Sanyo PC 1250 Sinclair ZX-80, Sinclair ZX-81 Sol Model 20, Sony SMC-70, Spectravideo SV-328 Tandy 1000, Tandy 1000SL, Tandy Coco 1, Tandy Coco 2 Tandy Coco 3, TRS-80 models I, II, III, IV, 100, Tano Dragon, TI 99/4, Timex/Sinclair 1000 Timex/Sinclair color computer, Vector 4 Victor 9000, Workslate Xerox 820 II, Xerox Alto, Xerox Dorado, Xerox 1108 Yamaha CX5M etc. etc. etc. Dead computer languages. Fortran I, II and III, ALGOL 58 and 60, Lisp 1 and 1.5 COBOL, APT, JOVIAL, SIMULA I and 67 JOSS, PL/1, SNOBOL, APL Dead operating systems. Dead Internet techniques. We are actively hunting data in all these categories and also hunting for more categories. Bruce Sterling July 10, 1996 Subject: Dead Media Working Notes, 1-20 0.01. The Incan quipu 0.02. Chaucerian virtual reality 0.03. The Incan quipu 0.04. Kid media: viewmasters, filmstrips, portable projectors, Teddy Ruxpin 0.05. Dead personal computers 0.06. Dead mainframes; early computation devices 0.07. The cyrograph 0.08. The scopitone 0.09. Dead computer languages 01.0 The magic lantern 01.1 The magic lantern 01.2 Clockwork radio 01.3 The magic lantern 01.4 The term "Dead" 01.5 Silent film, the diorama, the panorama 01.6 The magic lantern 01.7 The Comparator; the Rapid Selector 01.8 Bibliography: Magic lanterns, Photography, Optical Toys, Early Cinema 01.9 The Experiential Typewriter 02.0 The magic lantern Dead Media Necronauts: Trevor Blake Paul Di Filippo Stefan Jones Bradley O'Neill Dan Rabin Bruce Sterling Alan Wexelblat Dead Media Working Note 00.1 Dead medium: The Inca Quipo Source: "History of the Inca Empire: An account of the Indians' customs and their origin together with a treatise on Inca legends, history and social institutionsî by Father Bernabe Cobo Translated and edited by Roland Hamilton University of Texas Press 1979 Third reprinting 1991 This book is an excerpt from "Historia del Nuevo Mundo" a much larger manuscript completed in 1653 by Bernabe Cobo, a Peruvian Jesuit p 252: "In place of writing they used some strands of cord or thin wool strings, like the ones we use to string rosaries; and these strings were called *quipos.* By these recording devices and registers they conserved the memory of their acts, and the Inca's overseers and accountants used them to remember what had been received or consumed. A bunch of these *quipos* served them as a ledger or notebook. The *quipos* consisted of diverse strings of different colors, and on each string there were several knots. These were figures and numbers that meant various things. Today many bunches of very ancient *quipos* of diverse colors with an infinite number of knots are found. On explaining their meaning, the Indians that know them relate many things about ancient times that are contained in them. There were people designated for this job of accounting. These officials were called *quipos camayos,* and they were like our historians, scribes, and accountants, and the Incas had great confidence in them. "These officials learned with great care this way of making records and preserving historical facts. However, not all of the Indians were capable of understanding the *quipos;* only those dedicated to this job could do it; and those who did not study *quipos* failed to understand them. Even among the *quipo camayos* themselves, one was unable to understand the registers and recording devices of others. Each one understood the *quipos* that he made and what the others told him. There were different *quipos* for different kinds of things, such as for paying tribute, lands, ceremonies, and all kinds of matters pertaining to peace and war. And the *quipo camayos* customarily passed their knowledge on to those who entered their ranks from one generation to the next. The *quipo camayos* explained to the newcomers the events of the past that were contained in the ancient *quipos* as well as the things that were added to the new *quipos;* and in this way they explain everything that that transpired in this land during all the time that the Incas governed. These *quipos* are still used in the *tambos* to keep a record of what they sell to travellers, for the *mitas,* for herders to keep track of their livestock, and for other matters. And even though many Indians know how to read and write and have traded their *quipos* for writing, which is without comparison a more accurate and easier method, still, in order to show the great subtlety of this method of preserving history and keeping accounts for people who had no writing and what they achieved with it, I wish to give the following example of what happened in our times. "Two Spaniards left together from the town of Ica to go to the city of Castro Virreina, and arriving at the *tambo* of Cordoba, which is a day's travel from Ica, one of them stayed there and the other continued his trip; at this *tambo* this latter traveller was given an Indian guide to accompany him to Castro Virreina. This Indian killed the Spaniard on the road and returned to the *tambo.* After some time passed, since the Spaniard was very well known, he was missed. The governor of Castro Virreina, who at that time was Pedro de Cordoba Mejia, a native of Jaen, made a special investigation to find out what had happened. And in case the man had been killed, he sent a large number of Indians to look for the body in the puna and desert. But no sign of him could be found, nor could anyone find out what had become of him until more than six years after he had been killed. "By chance the body of another Spaniard was found in a cave of the same desert. The governor ordered that this body be brought to the plaza so that it could be seen, and once it was brought, it looked like the one the Indian had killed, and, believing that it was he, the governor continued witht he investigation to discover the killer. Not finding any trace or evidence against anybody, he was advised to make an effort to find out the identity of the Indian who was given to the deceased as a guide at the *tambo* or Cordoba. The Indians would know this in spite of the fiact that more than six years had passed because by means of the record of the *quipos* they would have kept memory of it. With this the governor sent for the caciques and *quipo camayos.* After they were brought to him and he continued with the investigation, the *quipo camayos* found out by their *quipos* the identity of the Indian who had been given as a guide to the aforementioned Spaniard. The Indian guide was brought prisoner immediately from his town, called Guaytara, and, having given his declaration in which he denied the crime, he was questioned under torture, and at once confessed to having killed the man, but explained that the wrong body had been brought. However, he would show them the place where he had killed the man and where the body was located. Police officers went with him to the puna, and they found the body where the Indian guide had hidden it, and it was in a cave located some distance from the road. With the great cold and dryness of the paramo, the body had not decomposed, but it had dried out, and thus it was whole. The first body that was brought was never identified, nor was the killer. The extent of the achievement of the record and memory of the *quipos* can be appreciated by this case." Dead Media Working Notes 00.2 Dead medium: "Chaucerian Virtual Reality" Source: Popular Entertainments Through the Ages by Samuel McKechnie London, Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd GV 75 M35 MAIN UT library (1937?) pp 10-11-12: "Many of the minstrels were conjurers. These entertainers probably reached their greatest popularity in the fourteenth century, when they were known as tregetours. Some of their tricks were generally attributed to an understanding between the performer and the devil, this view being held by James 1. Accordingly, the tregetours were frequently classed with magicians, sorcerers and witches. They often travelled about in companies, and it is to be assumed that they carried with them the various contrivances necessary for the performance of tricks which did not depend on the most precious accomplishment of the conjurer, then as today -- sleight of hand. In 'The Frankeleyns Tale' Chaucer descries some of the tricks. Among them were the appearance, in a hall, of water and a barge, a lion, flowers, a vine, a castle of lime and stone -- all of which vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared: For ofte at festes have I wel herd seye, That tregetours, with-inne an halle large, Have maad come in a water and a barge, And in the halle rowen up and doun. Sometyme hath semed come a grim leoun; And somtyme floures spring as in a mede; Somtyme a vyne, and grapes whyte and rede; Somtyme a castle, al of lyme and stoon; And whan hem lyked, voyded it anoon. Thus semed it to every mannes sighte. He also tells how there appeared wild deer, some being slain by arrows and some killed by the hounds. Falconers were seen on the bank of a river, where the birds pursued herons and slew them. Knights jousted on a plain. The amazed spectator saw himself dancing with his lady: Doun of his hors Aurelius lighte anon, And forth with this magicien is he gon Hoom to his hous, and made hem wel at ese. Hem lakked no vitaille that mighte hem plese; So wel arrayed hous as ther was oon Aurelius in his lyf saugh never noon. He shewed him, er he went to sopeer, Forestes, parkes ful of wilde deer; Ther saugh he hertes with hir hornes hye, The gretteste that ever were seyn with ye. He saugh of hem an hondred slayn with houndes. And somme with arwes blede of bittre woundes. He saugh, whan voided were thise wilde deer, Thise fauconers upon a fair river, That with hir haukes han the heron slayn. Tho saugh he knightes justing in a playn; And after this he dide him swich plesaunce, The he him shewed his lady on a daunce, On which him-self he daunced, as him thoughte. And whan this maister, that this magik wroughte, Saugh it was tyme, he clapped his handes two, And farewel! al our revel was ago. And yet remoeved they never out of the hous, Whyl they saugh al this sighte merveillous. These were undoubtedly magic lantern effects, yet the lantern itself is usually thought to have been invented by Athanasius Kircher in the middle of the seventeenth century. The explanation, however, is that in the fourteenth century there were glass lenses which gave good telescopic and microscopic effects." Dead Media Working Notes 00.3 medium: the Inca Quipo aka Quipu Source: Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society David Crowley and Paul Heyer, eds. Longman, New York and London, 1991 ISBN 0-8013-0598-5 From the article: "Civilization Without Writing -- The Inca and the Quipu" by Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher (also authors of "Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, Mathematics and Culture", publisher and date unknown) "A quipu is a collection of cords with knots tied in them. The cords were usually made of cotton, and they were often dyed one or more colors. When held in the hands, a quipu is unimpressive; surely, in our culture, it might be mistaken for a tangled old mop. (...) "Quipus probably predate the coming to power of the Incas. But under the Incas, they became part of statecraft. (....) "There are several extremely important properties of quipus.... First of all, quipus can be assigned horizontal direction. (...) Quipumakers knew which end was which; we will assume that they start at the looped aends and proceed to the knotted ends. Quipus can also be assigned vertical direction. Pendant cords and top cords are vertically opposite to each other with pendant cords considered to go downward and top cords upward. (...) Quipus have levels. Cords attached to the main cord are on one level; theur subsidiaries form a second level. Subsidiaries to these subsidiaries form a third level, and so on. Quipus are made of cords and spaces between cords. (...) Larger or smaller spaces between cords are an intentional part of the overall construction. (...) "As well as having a particular placement, each cord has a color. Color is fundamental to the symbolic system of the quipu. (...) Basically, the quipumaker designed each quipu using color coding to relate some cords together and to distinguish them from other cords. (...) Additional cord colors were created by spinning the colored yarns together. Two solid colors twisted together gives a candy cane effect, two of these twisted together using the opposite twist direction gives a mottled effect, and the two solid colors can be joined so that part of the cord is one color and the rest of it is another color. (...) "For the most part, cords had knots tied along them and the knots represented numbers. But we are certain that before knots were tied in the cords, the entire blank quipu was prepared. The overall planning and construction of the quipu was done first, including the types of cord connections, the relative placement of cords, the selection of cord colors, and even individual decorative finishings. (...) The quipumaker's recording was nonlinear. (...) A group of strings occupy a space that has no definite orientation; as the quipumaker conmnected strongs to each other, the space became defined by the points where the strings were attached. (...) Essentially then, the quipumaker had to have the ability to conceive and execute a recording in three dimensions with color." Dead Media Working Notes 00.4 Dead medium: Children's Dead Media From SeJ@aol.com (Stefan Jones) A lot of the Dead Media examples Bruce provided are from the deep dark past. Here are some from a more recent epoch . . . kid media from when I was growing up, now dead and forgotten. Noninteractive Multimedia for Kids ------------------------- Film Loops ---------- A proto-VCR contraption, developed for schools. The media was a film cartridge: An endless loop of super 8mm film in a sealed, asymmetrical transparent plastic case. The player was about the size of a carousel- type slide projector. Operation was marvelously simple; the operator merely jammed the cart into a slot in the side of the projector and hit play. I seem to remember a reverse and still frame setting. There was no sound; running time was about five minutes. My high school had a few dozen of these; the ones I remember involve demonstrations of biological processes (cell division, metamorphosis, reptile homeostasis). There was also one of "Galloping Girdy," the bridge in Washington state that wiggled itself to death. Major flaws: Bulbs burned out frequently; my teachers took about five tries to get the cartridge inserted properly. Kiddie Film Strip Projector --------------------------- When I was a kid, a cousin got a swell visual storytelling gadget for christmas. The projector was a TV-shaped box with a rear-projection screen up front and a turntable up top. The media was a 35mm film strip enclosed in a stiff plastic holder; I seem to remember these "sticks" having gear teeth along one side. Each stick was accompanied by a 45 RPM (?) record. There may have been nine or ten slides per "show." Operation was not quite foolproof. The stick was inserted in a slot up top, and the corresponding record queued up; lots of leeway for error and accidental breakage, there. Once inserted properly, the stick descended into the machine, one frame height at a time; this in itself was fun to see. I don't know what synchronized the sound and pictures, but it worked quite well. The stories were kid stuff: Raggedy Ann & Andy, etc. The one that interested me most at the time was a quickie adaption of Doyle's _The Lost World_. Very dramatic. The "production values" of the stories were pretty good: Nice narration and music, plus brightly colored cartoon artwork. ViewMaster Knockoffs -------------------- I was going to describe the Viewmaster here, but I recently learned that the things are still in production! Indeed, gift shops at historical landmarks and scenic wonders still carry Viewmaster reels for touristas to bring home. I find this really remarkable. Who would buy the things, in this age of Game Boys and cynical, post-literate youngsters? Perhaps they've become "old fashioned" enough to be acceptable to Amish families. (After all, the classic Viewmaster ran on ambient light, and the reels were strictly rated G.) While the Viewmaster struggles on, its many variants and knockoffs have passed on. Here are a few: -- Viewmaster itself released a "talking" version when I was a kid; I think it had small strips of magnetic tape next to each slide. The viewer was a beast, from what I remember; it had to contain a tape player, batteries and loudspeaker. -- I remember a friend getting a knock-off of the viewmaster. The media were rectangular cards, and inserted into the viewer vertically. Notches along the edge allowed the advance mechanism to get a grip on the card. This strikes me as a much saner scheme than the Viewmaster proper, which had circular reels. -- Another knockoff, which I remember being advertised on TV under the name "Captain Stereo", also had rectangular cards. This variant had no slides; the color pictures that formed the stereo pairs were simply printed on the card! I imagine the viewer somehow projected light on the front of the card. Portable Film Viewers --------------------- At least one company offered a kiddie film viewer when I was a youngster. Light was provided by the sun or a handy light bulb; the film was advanced by a hand crank. The carts, each about the size of a had a minute or so's worth of 8mm film. The only one I remember was an excerpt from a Mickey Mouse cartoon. I've asked some friends to think about Dead Media. I'm getting some interesting feedback. Someone mentioned Teddy Ruxpin, the animatronic story-telling bear (who had two chances at life before snuffing it, and whose mechanism is still begging to be hacked and exploited for dadaist purposes), and QXL, the quiz robot. Both of these casette droids are _toast_, and these are just two of a growing legion of interactive dolls, video-watching puppies, and space fighters that react to stuff on cancelled TV shows. These things are _really_ dead; unlike, say, an orphan computer platform, there's no audience of obsessed users willing to churn out new software for these. If this trend continues, we'll no doubt someday see semi-sapient robot robot things, perhaps in the form of animals with pee and spit-up proof plush shells, languishing unused in closets for lack of new programs. Or, maybe, covered in green vinyl and reprogrammed to do yardwork. *************** Somewhere between live media and dead media is ephemeral media, something that might deserve a passing comment, if only to contrast it to the really dead stuff. Example: I've been working for a multimedia company. I get lots of trade junk mail. Every once in a while I get a thick envelope with a folding cardboard and plastic filmstrip viewer . . . a really nifty item. But after looking at the attached film strip once (I've seen 'em advertise things like monitors, virus removers and data conversion services) the thing's garbage. The thing's too simple to become "dead," but its usefulness is pfft! ****************************************************** Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 00.5 Dead medium: Dead Personal Computers Source: Historical Computer Society's "Historically Brewed" magazine Historically Brewed: Our First Year, $14.95 editor David Greelish Available from: HCS Press, 1994 2962 Park Street #1 Jacksonville Florida 32205 The staggering speed of technological obsolescence in personal computing makes this perhaps the single most challenging area in dead media studies. The following list, garnered from several issues of "Historically Brewed," a computer collectors' fanzine, does not even begin to count the casualties. There is no pretense of accuracy or exhaustiveness here, although this is the best list I've seen to date. These machines were created for the American, British, and Japanese markets, with no mention at all of, for instance, Soviet Bloc computers. Nor are there any listings of workstations, mainframes, dedicated game computers or arcade console machines. The lacunae here are very obvious and I hope that knowledgeable Dead Media Illuminati will help to close those gaps. I was deeply disquieted to learn that the Historical Computer Society has a sister group known as IACC which specializes in collecting defunct calculators. A further wrinkle suggests itself when one surmises that the true "dead medium" in dead computation is not dead platforms (such as those listed here) but dead operating systems (for which I have no list at all). An editorial note: The Dead Media Mailing List is now emanating from fringeware.com, who were kind enough to offer us their services gratis. The Dead Media Mailing List is not an interactive list or discussion group. That may come at some later time -- I welcome advice on the subject of a possible "alt.dead.media." Currently this mailing list is solely a means of distribution of edited articles and research minutiae. Only the most sober, lugubrious, and scholarly commentary will pass the eagle eye of the DMML editor, ie. bruces@well.com. Hopefully this will keep traffic down to the point where we can all actually get some work done. Dead Personal Computers (the first draft): Altair 8800 Amiga 500 Amiga 1000 Amstrad Apple I, II, IIc, IIe, II+, IIgs, III Apple Lisa Apple Lisa MacXL Apricot Atari 400 Atari 800 Atari 520ST Atari 1200XL Basis 190 BBC Micro Bondwell 2 Cambridge Z-88 Canon Cat Columbia Portable Commodore 128 Commodore C64 Commodore Vic-20 Commodore Plus 4 Commodore Pet CompuPro "Big 16" Cromemco Z-2D Cromemco System 3 DOT Portable Eagle II Epson QX-10 Epson HX-20 Epson PX-8 Geneva Exidy Sorcerer Franklin Ace 500 Franklin Ace 1200 Gavilan Grid Compass Heath/Zenith Hyperion IBM PC 640K IBM XT IBM Portable IBM PCjr IMSAI 8080 Intertek Superbrain II Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1 Kaypro 2x Linus WriteTop Mac 128, 512, 512KE Mattel Aquarius Micro-Professor MPF-II Morrow MicroDecision 3 Morrow Portable NEC PC-8081 NEC Starlet 8401-LS NorthStar Advantage NorthStar Horizon Ohio Scientific Oric Osborne 1 Osborne Executive Panasonic Sanyo 1255 Sanyo PC 1250 Sinclair ZX-80 Sinclair ZX-81 Sol Model 20 Sony SMC-70 Spectravideo SV-328 SuperBrain II QD Tandy 1000 Tandy 1000SL Tandy Coco 1 Tandy Coco 2 Tandy Coco 3 Tano Dragon TRS-80 TI 99/4 Timex/Sinclair 1000 Timex/Sinclair color computer Vector 4 Victor 9000 Workslate Xerox 820 II Xerox Alto Xerox Dorado Xerox 1108 Yamaha CX5M Possible sources of further insight: A Collector's Guide to Personal Computers and Pocket Calculators by Dr Thomas F Haddock $14.95 from: Books Americana, Inc P O Box 2326 Florence, Alabama 35360 History of the Personal Computer by Stan Veit $16.95 from: Historical Computer Society 2962 Park Street #1 Jacksonville, Florida 32205 Encyclopedia of Computer History by Mark Greenia Lexikon Publishing (??) Dead Media Working Note 00.6 From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Dead Medium: Dead computational platforms, dead mainframes, and their dates Sources: Bruce P. Watson, Dr Kenneth E. Knight, assorted scrounging on World Wide Web "computer history" sites abacus (circa 500BC Egypt) saun-pan computing tray (200 AD China) soroban computing tray (200 AD Japan) Napier's bones (1617 Scotland), William Oughtred's slide rule (1622 England) Blaise Pascal's calculating machine (1642 France) Gottfried Liebniz's calculating machine (1673) Charles Babbage's Difference Engine (never built) (1822 England) Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (never built) (1833 England) Scheutz mechanical calculator (1855 Sweden) Hollerith tabulating machine (1890) Vannevar Bush differential analyzer (1925 USA) Konrad Zuse's Z1 computer (1931 Germany) Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1939 USA) Turing's Colossus Mark 1 (1941 England) Zuse's Z3 computer (1941 Germany) Colossus Mark II (1944 England) IBM ASCC Mark I (1944 USA) BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) (1946-1949 USA) ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) (1946 USA) Dead Mainframes afcno KEKno Manufacturer Computer Name Introduced ----- ----- -------------------------- ---------- * Zuse Z4 (mechanical relays) 1939 * Atanasoff/ABC Oct 1939 ? * Colossus Mark I (declassified 1970) 1943 1 Harvard Mark I 1944 * Colossus Mark II (declassified 1970) 1944 2 Bell Labs Computer Model IV Mar 1945 3 ENIAC (first vacuum tube) 1946 4 Bell Labs Computer Model V Late 1947 5 Harvard Mark II Sep 1948 6 BINAC (first stored program?) Aug 1949 * Cambridge Edsac (first stored program?) 1949 * IBM SSEC 1949? 7 IBM CPC 1949 8 Bell Computer Model III 1949 9 National Bureau of Standards SEAC May 1950 10 MIT Whirlwind I Dec 1950 11 Eckert-Mauchley UNIVAC 1101 Era 1101 Dec 1950 12 IBM 607 1950 13 AVDIAC 1950 * National Physics Labs/ACE May 1950 14 Harvard ADEC Jan 1951 15 Burroughs Lab Calculator Jan 1951 16 NBS SWAC Mar 1951 17 Eckert-Mauchley UNIVAC I Mar 1951 18 ONR Relay Computer May 1951 19 Fairchild Computer Jun 1951 * General Electric 100 ERMA 1951 20 National 102 Jan 1952 21 IAS Mar 1952 22 MANIAC I Mar 1952 23 ORDVAC Mar 1952 24 EDVAC Apr 1952 25 Teleregister Spec Purpose Dig Data Jun 1952 26 U. of Illinois ILLIAC Sep 1952 27 Elcom 100 Dec 1952 28 Harvard Mark IV 1952 29 ALWAC II Feb 1953 30 Logistics Era Mar 1953 31 OARAC Apr 1953 32 ABC May 1953 33 RAYDAC Jul 1953 34 MIT Whirlwind II Jul 1953 35 National 102A Sum 1953 36 Consolidated Eng. Model 36-101 Sum 1953 37 Jaincomp C Aug 1953 38 FLAC Sep 1953 39 Oracle Sep 1953 40 Sperry Rand UNIVAC 1103 Sep 1953 41 UNIVAC 1102 Dec 1953 42 UDEC 1 Dec 1953 43 National Cash Register NCR 107 1953 44 MINIAC Dec 1953 45 IBM 701 (first comm large scale) 1953 46 IBM 604 1953 47 AN/UJQ-2(YA-1) 1953 48 Rand JOHNNIAC Mar 1954 * Bell Labs LEPRECHAUN ???? 49 DYSEAC Apr 1954 50 Elecom 120 May 1954 51 Circle Jun 1954 52 Burroughs 204 & 205 Jul 1954 53 MODAC 5014 Jul 1954 54 ORDFIAC Jul 1954 55 Electro Data Datatron Aug 1954 56 MODAC 404 Sep 1954 57 Lincoln Memory Test Dec 1954 58 TIM II Dec 1954 59 UC Berkeley CALDIC 1954 * CSC-46 1954 60 UNIVAC 60 & 120 Nov 1954 61 IBM 650 Nov 1954 62 WISC 1954 63 NCR 303 1954 64 Mellon Inst. Digital Computer 1954 65 IBM 610 1954 66 ALWAC III 1954 67 IBM 702 Feb 1955 68 Monrobot III Feb 1955 69 NORC Feb 1955 70 MINIAC II Mar 1955 71 Monrobot V Mar 1955 72 UDEC II Oct 1955 73 Radio Corp of Amer RCA BIZMAC I & II Nov 1955 74 PENNSTAC Nov 1955 75 Technitral 180 1955 76 National 120D 1955 77 Monrobot VI 1955 78 MODAC 410 1955 79 MIDAC 1955 80 Elcom 125 1955 81 Burroughs E 101 1955 82 Bendix G15 Aug 1955 83 ALWAC III E Nov 1955 84 J.B. Rea Co. Readix Feb 1956 85 IBM 705, I, II Mar 1956 86 UNIVAC 1103 A Mar 1956 87 AF CRC Apr 1956 88 Guidance Function Apr 1956 89 IBM 704 Apr 1956 90 IBM 701 (CORE) 1956 91 NAREC Jul 1956 92 Royal McBee LGP-30 Sep 1956 93 Madac 414 Oct 1956 94 Underwood Elecom 50 1956 * Soviet Strela (Arrow) 1956 95 UDEC II Mar 1957 96 George I Sep 1957 97 UNIVAC File O Sep 1957 98 Lincoln TXO Aut 1957 99 UNIVAC II Nov 1957 100 IBM 705 II Lat 1957 101 Teleregister Telefile Lat 1957 102 Autonetics Recomp I Lat 1957 103 IBM 608 1957 104 Mistic 1957 105 MANIAC II 1957 106 IBM 609 1957 107 IBM 305 Dec 1957 108 Corbin 1957 109 Burroughs E 103 1957 110 AN/FSQ 7 & 8 1957 111 Alwac 880 1957 * Pegasus 1957 112 UNIVAC File I Jan 1958 113 Linclon CG24 May 1958 114 IBM 709 Aug 1958 115 UNIVAC 1105 Sep 1958 116 Lincoln TX2 Fal 1958 117 Philco 2000-210 Nov 1958 118 Autonetics Recomp II Dec 1958 119 Burroughs 220 Dec 1958 120 Mobidic 1958-1960 121 Philco CXPO 1958 122 Monrobot IX 1958 * NBS PILOT 1958 123 General Electric GE 210 Jun 1959 124 Cyclone Jul 1959 125 IBM 1620 Oct 1959 126 NCR 304 Nov 1959 127 IBM 7090 Nov 1959 128 RCA 501 Nov 1959 129 RW 300 Nov 1959 130 RPC 9000 1959 131 Librascope Air Traffic 1959 132 Jukebox 1959 133 Datamatic 1000 1959 134 CCC Real Time 1959 135 Burroughs E 102 1959 136 Burroughs D 204 1959 137 AN/TYK 6V BASICPAC 1959 138 Control Data Corp CDC 1604 Jan 1960 139 Librascope 3000 Jan 1960 140 UNIVAC Solid State 80/90 I Jan 1960 * Bunker-Ramo 300 Jan 1960 141 Philco 2000-211 Mar 1960 142 UNIVAC Larc May 1960 143 Libratrol XI May 1960 144 Monrobot XI May 1960 145 IBM 7070 Jun 1960 146 CDC 160 Jul 1960 147 IBM 1401 (Mag Tape) Sep 1960 148 AN/FSQ 31 & 32 Sep 1960 149 Merlin Sep 1960 150 IBM 1401 (Card) Sep 1960 151 Mobidic B Fal 1960 152 CDC RPC 4000 Nov 1960 153 Digital Equipment Corp PDP-1 (M.T.) Nov 1960 154 DEC PDP-1 (P.T.) Nov 1960 155 Packard Bell 250 (PT) Dec 1960 156 Honeywell 800 Dec 1960 157 General Mills AD/ECW-57 Dec 1960 * Bunker-Ramo 330 Dec 1960 158 Philco 3000 Lat 1960 159 MANIAC III Lat 1960 160 Sylvania 59400 Lat 1960 161 Target Intercept Lat 1960 162 Westinghouse Airborne 1960 163 RCA 300 1960 164 Mobidic CD & 7A AN/MYK 1960 165 Litton C7000 1960 166 Libratrol 1000 1960 167 GE 312 1960 168 Diana 1960 169 DE 60 Feb 1960 170 Burroughs D107 1960 171 AN/USQ 20 1960 172 AN/TYK 4V COMPAC 1960 * CSC-160 1960 173 General Mills APSAC Jan 1961 174 UNIVAC Solid State 80/90 II Jan 1961 175 Bendix G20 & 21 Feb 1961 176 RCA 301 Feb 1961 177 BRLESC Mar 1961 178 GE 225 Mar 1961 179 CCC-DDP 19 (Card) May 1961 180 CCC-DDP 19 (MT) May 1961 181 IBM Stretch (7030) May 1961 182 NCR 390 May 1961 183 Honeywell 290 Jun 1961 184 Autonetics Recomp III Jun 1961 185 CDC 160A Jul 1961 186 IBM 7080 Aug 1961 187 RW 530 Aug 1961 * Bunker-Ramo 530 Aug 1961 * CDC 924/A Aug 1961 188 IBM 7074 Nov 1961 189 IBM 1410 Nov 1961 190 Honeywell 400 Dec 1961 191 Rice University Dec 1961 192 UNIVAC 490 Dec 1961 * Bunker-Ramo 130 Dec 1961 193 AN/TYK 7V 1961 194 UNIVAC 1206 1961 195 UNIVAC 1000 & 1020 1961 196 ITT Bank Loan Process 1961 197 George II 1961 198 Oklahoma University Ear 1961 199 NCR 315 Jan 1962 200 NCR 315 CRAM Jan 1962 201 UNIVAC File II Jan 1962 202 HRB-Singer SEMA Jan 1962 203 UNIVAC 1004 Feb 1962 * IBM 1710/1720 Feb 1962 * Linc Mar 1962 204 ASI 210 Apr 1962 205 UNIVAC III Jun 1962 206 Burroughs B200 Series-B270 & 280 Jul 1962 * GE 412 Jul 1962 207 Scientific Data Systems SDS 910 Aug 1962 208 SDS 920 Sep 1962 209 DEC PDP-4 Sep 1962 210 UNIVAC 1107 Oct 1962 211 IBM 7094 Oct 1962 * Collins Radio 8400 Nov 1962 212 IBM 7072 Nov 1962 213 IBM 1620 MOD III Dec 1962 214 Burroughs B5000 Dec 1962 215 ASI 420 Dec 1962 216 Burroughs B2000 Series-Card Sys. Dec 1962 * CDC LPG-21 Dec 1962 217 TRW 400 (AN/FSQ 27) 1962 * AN/GYK-3(V) (Honeywell D825) 1962 218 CDC 3600 Jun 1963 219 IBM 7040 Apr 1963 * English Electric KDF 9 Apr 1963 220 IBM 7044 Jul 1963 221 RCA 601 Jan 1963 222 Honeywell 1800 Nov 1963 223 Philco 1000 TRANSAC S1000 Jun 1963 224 Philco 2000-212 Feb 1963 225 Librascope L 3055 Dec 1963 226 H.W.Electronics 15K Feb 1963 227 GE 215 Jun 1963 228 DDP-24 Jun 1963 229 CDC 3600 Jun 1963 * Bunker-Ramo 230 Jun 1963 * Westinghouse 510/580 Jun 1963 * Honeywell 610/620 Aug 1963 230 UNIVAC 1050 Sep 1963 231 UNIVAC 1004 Sep 1963 232 DEC PDP-5 Oct 1963 * Bunker-Ramo 340 Oct 1963 * CSC-636 Oct 1963 233 IBM 1460 Oct 1963 * GE Datanet-30 Oct 1963 234 IBM 1440 Nov 1963 235 Honeywell 1400 Dec 1963 236 ASI 2100 Dec 1963 237 SDS-93C0 Dec 1963 238 Burroughs 273 Jan 1964 239 GE-235 Jan 1964 240 IBM 7010 Jan 1964 * PDS 1020 Feb 1964 * IBM 7700 Mar 1964 241 Burroughs B 160-180 Apr 1964 242 CDC 160G Apr 1964 243 IBM 7094 II Apr 1964 244 CDC 3200 May 1964 245 GE 415 May 1964 * CDC 8090 May 1964 246 UNIVAC 1004 II, III Jun 1964 247 SDS-930 Jun 1964 248 GE 425 Jun 1964 * Beckman Instruments 420 Jun 1964 * Bunker-Ramo 133 Jun 1964 * CDC 8092 Jun 1964 249 GE 205 Jul 1964 250 Honeywell 200 Jul 1964 251 RCA 3301 Jul 1964 252 DEC PDP-6 Jul 1964 * Varian 610 Jul 1964 * Adage Ambilog-200 Aug 1964 * GE 4040 Aug 1964 * Westinghouse Electric 50 Aug 1964 253 CDC 6600 Sep 1964 254 UNIVAC 41B Sep 1964 255 NCR 315-100 Nov 1964 256 GE 635 Nov 1964 257 CDC 3400 Nov 1964 258 Burroughs B5500 Nov 1964 * Digital Electronics 3080 Dec 1964 * DECSYSTEM 10 PDP-6 1964 259 SDS 925 Feb 1965 260 SDS 92 Feb 1965 261 CDC 3100 Feb 1965 262 ASI 6020 Mar 1965 263 DDP-224 Mar 1965 264 DDP-116 Apr 1965 265 GE 625 Apr 1965 266 DEC PDP-8 Apr 1965 267 DEC PDP-7 Apr 1965 268 IBM 360/40 May 1965 269 IBM 360/30 May 1965 * EA 8400 Jun 1965 * GE 4060 Jun 1965 270 NCR 315 RMC Jul 1965 * ASI 6040 Jul 1965 271 UNIVAC 1108 II Aug 1965 272 GE 435 Aug 1965 273 IBM 360/50 Sep 1965 274 IBM 1130 Sep 1965 275 NCR 590 Sep 1965 * Systems Engineering Labs 810-A Sep 1965 * Varian Data Machines 611/612 Sep 1965 276 ASI 6240 Oct 1965 277 UNIVAC 491 & 492 Oct 1965 278 RCA Spectra 70/15 Oct 1965 279 Raytheon 520 Oct 1965 * ASI 6070 Oct 1965 * SCC 660 Oct 1965 280 IBM 360/75 Nov 1965 * Bailey Meter 756 Nov 1965 * Philco 102 (CPS) Nov 1965 * SEL 840 Nov 1965 * Varian 620 Nov 1965 281 Honeywell 2200 Dec 1965 282 CDC 3800 Dec 1965 283 RCA Spectra 70/25 Dec 1965 284 Friden 6010 Jan 1966 285 CDC 6400 Jan 1966 286 DDP-124 Jan 1966 287 Honeywell 1200 Jan 1966 288 IBM 360/20 Jan 1966 289 UNIVAC 1005 II, III Feb 1966 290 UNIVAC 1005 I Feb 1966 291 Honeywell 120 Feb 1966 * ASI 6050 Feb 1966 * Honeywell H-21 Feb 1966 * IBM 1800 Feb 1966 292 IBM 360/65 Mar 1966 293 UNIVAC 494 Mar 1966 294 SDS 940 Apr 1966 * CDC 1700 May 1966 * SCC 670 May 1966 * CCD 516 Jun 1966 295 RCA Spectra 70/55 Jul 1966 296 RCA Spectra 70/45 Jul 1966 297 RCA Spectra 70/35 Jul 1966 * GE 645 Jul 1966 * SEL 810-A Aug 1966 * SEL 840-A Aug 1966 298 Philco 200-213 Oct 1966 299 IBM 360/44 Oct 1966 * Data Mate ECP-18 Nov 1966 * Hewlitt-Packard 2116-A Nov 1966 * GE 4050 Dec 1966 * CDC 6416 1966 300 Honeywell 4200 May 1967 301 SDS Sigma 7 Dec 1966 302 DEC PDP-8/S Linc-8 Sep 1966 303 DEC PDP-9 Dec 1966 * Business Information Technology 80 Dec 1966 * SCC 650 1966 304 SDS Sigma 2 Jan 1967 305 Burroughs B 2500 Feb 1967 309 Burroughs B 6500 Feb 1967 * GE 4020 Feb 1967 306 Burroughs B 3500 May 1967 * SCC IC6000 May 1967 * Interdata 3 May 1967 307 UNIVAC 9300 Jun 1967 308 UNIVAC 9200 Jun 1967 * IBM 1401-H Jun 1967 * Electronics Assoicates, Inc 640 Jun 1967 * Xerox Sigma 5 Aug 1967 310 CDC 3500 Sep 1967 * Westinghouse 250 (S-2) Sep 1967 * Digital Electronics 3080-C Oct 1967 * ASI 6130 Oct 1967 * SEL 840-MP Oct 1967 * Raytheon Computer 703 Oct 1967 * IBM 360/90 Series Nov 1967 * HP 2115-A Nov 1967 * Honeywell 125 Dec 1967 * DECSYSTEM 10 KA10 1967 * DEC 20 ???? * AGU (Apollo CM guidance computer) ???? * (Apollo LM computer) ???? * IBM (Saturn V IMU computer) ???? * General Automation SPC-8 Jan 1968 * Honeywell 1648 Jun 1968 * Computer Automation 808 Jun 1968 * Motorola Instrumentations MDP-1000 Jun 1968 * Interdata 2 Jul 1968 * Redcor RC-70 Jul 1968 * Honeywell 1250 Aug 1968 * Interdata 4 Aug 1968 * Honeywell 110 Sep 1968 * NCR Century 100 Sep 1968 * SCC IC4000 Sep 1968 * HP 2116-A Sep 1968 * Varian 520 1 Sep 1968 * IBM 360/25 Oct 1968 * HP 2114-A Oct 1968 * RCA Spectra 70/46 Nov 1968 * Burroughs B500 Nov 1968 * DEC PDP-9/L Nov 1968 * HP 2000-A Nov 1968 * Honeywell 632 Dec 1968 * Bailey Meter 855 Dec 1968 * Computer Automation 816 Dec 1968 * Dynamic Research DRC-44 Dec 1968 * Honeywell CCD 416 Dec 1968 * SEL 810-B Dec 1968 * DEC PDP-8/I Apr 1968 * DEC PDP-8/L Nov 1968 * CDC 7600 Jan 1969 * Interdata 15 Jan 1969 * Micro Systems 800 Jan 1969 * Micro Systems 810 Jan 1969 * Honeywell 8200 Feb 1969 * Data General Nova Feb 1969 * GE 105 Mar 1969 * Lockheed Electronics MAC-16 Mar 1969 * Raytheon Computer 704 Mar 1969 * Sanders 200 Mar 1969 * Burroughs B8500 Apr 1969 * DEC PDP-12 Apr 1969 * GE 30 Apr 1969 * SCC 4700 Apr 1969 * UNIVAC 9400 May 1969 * Data Craft 6024-1 May 1969 * Raytheon Computer 706 May 1969 * SCC DCT-132 May 1969 * Varian Data R620 i May 1969 * GE 615 Jun 1969 * NCR Century 200 Jun 1969 * SCC IC7000 Jun 1969 * Burroughs B6500 Jul 1969 * Computer Automation 208 Jul 1969 * General Automation GA-18/20 Jul 1969 * Honeywell CCD 316 Jul 1969 * Xerox Data CE-16 Jul 1969 * Sprias Systems 65 Aug 1969 * Westinghouse Electric 2000 Aug 1969 * Tempo Computers 1/1-A Sep 1969 * Xerox Data CF-16 Sep 1969 * IBM 360/85 Oct 1969 * CDC 6700 Oct 1969 * Data Mate DM-16 Oct 1969 * GE 58 Nov 1969 * Computer Logic CLS-18 Nov 1969 * HP 2114-B Nov 1969 * SCC DCT-32 Nov 1969 * UNIVAC 1106 Dec 1969 * Xerox Sigma-3 Dec 1969 * Business Information Technology 483 Dec 1969 * Micro Systems 812 Dec 1969 * CDC 7600 1969 * General Automation SPC-12 1969 * U. of Illinois/ILLIAC IV Ear 1970 * IBM System/3 Jan 1970 * GE 120 Jan 1970 * DEC/PDP-15 Jan 1970 * GRI Computer 909 Jan 1970 * Recor RC-77 Jan 1970 * Honeywell 3200 Feb 1970 * Rolm 1601 Feb 1970 * DEC/PDP-11/20 Apr 1970 * Data General Super Nova Apr 1970 * Viatron 2140 Apr 1970 * Viatron 2150 Apr 1970 * SEL 86 May 1970 * Computer Automation 216 Jul 1970 * RCA Spectra 70/60 Sep 1970 * Mini Comp Multi-Term Sep 1970 * SEL 88 Nov 1970 * GE 53 1970 * Clary-Datacomp 404 1970 * Data Craft 6024-1 1970 * ASI 6120 1970 * RCA Spectra 70/61 Feb 1971 * IBM 360/195 (Was this ever delivered?) Mar 1971 * GE 655 Mar 1971 * DEC PDP-8/E Mar 1971 * Honeywell 6045 ???? * IBM 370/155 Aft 1971 * IBM 370/165 Aft 1971 * IBM 370/145 Aft 1971 * IBM 370/168 Aft 1971 * DEC PDP-8/M Jun 1972 * DEC PDP-11/05 Jun 1972 * DEC PDP-11/45 Jun 1972 * DEC PDP 11/45 (Fl point and mem man) 1972 DECSYSTEM 10 KI10 1972 * DEC PDP-8/M Jun 1972 * DEC PDP-11/05 Jun 1972 * DEC PDP-11/45 Jun 1972 * DEC PDP-11/40 Jan 1973 * Unidata 7720 Jan 1974 * DEC PDP-11/40 Jan 1973 * Unidata 7720 Jan 1974 * Burroughs ILLIAC IV 1974 * Naked Mini LSI 1 1974 * Naked Mini LSI 2 1974 * Honeywell 60 1974 * CDC STAR-100 1974 * Texas Instruments ASC 1974 * Alphamicro 1000 A ???? * HP 9000/730 ???? * Goodyear Aerospace STARAN 1974 * DEC PDP-8/A Jan 1975 * MITS Altair 8800 (first micro kit) Jan 1975 * DEC PDP-11/70 Mar 1975 * MITS Altair 680b ???? * Osbourne 1 ???? * DEC PDP-11/03 Jun 1975 * DEC PDP-11/04 Sep 1975 * IBM 5100 1975 * IBM System 32 1975 * DECSYSTEM 10 KL10 1975 * AN/UYK-44 ???? * Prime 500 bef 1982 * Prime 550 ???? * AN/AYK-14 ???? * DEC PDP-11/34 Mar 1976 * DEC PDP-11/55 Jun 1976 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This list is based two articles by Dr. Kenneth E. Knight in DATAMATION: "Changes in Computer Performance", Sept. 1966 and "Evolving Computer Performance 1963-1967", Jan. 1968. His study evaluated cost vs performance and is not necessarily meant to be a history of the computer. His criteria for inclusion to the list were: 1. General purpose digital computers; 2. One configuration chosen of memory size, IO, arithmetic and control; 3. Important modifications affecting performance added at a later date considered a separate computer. AFCno refers to a serial number which will be assigned when additions to the list have ceased. For now an (*) will denote a machine not on the Knight list. KEKno refers to the serial number assigned to each computer type by Dr. Knight. The dates of introduction are defined as that when the completed computer passed a minimal acceptance test. I have added some which may or may not fit Knight's criteria or were unknown to him. I have attempted to continue the list past 1967. Thanks for additions and corrections to Tony Duell (aduell@isis.cs.du.edu). ================================================================= Bruce P. Watson | bwatson@isis.cs.du.edu or wats@scicom.Alphacdc.com ================================================================== Subject: Dead Media Working Note 00.7 Dead Medium: The Cyrograph From: danrabin@a.crl.com (Dan Rabin) Mr. Sterling, I just attended your talk at Apple, and I thought I'd try to get this to you before you get home. The Dead Medium in question is the CYROGRAPH. It was a form of authentication for duplicate documents used in the Middle Ages. The document was written in duplicate on a piece of vellum (or parchment); the copies were cut apart and retained by two different parties. Sometimes the cut was deliberately irregular in order to make spurious matches unlikely. In addition, lettering would be placed where the cut was to be made so that both the shape of the cut and the lettering would have to match in order to authenticate the copies. References (from Library of Congress online catalog): 92-131963: Brown, Michelle. A guide to western historical scripts : from antiquity to 1600 / London : British Library, 1990. 138 p. : ill. ; 29 cm. LC CALL NUMBER: Z114 .B87 1990 92-160830: Brown, Michelle. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts / Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, 1991. 80 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 24 cm. LC CALL NUMBER: Z8.G72 E53 1991 Enjoy, -- Dan Rabin (danrabin@a.crl.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 00.8 Dead Medium: the Scopitone From: ac038@osfn.rhilinet.gov (Paul Di Filippo) Source: Request Magazine October 1995 p 10; James Sullivan, reporter; Sam Wasserman, Scopitone collector The Scopitone was a precursor of the rock video, a visual jukebox introduced in France in 1963. It was a coin-operated large-screen device intended for the bar and nightclub market, showing brief 16mm color films of such period popstars as Lesley Gore, Dion, the Tijuana Brass and Nancy Sinatra. These devices were essentially extinct by 1968 -- "victims of slot-machine racketeers and censorial prudes," according to Request magazine writer James Sullivan. San Francisco's Roxie Cinema has run three Scopitone festivals in recent years. Sam Wasserman is a Scopitone collector, owning six Scopitone players and "thousands" of their films. He has been transferring his Scopitone reels to VHS cassettes and will send a catalog of his prizes for a self-addressed stamped envelope. His address is P. O. Box F, Daly City CA 94017. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 00.9 Dead medium: dead computer languages From: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Source: Wexelblat, Richard (ed.) "History Of Programming Languages" Academic Press (HBJ), ISBN 0-12-745040-8 Dead computer languages covered in "History of Programming Languages" Fortran I, II and III ALGOL 58 and 60 Lisp 1 and 1.5 COBOL (the dead-ness of this language may be debatable) APT JOVIAL SIMULA I and 67 JOSS PL/1 SNOBOL APL (ditto) Also: check out http://www.indiana.edu/~sharp It's nominally the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (ie books), but also has links to some older (dead) book-related tech, including papyrus, illuminated manuscripts, and medieval blockbooks. Alan Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.0 Dead Medium: The Magic Lantern From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) I have recently come into happy possession of "Peck and Snyder's Price List of Base Ball, Gymnasium, Boating, Firemen, Cricket, Archery, Lawn Tennis and Polo Implements, Guns, Skates, Fishing Tackle. Manly Sporting Goods, Novelties, &c." This catalog was published in 1886. In 1971 it was re- released by the "American Historical Catalog Collection" of the Pyne Press at Princeton (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4). This catalog is a veritable brass mine of dead media, offering startling insights into an entirely vanished nineteenth- century media environment. It offers for commercial sale to the public several media devices I have never heard of, plus over 40 different commercial varieties of "magic lantern." I think it is well to have Mssrs. Peck and Snyder speak for themselves, in the first of what will doubtless turn out to be a long series of Working Notes. My commentary will be included in (((triple parens))). The Peck & Snyder full-page ad is reproduced in its entirety. THE ELECTRO RADIANT No. 2. The Most Popular Magic Lantern Ever Introduced (black and white woodcut illustration -- "this cut represents No. 2 Electro Radiant Magic Lantern. PATENTED.") The body of the ELECTRO RADIANT is a cone-shaped reflector which gathers each divergent ray of light and concentrates them all on the main reflector, whence the whole mass of brilliancy illuminated and projects the picture with startling clearness. No combination of lenses, however ingenious, has ever been known to produce equal effects with the light used. *The ELECTRO RADIANT No. 2 projects on screen a picture 8 feet in diameter.* The No. 2 Lantern is made entirely of metal. Including the smoke-stack, it stands over 16 inches high when ready for use, but when taken apart it goes into a box 11x9x12 -- *small enough to carry in the hand.* (((Imagine disassembling, by hand, a fire-driven slide projector made entirely of (red-hot) metal. Yes, the Electro Radiant Magic Lantern features a smoke-stack -- a domestic, personal smoke-stack for your parlor.))) The removable parts are the base, the reflector, the lens tubes, the smoke-stack and the lamp. The entire base being removeable, *allows the use of any kind of light,* whether oil, gas, calcium or electric. (((Calcium??))) A large door at the side gives ample room for manipulating the light. The Slide Box will take in slides 4 1/2 inches wide with a 3-inch picture. It is very unusual that slides are made with pictures over 3 inches, and when they are they are for special purposes, and Lanterns have to be made to accommodate them. Therefore our No. 2 Lantern will show the *largest* of the regulation size slides as well as the *smallest* and *intermediate* sizes, whether made by ourselves or others here or in Europe. (((I note here that Magic Lantern ware comes in several different size formats and from a variety of manufacturers and distributors, who apparently could not agree on a standard.))) There are 12 slides with 2 3/4 inch pictures packed with each No. 2 Lantern and included in the price. (((The traditional "bundled software" or "first taste is free" marketing approach.))) There are many persons who are able and willing to pay for *luxuries* -- such things as are no better for practical uses, but add to the convenience and perfection of life. The sentiment is commendable, and, for those who can afford it, is not only a proper but a wise indulgence. (((The infant consumer society still required moral lectures at this point.))) For that class (((appeals to snobbery were useful also))) we have constructed our * Electro Radiant Lanterns,* with fittings of various kinds, which, though they make the picture on the screen very little if any better, add very much to the convenience of handling and the the general appearance of an outfit, and increase the cost accordingly. (((Today this is known as "ergonomics" and "industrial design." In 1886 this practice required an apologia.))) For instance, the price of OUR MOST POPULAR LANTERN, No. 2, is $12; but with additional conveniences the price is $15.00, $20.00 and $24.00, respectively. The $15.00 Lantern is fitted with Colt's patent Brass Spun Thread Focussing Tube, with lenses to make an eight to nine foot picture. This focussing tube is the best improvement that has been made in years. It is perfect in working, adjustable by simple turning; there is no loss of light through uneven fitting, it does not catch or hitch, and is as easily and nicely adjustable as the highest price Rack and Pinion Tube made. (((One cannot help but marvel as this sudden revelation of an entire peripherals industry for Magic Lanterns. Could this be the same "Colt" who created the Colt revolver?))) For use with a nine-foot screen we recommend the $15.00 No. 2 LANTERN ABOVE ALL OTHERS. The $20.00 No. 2 Lantern may be used with a twelve or fifteen foot screen, and therefore may be operated in a room that will hold more people. The $24.00 Magic Lantern is precisely the same as the $20.00 one, except that it has the lenses set in a rack and pinion focussing tube, made of heavy cast brass with milled head adjusting connection, which makes a very stylish and handsome appearance. *Price List of No. 2 Electro Radiant Magic Lanterns No. 2. With Piano Convex Lenses.........$12.00 No. 2A. With Piano Convex Lenses in Colt's Pat Spun Thread Focussing Tube...........................$15.00 No. 2B, Double Achromatic Lenses in Colt's Pat Spun thread tube $20.00 No. 2C, Double Achromatic Lenses in heavy brass rack and pinion focussing tube..........$24.00 12 Slides are packed with each No. 2 Lantern. P E C K & S N Y D E R, 126, 128 & 130 Nassau Street, New York. Importers and Dealers in English, French and German Magic Lanterns, at prices from $2.00 to $50.00 each, and also in those of the best American make, prices $5.00 to 75.00 each. (((It must be noted in concluding that the "Electro Radiant," illustrated with a burning gas lamp, has nothing "electro" about it. The Electro is entirely rhetorical, a futuristic fillip for a cutting-edge device which has already killed off the unlucky "Electro Radiant No. 1."))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.1 Dead Medium: The Magic Lantern From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: Peck and Snyder's Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4) Mssrs Peck and Snyder offered at least 47 distinct varieties of magic lantern (as well as the Polyopticon and the Megascope, intriguing variants of magic lantern technology). The large variety of Peck and Snyder's own product rose from clever recombination of the magic lantern's basic elements: the body, the base, the reflector, the condenser, the lens tube, the smoke-stack and the lamp. The materials could be cheap japanned tin, or luxuriant brass; the lenses cheap or precise; the lamps powerful and dangerous, or weak and relatively safe. Some few magic lanterns were imported: "Wrench's Celebrated London Make Magic Lanterns", the "Favorite German Lantern," and the "New Style French Magic Lantern." The following sample excerpts from Peck and Snyder advertising copy will show how these manufactured variants addressed different purposes and different demographic slices of the magic lantern media market. My commentary is in (((triple parens))). (((The Professional's Model))) Electro Radiant Lantern, No. 10. The construction of this lantern is such as to especially commend it to exhibitors. (...) A set of Achromatic Object Glasses, as used in No. 10 Lantern, is made up of four lenses of the finest and most accurately ground *Crown* and *Flint Glasses,* a *concave* lens of *Flint* with a convex lens of *Crown* glass are paired in cells and placed at the proper distance apart in the focusing tube. The effect on the screen is to bring out a very sharp and well-defined image, free from blurred edges, prismatic color, etc., which invariably accompany the use of plano, or concavo- convex lenses. (...) It accommodates slides of all makes now in vogue and is thoroughly well-adapted for dissolving effects. ((("Dissolving effects" or "dissolving views" required the use of dual magic lanterns, projecting two images into the same circle on the screen. With "a simple mechanical arrangement," two different projected images could apparently dissolve into and emerge from one another. This impressive gimmick led Peck and Snyder to sell their magic lanterns, including the No. 10, in matched pairs. As the unknown copywriter rhapsodized, "The most beautiful effects that can possibly be produced... The effect is indescribably impressive.")) (((The Art Model.))) (((The Electro Radiant Sketching Lantern pursued an application for the artists' market. It was essentially identical to the No. 10 model, but came without any bundled lanternware.))) "Artists can save many hours of work and attain great accuracy of expression by using in connection with our Sketching Lantern a photographic negative of the subject to be produced. (...) The picture may be thrown onto the paper or canvas, anywhere from miniature to twice life size. (...) The sketching may be done by a boy or girl, saving the artists' time and talent (...) If the artist is not a photographer, an arrangement can generally be made with some photographer to furnish at a low figure a negative plate." (((The Kid Media Model. Note the free-and-easy attitude toward child employment.))) ELECTRO RADIANT MAGIC LANTERN NO. 3. This Lantern was designed Especially for Youths, not only for its remarkable effects on the screen, but also for its limited effects on the pocket. (...) With a No. 3 Lantern a boy may amuse a party of friends, or he may, by charging a small admission fee, earn considerable for any object he may set his heart on. (...) An ingenious boy will have tickets of admission, programmes, music of some sort and numberless little devices to heighten the theatrical, magical and mysterious effect. (...) All devices he will execute himself, filling leisure hours in writing out his tickets and programmes and making other arrangements to make his exhibition a success. (...) Parents and friends should not ignore the instruction and other beneficial effects, and should by all means make their young people owners of a Lantern. (((The No. 3 cost only eight dollars. The very similar No. 4 model was sold without a smokestack or chimney burner for a mere six dollars, though this must have increased the fire hazard considerably.))) (((The Luxury Model))) THE IMPROVED TRIPLEXICON, 100 CANDLE POWER. Price Complete in a Strong Wooden Box, $35.00 The chimney, which connects with the flame chamber, is made in two parts, one sliding into the other, telescope fashion. This allows of the most exact regulation of the current of air supplied to the flame to effect perfect combustion. (...) The body of the lantern (...) may be handled as comfortably, after being two hours in operation, as at the beginning of the exhibition. The reservoir, which will hold enough oil for two and a half hours' work, is *completely* out of reach of the heat. (...) *Particular* care has been taken in the mounting of the lenses to allow for their expansion by heat, thus avoiding the liability of breakage (...) a brilliance and clearness of outline to be surpassed only be the best limelight stereopticons. (((To the modern skeptical eye these oily assurances of comfort and safety conjure up dire vistas of soot- blackened parlors, badly scorched boy-entrepreneurs, and audiences explosively drenched in sheets of flaming kerosene.))) I believe this to be a complete list of Peck and Snyder's magic lantern models as offered in the 1886 catalog: The Electro Radiant No. 2, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10. The New Improved Duplex Magic Lantern, Nos. 1 and 2. Magic Lantern 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 26, 30, 32, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48. Wrench's Celebrated London Make Magic Lantern. Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. The Favorite German Lantern. New French Style Magic Lanterns Nos 814, 815, 816, 817, 818, 819. The Improved Triplexicon. The Gem Magic Lantern. The wonder of it is that Peck and Snyder must have had a great many competitors. This catalog offers only a glimpse of what must have been an enormous market. Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 01.2 Newborn medium: Clockwork Radio From house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) (((It's not "dead media" but it's too amazing not to think about. -- bruces))) Source: Facts paraphrased from memory of 'All Things Considered' for 31 October 1995 on National Public Radio, USA. Trevor Bailes (pronounced Bail-Es) of England was listening to the radio one morning when he heard a news broadcast on AIDS in Africa. Many people there could not get health information over radio because they could not afford batteries. He went into his workshop and produced a clockwork radio: two minutes of winding produce fourteen minutes of reception. There is now a factory for production (staffed entirely by the handicapped) in Africa, with more planned in other countries. Bailes said his next project was to do the same for computers. Further information most welcome! - Trevor (no relation) Blake 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology Post Office Box 2321 Portland OR 97208-2321 United States house127@teleport.com - http://www.teleport.com/~house127 (((Update added by scarmike@well.com (Seth Carmichael), editor of the Dead Media Collectors' List))) Anyone interested in clock-work radios: I have managed to get the contact info in the UK. The people you need to contact are called BAYGEN, and they're at BAYGEN POWER EUROPE 2ND FLOOR 13 KING HENRY TERRACE SOVEREIGN CLOSE LONDON E1 9HE tel 44 171 702 3247 fax 77 171 702 3248 Musician Brian Eno says: "The radio is really good by the way. I have a preproduction model which has a rather noisy spring, but I think that problem is unique to mine. But do get a radio! You'll love it. I think they are just starting to sell them in America." Stay tuned for lots more collectors information and feel free to share your own! Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.3 Dead Medium: the Magic Lantern From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: THE HISTORY OF MOVIE PHOTOGRAPHY by Brian Coe, Eastview Editions, Westfield NJ, 1981, ISBN 0-89860-067-0 Brian Coe was (is?) the Curator of the Kodak Museum in Harrow, Middlesex. He was also narrator of an 8-part BBC television series, "Pioneers of Photography." Coe's HISTORY OF MOVIE PHOTOGRAPHY boasts many high-quality color illustrations of museum-quality hardware. It has a great deal of highly detailed dead-mediana concerning "the bewildering diversity of optical toys which flooded the laboratories and drawing rooms of the early nineteenth century." Truly a wonderful book. The following, reproduced from Coe's book, is the complete text of a playbill for a travelling American magic lantern show, circa 1880. The playbill is apparently designed for poles, columns or door lintels,.as it is very long and narrow. It has a wide, spreadeagle variety of lavish circus fonts in different sizes. Empresario, Mr. B. A. Bamber. Price of the show, ten cents. (((my remarks in triple parens))) 5th ANNUAL TOUR ================ B. A. BAMBER'S ---GREAT---- DIME SHOW New Attractions and Better Than Ever Before Travels, Art, History. Astronomy, Fun, Electricity. (((a dashing woodcut of the balding, heavily mustached B. A. Bamber))) GRAND STEREOPTICAL DISSOLVING VIEWS SCENES IN MANY LANDS FROM GREENLAND'S ICY MOUNT, TO INDIA'S CORAL STRAND THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD. THE BEAUTIES OF THE WORLD. Read Carefully Every Word of the Following Programme PART I. THE PLANETARIUM Will be exhibited and explained. This is an instrument (lately invented) for showing the Planets of the Solar System in their annual motion around the Sun; it also shows their relative size and distance from the Sun, the cause of Tides, Eclipses, Change of Seasons and Signs of the Zodiac. This part will be a lasting benefit to all who desire to know more about the wandering stars that reflect the Sun's light upon us by night. After this instrument has been exhibited Telescopic Views of the larger Planets will be reflected upon the canvas. PART II. NATURAL SCENERY Comprises Views of the most Prominent Objects of Interest in both the Old and New World. All cannot travel and see these places, but whoever attends this Entertainment will see them reflected on canvas with a glow of beauty never to be forgotten. PART III. THE ILL-FATED SHIP Comprises a series of Paintings, showing the sunshine and shadow of a Sailor's life. SCENE 1. -- Ship at dock in Liverpool Harbor, passengers leaving their native country. SCENE 2. -- Just out of the harbor, sailing on the blue waters of the Irish Sea. SCENE 3. -- A Storm arises, which rapidly increases the furling and reefing of sails. SCENE 4. -- Height of the Storm, rolling on the boundless deep and struck by lightning. SCENE 5. -- Horrible calamity at sea; ship on fire; most on board perish in the flames. SCENE 6. -- The few who make their escape on a raft are now afloat on the wide Ocean. PART IV. The Highland Lover's Courtship for Marriage Showing how it is done, also the result which usually follows; a caution to those about to embark on this kind of a ship. PART V. STATUARY A Magnificent Collection of Statuary from the Centennial Art Gallery will be exhibited, besides other noted works of Sculpture, the beauty of which cannot be described; they must be seen to form any idea of their real beauty and grandeur. Among the many we mention "Flight of Mercury," "Ophelia," "Evening," "Forced Prayer," Council of War," &c, &c. PART VI. MISCELLANEOUS These embrace a large collection of Paintings, Artistic Gems, Dissolving Views and Transformation Scenes, which have been procured at great expense, and for faithfulness in perspective and beauty in design, they stand unrivalled. The whole will be enlivened with NUMEROUS COMIC SCENES Electricity Without Extra Charge A very fine Galvanic Battery is provided for any who may wish to try it. This is an excellent remedy for Rheumatism, Neuralgia and Headache. Be sure to come before the show begins if you want to try it. Positively Everything Advertised on this Bill will be Shown REMEMBER, THE PRICE OF ADMISSION IS ONLY *10* CENTS FOR ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY Doors Open at 7 O'Clock. Begins at 8 O'Clock. (((Travels, Art, History, Astronomy, Fun & Electricity -- Bamber's Dime Show was entertainment shovelware to rival CD-ROM. First a weird gizmo (the so-called planetarium, presumably an orrery). Then astronomical slides, no doubt accompanied by a proto-Saganesque cosmic narrative from Bamber. Then telepresence -- "all cannot travel," but a virtuality is beautiful and cheap. Then a melodramatic disaster -- the repeated mentions of "rolling," "sailing" and "reefing" strongly suggests these so-called "paintings" were partially animated. Magic lantern slides were often quite mechanically complex. (((A bit of mild bawdry and ethnic humor in part four. Then the statuary -- their placement in the show seems odd and anticlimactic, unless the statuary included female nudes, which might make sense as the children have probably left by this time. Then, "miscellaneous" or basically the leftover contents of the professor's trunk from the previous four tours, with a bang-up ending of eye-boggling "dissolving views."))) (((Bamber also boasts an interesting sideline in voltaic placebo snake-oil -- "Electricity Without Extra Charge." People can be impressed by gadgets, entertained by gadgets, forced to laugh or weep by gadgets. The truly daring charlatan can even cure the sick by gadgets. The "magic" of the magic lantern was closer to the healing magic of the witch doctor than we might credit today.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 01.4 Theoretical disquisition: The term "Dead" From house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) Blake's "Vital Signs Checklist for Dead Media": (a work in progress -- comments and amendments welcome) 1. Is the device still manufactured? 2. Does the company still exist? 3. Is technical support or documentation still available? 4. Is anyone anywhere still using or supporting the thing? 5. Does the (social, economic, political, artistic, archival) function that it served still exist? Does it still do what it was supposed to do? 6. Does the society that invented it still exist? 7. Are there other and newer things that serve the same function with more speed, efficiency, or glamor? 8. Was the thing the victim of planned obsolescence? 9. Does it employ some basic technology generally considered no longer up to the task? 10. Does it require storage or power devices that are no longer used or manufactured? 11. Is it inherently dangerous? 12. If it were invented today, would it be declared illegal by occupational, safety & health people? 13. How many of them will I see at a Goodwill, garage sale or junkshop in a year, or ever? Will I ever see one anytime anywhere? 14. How utterly has it disappeared from the history books and popular consciousness? 15. Is it collected? 16. Would I take someone out to dinner so I could borrow one? Would I be hard pressed to actually pay money for one, even as a curiosity? 17. Are there clubs or user's groups for them? 18. Could I make one in my spare time if I wanted? Committing these factors to screen, I note my idea of dead tech relies as much on my personal relation with the thing as what the thing is. Hmmm. Best, - Trevor Blake Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 01.5 Dead Media: Silent Film, Diorama, Panorama From: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Source: VIEWING POSITIONS: WAYS OF SEEING FILM, Linda Williams (ed.), Rutgers University Press 1995 ISBN 0-8135-2133-5, 1995. This collection of essays deals with the philosophy, theory, and sociology of film viewing. Of particular interest to necronauts are a couple of essays on "Historians View Spectators:" In "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator" Tom Gunning takes on the myth that early film audiences ran in fear from a film of a train apparently coming at them. He discusses several of the (now dead) technologies that immediately preceded film and shows how they were used/presented in such a way as to achieve maximum amazement. He shows that while audiences may have been amazed by the new moving images, they were not apt to confuse these images for reality. An important debunking of popular mythology. In "Cinematic Spectatorship before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," Vanessa Schwartz discusses Parisian's methods of self-amusement in the immediate pre-film period. Flanerie (the taking in of sights while strolling/shopping) translated itself into a bizarre entertainment spectacle whereby the Paris Morgue because a medium of reality display. Bodies of crime victims were put on display, ostensibly so the public could identify the people but in fact for entertainment. Her description of the many-days display of the corpse of a child is particularly interesting. She also discusses a couple of other dead techs -- the diorama and the panorama -- and talks about how the newspapers of the day combined 'true crime' stories and serial novels. Alan Wexelblat, http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/ Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.6 Dead Medium: the Magic Lantern From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Magic Lanternware: Slide mechanisms Sources: THE HISTORY OF MOVIE PHOTOGRAPHY by Brian Coe, Eastview Editions, Westfield NJ, 1981, ISBN 0-89860-067-0 Peck and Snyder's Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4) ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CINEMA by C. W. Ceram, Harcourt Brace and World (1955?), LC # 65-19106 To the modern eye a magic lantern most resembles a kerosene-fired slide projector. This preconception overlooks the slides themselves, however. Lantern slides were large, bulky, complex objects of glass, paint, wood and metal. Many had built-in mechanical features. So the lantern's projected images were not necessarily static, but could be graced with limited animation. Some slides could even create complex, constantly moving screen displays. Lantern slides came in several physical formats. Peck and Snyder's proprietary slides were 4 1/2 by 7 inches. The "usual English pattern" was 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 and the "French pattern" was 3 1/4 by 4 inches. (Brian Coe describes the standard European size as 3 1/4 by 3 1/4 inches.) But specialized slides could be over a foot long, containing gears, cranks, cogs, or even belts and pulleys. Slides were attached in front of the condensing lenses, outside the body of the lantern itself. They slid into place horizontally through metal runners at top and bottom. The following describes some of the mechanical variants of the lantern slide. Lever Action Slides. A lever protruded from one corner of the slide, attached to a second, overlapping pane of painted glass. When the lever was depressed or lifted the second glass rotated through a brief arc, resulting in a single animated movement on the lantern's screen. The Peck and Snyder catalog enthuses: "The moving effects produced on the screen are very life-like. (...) The horse is put in motion by the lever, and appears to be cantering. (...) The children go up and down as natural as can be, and the audience can hardly believe that they are not alive. The No. 2 Electro Radiant Magic Lantern reproduces these pictures 8 to 12 feet in diameter. We conside the Lever one of the very best mechanical effects." Peck and Snyder sold lever-action slides for between $1.75 and $2.25. Brian Coe's History of Movie Photography describes double and even triple lever-action slides, but the truly elaborate ones were apparently rare. Peck and Snyder does not offer any doubles or triples. Slip slides. Slip slides had two panes of glass, with a thumb-and-finger notch cut into one corner of the wooden frame. The moving pane of glass was gripped and pulled by hand, a very simple operation. Slip slides often used black patches to obscure and reveal details of the background slide. Coe describes sub-varieties of "slipping slides" that were pulled with tabs. Peck and Snyder: "Part of the picture is painted on one glass and the other on part on another glass. The two are arranged in a frame so that one glass slips over the other, and very comical effects are produced. It is a great mystery to the uninitiated, and they cannot understand how the transformations are made." Peck and Snyder retailed these for a thrifty seventy-five cents each. Mechanical Slides: Rackwork and Pulley Slides. Early rotary slides sometimes used a belt-and-pulley drive, with two brass disks turned in contrary directions by belt drives and a little hand-crank. This technique was rivalled and eventually replaced by the neater and more accurate rack-and-pinion system. A single round disk of glass with a toothed brass rim could be cranked and rotated indefinitely. This caused repeated rotary animation on the screen. Rackwork slides cost $4.25 to $5.00 in Peck and Snyder's catalog. The catalog offers no pulley slides circa 1886. Chromatropes. Says Peck and Snyder: "These are handsomely painted geometrical or other figures on two glasses, which, by an ingenious arrangement of crank pinion and gear wheels, are made to revolve in opposite directions, producing an endless variety of changes, almost equal to a grand display of fire-works." Chromatrope cranks could produce single rackwork rotation against a fixed background, or double counter-rotation of both disks of glass. Peck and Snyder's chromatropes could project various brightly colored psychedelic moire' patterns up to twelve feet across. Professional chromatrope displays in large urban theaters must have been quite mind- boggling. The Eidotrope was a chromotrope variant using counter-rotating disks of perforated metal, showing a swirling pattern of brilliant white dots on the screen. "Tinters" or colored translucent sheets could be added to tint the display. Coe describes Eidotropes, but Peck and Snyder does not offer any Eidotropes for sale circa 1886. C. W. Ceram's ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CINEMA states that Eidotropes were powered by pulleys and "superseded" by Chromatropes. The Cycloidotrope (see Coe p 19) was a truly remarkable variant, a kind of lantern spirograph. A black disk of smoked glass rotated within the slide frame, and a stylus on a pivoted arm traced a pattern in the soot against the moving glass. This appeared on the screen as a brilliant white line tracing a regular geometric design, an increasingly complex animated display. The stylus could be re-set as the cycloidotrope rotated, producing interlocking rosettes and similar mechanical geometries. Peck and Snyder do not sell or mention this impressive but labor-intensive graphic device. Images very similar to those generated by the Eidotrope and Cycloidotrope are now quite popular in computer screen-savers. Dioramic Slides. These very elongated slides were twice as wide as normal slides, 4 1/2 by 12 or 14 inches. Peck and Snyder: "These slides are exceedingly beautiful. The painting is artistic and elaborate, and the wonder is they can be sold so cheaply. A scene is painted on fixed glass, and over this is made to pass a long procession of figures -- soldiers, vessels, trains of cars, caravans, as the case may be -- with the most pleasing and wonderful effects." The colored background image was small and square, but the pane with little figures was over a foot long. The figures slid along in front of the painted background. Peck and Snyder sold dioramic slides for $3 each. Panorama slides. These landscape-style slides were over a foot long and could be gently drawn past the condensing lenses, "panning" across the picture. Like diorama slides, they often had a procession of moving figures as well. They cost $3.35 to $4.50 from Peck and Snyder. Coe states that a London optician named J. Darker succeeded in attaching a kaleidoscope to the lens of a magic lantern in the 1860s. Says Coe: "His projection Kaleidoscope produced a remarkable effect when used to fill a large screen with a colorful, constantly changing pattern." (The Kaleidoscope itself, an optical toy which is very much alive, was invented by Sir David Brewster and patented in 1817.) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.7 Dead Medium: The Comparator; the Rapid Selector From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Dear Bruce, Here's some information on pre-encryption/decryption technologies of the 1930s and 40s. These creatures were the stillbirths of Vannevar Bush's projects at MIT and OP-20-G (Naval encryption division). Most people know Bush as grandaddy of info-science, and prognosticator of hypertext (in the famous article in a 1945 edition of _Atlantic Monthly,_ Bush envisioned a hyper-linked bibliography system called MEMEX, an idealized machine that was never built). Well, when I started looking into developmental background on BOMBE decryption devices for the German ENIGMA encryption system, I stumbled onto a source examining Vannevar Bush's role in creating Rapid Selector/Tabulating machines for the Navy and private industry, all inventions that predate Bush's idea of MEMEX. This particular text is I'm citing is _Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex_ by Colin Burke; Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen N.J., 1994. LOC: HD9696.C772B87 1994 Dr. Burke goes in-depth on several Bush "Rapid Selector" inventions that precede the development of successful analog optic-cryptoanalytic machines of WWII. Principal among them: THE COMPARATOR: 70mm Eastman-Kodak paper-tape based electronic crypto-analytic prototype, funded by the US Navy, built mostly at MIT, first assembled in 1938. The Comparator was plagued by years of mechanical setbacks. Bush wanted a "high-speed" (projected to be 100 times faster than 1920s tabulators) parallel processing analyser that utilized photo-cell light readings to index (and thus decode) up to 50,000 character comparisons per minute. Very low memory capability caused printing/retrieval problems. Bush realized that without microfilm density, the processing speeds were also unachievable. And if microfilm was used, then the reading/recording capabilities would suffer from insufficient resolution. THE RAPID SELECTOR: Begun in 1937. Bush's MIT team first built this analyser in 1940. Funding was dropped by a disgruntled FBI and subsequently picked up by various private foundations including Eastman and NCR (Bush was apparently an undaunted spinner of techno-dreams ala Steve Jobs). The Rapid Selector went through several incarnations, but was conceived as a specialized data- retrieval system for business records or scientific research. The Rapid Selector was a microfilm-based analyser consisting of a 7' tall relay rack, housing the film drives. Like its sister,the Comparator, it used a light- sensing reader system to allow speedy retrieval of microfilmed information. The user compiled a series of punchcard notes that were indexed into microfilm storage by a system operator/librarian. The Rapid Selector would then allow the user to cross-reference other researchers' additions to the user's "specialized area" without sorting through irrelevant texts. Bush saw the Rapid Selector as an eventual replacement for card catalogues. Although Bush conquered his basic speed/retrieval problems, the required coding system to access information ultimately proved prohibitively complex. The specialized typewriter for the code-punch was also unworkable. Burke's text is full of other useful information, follies, and successes that orbit around the development of these pre-digital machines. I'll post more as I digest it. Regards, Bradley. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.8 Dead Media: Magic Lanterns, Photography, Optical Toys and Early Cinematic Devices (((commentary in triple parens by bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) ))) (((This bibliography, drawn from various sources, makes no pretense at completeness. Further submissions and corrections are welcome. This list does demonstrate the great extent of the topic, and it offers many glowing opportunities for research, especially for the growing numbers of Dead Media Lurkers in Europe. If you can hack Latin, German and/or French and you haunt used bookstores, do think of the rest of us and write us some working notes. I must apologize for the lack of accents and umlauts in ASCII.))) Alhazen (Ibn al Haitam): Opticae Thesaurus Alhazen Arabis. Basel, 1572 (((earliest known work on the camera obscura. Alhazen died 1038 AD))) Allister, Ray: Friese-Greene. Close-up of an Inventor. London, 1848 (((British cinema-projection pioneer and crank -- "must be read with caution"))) Bardeche, Maurice and Brasillach, Robert: Histoire du Cinema. English translation New York, 1938 (((original date of French publication unknown))) Blum, Daniel: A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen. New York, 1953 Bode, Walter: Das Kleine Filmlexikon. Ein Taschenbuch uber das gesamte Filmwesen. Frankfurt and Vienna, 1954 Bossert, H and Guttman, H.: Aus der Fruhzeit der Photographie 1840-70, ein Bildbuch nach 200 Originalen. Frankfurt, 1930. Brunel, Georges: La Photographie pour tous. Paris, 1894 Cameron, J. R.: Sound Motion Pictures. Cameron Publishing Company, 1959 Ceram. C. W.: Archaeology of the Cinema. Harcourt, Brace and World, New York (1964?) (((a fine work with an excellent bibliography))) Coe, Brian: The History of Movie Photography. Eastview Editions, Westfield NJ, 1981 (((a highly informative and also very pretty book))) Cornwell-Clyde. A.: 3-D Kinematography. Hutchinson, London, 1954 Croy, Homer: How Motion Pictures are Made. London, 1899 Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mande: Histoire et description des procedes du daguerrotype et du diorama. Paris, 1839 Deslandes, Jacques: Histoire Comparee du Cinema, Vol. 1, Casterman, 1966 Demeny, Georges Emile Joseph: Les Origines du cinematographe. Paris, 1909 Dickson, W. K. L. and Dickson, A: History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph. London, 1895 Dost, Wilhelm: Vorlaufer der Photographie. Beitrag zur allgemeinen Geschichte der Photographie. Berlin, 1931 Dost, Wilhelm and Stenger, Erich: Die Daguerrotype in Berlin 1839-1860. Berlin, 1922 Duca, Lo: Hippolyte Bayard, der erste Lichtbildkunstler. Paris, 1943 (((Bayard was a French treasury official and purportedly "the first photographic artist," though completely overshadowed by Daguerre and Niepce))) Fescourt, Henry (ed.): Le Cinema des origines a nos jours. Paris, 1932 Fielding, Raymond (ed): A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television, University of California Press, 1967 Forch, Carl: Der Kinematograph und das sich bewegende Bild. Geschichte und technische Entwicklung der Kinematographie bis zur Gegenwart. Vienna and Leipzig, 1913 Fouque, Victor: La Verite sur l'invention de la photographie. Nicephore Niepce, sa vie, ses essais, ses travaux. Paris, 1867 Freund, Gisele: Histoire de la photographie en France. Paris, 1935 Fulop-Miller, Rene: Die Phantasie-maschine. Eine Saga der Gewinnsucht. Berlin-Vienna-Leipzig, 1931. Gernsheim, H. and A.: L. J. M. Daguerre. The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype. London, 1956. Griffith, Richard and Mayer, A.: The Movies. The sixty-year story of the world of Hollywood and its effect on America. From pre-Nickelodeon days to the present. New York, 1957. Grimoin-Sanson, Raoul: Le Film de ma vie. Paris 1926. (((Grimoin-Sanson was the inventor of the Ballon-Cineorama, a ten-projector, audience- surrounding virtuality system that premiered at the Paris Exhibition of 1900))) Guyot, Abbe: Nouvelles Recreations physiques et mathematiques. Paris, 1770 (((optical toys?))) Hendricks, Gordon: The Edison Motion Picture Myth. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961. (((Champions W.K.L Dickson against Edison as a "pioneer." Might have interesting dirt on Edison's purported "goon squads," who are said to have threatened the lives of French cinematographe salesmen))) Hepworth, Cecil M.: The ABC of Cinematography. London, 1897 Hepworth, Cecil M.: Came the Dawn. Memories of a Film Pioneer. London, 1951 (((Hepworth was the son of a famous magic-lanternist, worked on Paul's Theatrograph and invented several cinematic lighting and developing devices))) Hooper, William: Rational Recreations. London, 1774 (((Magic lanterns))) Hopwood, H. V.: Living Pictures. Their History, Photo-Production and Practice Working. London, 1899 Jeanne, Rene and Ford, Charles: Histoire encyclopedique de cinema. Paris, 1947 Kircher, Athanasius: Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. Rome, 1646; Amsterdam, 1671, etc (((first known description of the magic lantern. Apparently Father Kircher had a rather vague idea of how the device worked and was repeating what conjurers and tregetours may have known for centuries; see Dead Media Working Note 0.02))) Kubnick, Henri: Les freres Lumiere. Paris, 1936. (((Justly famed early filmmakers and inventors of the Lumiere cinematographe))) Liesegang, F. Paul: Marey, der Begrunder der modernen Kinematographie. Dusseldorf, 1910 (((Etienne-Jules Marey, a physiologist studying animal movement, invented the "fusil chronophotographique" and the "chronophotographe"))) Liesegang, F. Paul: Lichtbild und Kinotechnik. Munchen-Gladbeck, 1913 Liesegang, F. Paul (ed.): Die Projektionskunst und die Darstellung von Lichtbildern. Mit einer Anleitung zum Malen auf Glas und Beschreibung chemischer, magnetischer, optischer und elektrischer Experimente. Leipzig, 1909 Londe, Albert: La Photographie Moderne. Paris, 1895 Low, Rachel and Manvell, Roger: The History of the British Film. in three volumes, 1949-1950 Marey, Etienne Jules: Le Mouvement. Paris, 1894 (((may be a scholarly treatise on physiology rather than a description of his proto-cinema laboratory equipment))) Mayer, J.P.: British Cinemas and their Archives. London, 1948 Melies, Georges: Mes memoires. (date?) (((The memoirs of the father of science fiction film, the "Roi de la Fantasmagorie" and the "Jules Verne du Cinema," are said to be highly inaccurate))) Musschenbroek, Pieter van: Physicae experimentalis. Leyden, 1729 (((Musschenbroek, a Dutch mathematician, theorized that overlapping glass plates, subjected to a beam of light, could show animated movements; he may have built such a device))) Newhall, Beaumont: The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day. New York, 1949 Noverre, Maurice: Emile Reynaud, sa vie et ses travaux. Brest, 1926 (((Reynaud invented the Praxinoscope, an optical toy, and also the Theatre Optique and the Cabinet Fantastique, machines that manipulated strips of film with animated drawings))) Pathe, Charles: Souvenirs et conseils d'un parvenue. Paris, 1926 (((the self-proclaimed upstart was the world's first true cinema tycoon))) Peck and Snyder: Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4) (((a period catalog offering many optical and electrical toys and devices))) Porta, Giovanni Battista Della: Magia naturalis, sive de miraculis rerun naturalium. Naples, 1558 (((describes the "deviltries" of the camera obscura))) Potonniee, Georges: Histoire de la decouverte de la photographie. Paris, 1925 Potonniee, Georges: Les Origines du cinematographie. Paris, 1928 Quigley, Jr., Martin: Magic Shadows, the Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures. Washington DC, 1948 Ramsaye, Terry: A Million and One Nights. New York, 1926. (((said to be "the most original work on international cinema history" and "a real classic"))) Robert (Robertson), Etienne Gaspard: Memoires recreatifs, scientifiques et anecdotiques du Physicien-Aeronaute. Paris, 1831. (((Robert aka "Robertson" was a phantasmagoria entrepreneur and magic lanternist; his daring lantern show made him the victim of political censorship))) Rotha, Paul and Manvell, Roger: Movie-Parade 1888-1949, a Pictorial Survey of World Cinema. London and New York, 1950 Sadoul, Georges: Histoire de l'art du cinema des origines a nos jours. Paris 1949 (((A four-volume work said to be very thorough and complete))) Sears and Roebuck: Consumers Guide Catalogue No. 110, 1900, reprinted 1970 by DBI Books, Northfield, IL. (((features magic lanterns, optigraphs and stereopticons, as well as graphophones and toy telegraphs))) Talbot, Frederick A.: Moving Pictures: How they are made and worked. London, 1912 Taylor, Deems: A Pictorial History of the Movies. New York, 1943. (((is this author also the narrator of Walt Disney's Fantasia?))) Thomas, David B.: The Origins of the Motion Picture. HMSO, London, 1964 Thorndyke, Lynn: History of Magic and Experimental Sciences. New York, 1923 (((magic lanterns?))) Vivie, Jean: Traite general de technique du cinema. 1. Historique et developpement de la technique cinematographique. Paris, 1946 Zahn, Johannes: Occulis Artificialis 1685 (((Zahn invented the table- mounted magic lantern; he used it as an automatic wind-direction indicator by hooking it to a weathervane in the roof))) Zglinicki, Friedrich von: Der Weg des Films. Berlin, 1956 (((said to feature "proverbial German thoroughness" and to "cover the subject with prodigious industry." Would that we could all do likewise *8-) ))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 01.9 Dead medium: The Experiential Typewriter From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) EXPERIENTIAL TYPEWRITER: Built by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) in the winter of 1962-1963, Cambridge, Mass. An instrument for recording and charting the psychedelic experience. As cited in _Flashbacks_ by Timothy Leary, 1983, 1990; Putnam Publishing Group, New York. LC# BF109.l43A3 1990 p. 156 "The purpose of the ET was to deal with the 'words cannot express' aspects of accelerated-brain experience. The subject could indicate any of various levels of consciousness that they were unable to describe at the moment by pressing the appropriate buttons on the typewriter. The signal was recorded on a revolving drum, much the way temperatures are graphed in meteorological stations. After the session, when consciousness was operating at slower speeds, the subject would have leisure to examine the recorded data and describe the sequence of events fully and precisely." I'd like a more detailed account of this curiosity, as Dr. Leary does not elaborate in _Flashbacks_. But it's definitely dead. Regards, Bradley Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.0 Dead medium: The Magic Lantern From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: Peck and Snyder's Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4) Who were the "content providers" for the magic lantern industry? It would seem that most slides were very generic; job-lot, unsigned work by anonymous artisans. The Peck and Snyder catalog offers a wide variety of material on slides, but gives no hint about the lives or identities of their creators. Plain slides, simple images on single frames of painted glass, came in a number of distinct genres: Comedy, natural history, nursery tales, landscape views, and Scripture. These would all seem to be children's topics. More mechanically elaborate slides offered broad, hand- painted landscape panoramas, moving "views," and "conundrums," or written riddles whose image could be flipped over on the screen to reveal the answer. Peck and Snyder's Lever Slides illustrate the scope of partial animation in the magic lantern medium. Note that they offer more than 200 lever slides; the early versions are now apparently obsolete, removed from circulation like comic books in a later century. These slide descriptions give considerable insight into the taste and humor of the period. I quote from the catalog (((my comments are in triple parens))): Lever slides $1.75 each, 4 1/2 x 7 inches 200. SEE SAW 201. BOY BEATING DONKEY. Cruel blows descend on poor donkey's head. 203. GABRIEL GRUBB AND THE HOB GOBLIN. See sawing on tombstone, keeping poor Grubb in a terrible fright. 204. DONKEY RUNNING AWAY. With buxom country lass. 206. JUDY AND THE BABY. Judy appears at the window with the baby, which she tosses up and down, much to baby's delight. 207. SAM WELLER BLACKING BOOTS. Sam brushes away, but no thought of the approaching searchers for "Jingle" and the lady. (((Weller was created by Charles Dickens, though we see no acknowledgement of this fact. One comes to understand why Charles Dickens became such a stickler for intellectual property rights))) 208. FREE LUNCH. Man at an American lunch counter, raises the dainty morsel on his fork. 209. MENDICANT AT COTTAGE DOOR. A half frozen beggar lifts his hat in appeal to the sturdy woman at a cottage door. 210. AMERICAN GENTLEMAN. A portly, well-to-do gentleman gracefully raises his hat. A good slide with which to open an exhibition. 212. DENTIST AND PATIENT. To draw a refractory tooth, dentist and patient brace themselves for a heavy pull, but to the dentist's horror, the patient's HEAD as well as his tooth comes out. 214. BEGGAR AND CHILD. A street beggar bows, asking alms from a child. 218. THE HYPOCRITE. An old woman, who with her eyes turned upward looks pious, but when she casts them down and her jaw drops, looks a veritable old hag. 223. SAMBO WITH BANJO. Moves hand and arm very naturally. 224. SAMBO WITH CYMBALS. Playing vigorously. 227. PORKER, THE COOK. A Pig in Cook's costume, stands before the kitchen range and tastes the savory dishes before him. (((It's of considerable interest to see that Peck and Snyder offer the chance for individual entrepreneurs to develop their own slides, as the following illustrates.))) SLIDES TO ORDER. The above illustrations will perhaps show the range of possibilities, and while we would have to make special estimates in some cases, we can give the following prices as a groundwork, viz: 3 1/4 X 4 1/4 Photographs, 2 1/2 to 3 inch Picture, uncolored ... $1.50 each " " " colored, $2.50 each Mechanical effects, 2 1/2 to 3 inch Picture, $3.00 to $15.00 Lettered Advertisers " " " black letters, 75 cents (((Peck and Snyder's Chromatropes -- slides with rotating rackwork -- are also worthy of a look:))) CHROMATROPES FINE GEOMETRICAL PATTERNS, with brilliant chromatic effects ... each, $1.50 CHANGEABLE HEADS (3 inch single glasses) $1.50 GOOD-NIGHT CHROMATROPE -- the words "Good Night" in a handsome design, which revolve in a display of brilliant colors, very effective in closing an exhibition .......... Each, $2.50 LANDSCAPE CHROMATROPE. A landscape finely painted is show, with mill and revolving water-wheel, or like effect .... Each, $3.00 TOO MANY COOKS. A large pot is standing over a fire and a number (which seems endless) of cooks are cast into the pot and are apparently boiled into soup, or they may be ejected from the pot, as if they were boiling over ... Each $3.00 RAT EATING EXTRAORDINARY. Rat after rat crawls up the bed clothes, and running along the bed disappears into the open mouth of a heavy sleeper... Each, $3.00 (((Brian Coe, author of HISTORY OF MOVIE PHOTOGRAPHY, describes a British rat-swallowing chromatrope: "The highly popular 'Man eating rats' slide. The sleeper's jaw can be moved up by operating a lever; the rats, in an endless procession, run into his mouth when the handle is turned. The subject could cose ten shillings in the 1880s, perhaps half a week's wages."))) Dead Media Working Notes 02.1-04.0 02.1 Canada's Telidon Network 02.2 Dead Cryptanalytic Devices of World War II 02.3 The Stenograph 02.4 Canada's Telidon Network; Australia's Viatel and Discovery 40 02.5 The Copy Press, the Hektograph, Edison's Electric Pen, Zuccato's Trypograph, Gestetner's Cyclostyle, Dick-Edison Mimeograph, the Gammeter aka Multigraph, the Varityper, the IBM Selectric 02.6 Military Telegraphy, Balloon Semaphore 02.7 Mirror Telegraphy: The Heliograph, the Helioscope, the Heliostat, the Heliotrope 02.8 Schott's Organum Mathematicum 02.9 The Voder, The Vocoder, the Cyclops Camera, the Memex 03.0 C. X. Thomas de Colmar's Arithmometer 03.1 Toy telegraphy; toy telephony 03.2 Phonographic Dolls 03.3 The IBM Letterwriter 03.4 the Zuse Ziffernrechner; the V1, Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 program-controlled electromechanical digital computers; the death of Konrad Zuse 03.5 Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon 03.6 Karakuri; the Japanese puppet theater of Chikamatsu 03.7 Dead memory systems 03.8 the Kinetophone; the "Kinetophone Project" 03.9 Clockwork wall animation -- "living pictures" 04.0 Skytale, the Spartan code-stick Dead Media Necronauts: Nick Montfort Bradley O'Neill Andrew Pam Darryl Rehr Jack Ruttan Geoffrey Shea Andrew Siegel Bruce Sterling Bill Wallace Dead Media Working Note 02.1 Dead Medium: Canada's Telidon Network From: jackr@intrepid.axess.com (Jack Ruttan) Here is information I found out about Telidon, which is an obsolete, two-way version of the British Prestel system. It is from a book called GUTENBERG TWO, Godfrey & Parkhill eds. (Toronto: Press Porcepic Ltd. 1980) >From the glossary, pp. 220-221: "TELETEXT: An inexpensive, one-way information delivery system designed for mass-market home and business use. It makes use of the spare signal carrying capacity in existing television channels (((my note: the "vertical blanking interval, that space you see when you misadjust the tv's vertical hold.))). It can present from 100 to 300 'pages' or TV. screens of information." "VIDEOTEXT: an information delivery system that makes use of the telephone for two-way telecommunications. It may be linked into two-way cable T.V. or hybrid TV/telephone systems. Electronic mail is made possible by this system." "VIEWDATA: An early name for videotex, and still used as the generic name for the British Prestel system." British Teletext started in 1975. The book used the term "Electronic Highway." A small town called Elie, Manitoba, was to be the first in the world totally wired with fiber optic cable. Unfortunately, the book is not current enough to say if this actually took place. It also doesn't say when Telidon was abandoned, though I'm sure I saw it operating at Expo 86 in Vancouver. (very very slow screen refresh times, and graphics like some of those early Apple II computer games). Jack Ruttan, Montreal Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.2 Dead medium: Dead Cryptanalytic Devices of World War II From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Bruce, Here are various cryptanalytic machines developed before and during WWII. An '*' notes those items for which I will submit more detailed working notes. I am listing all of them here beforehand, for purposes of scope, and to encourage any interested souls. I'm also compiling a bibliography on dead military media. Anybody who wants to participate can e-mail me. The following list is gleaned from a superb source, _Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex_, by Colin Burke, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen N.J. 1994. LC# HD9696.C772B87 1994. WWII Cryptanalytic Devices (from a table of terms and abbreviations on pp. xxi-xxvi) *BOMBE - Electro-mechanical machines built by Britain and the US to attack ENIGMA. COLOSSUS - Britain's special purpose electronic computer to attack the German FISH system. *COMPARATOR - Bush's tape based-electronic cryptanalytic machines. COPPERHEAD - OP-20-G [Naval cryptology division] WWII advanced versions of tape-based electronic cryptanalytic machines. *ENIGMA - German encrypting device. FISH - German teletype-like automatic encryption systems and devices. FREAK (((no joke!))) - U.S. electromechanical cryptanalytic machine, WWII. *FRUIT - Special electro-mechanical adding machine built for OP- 20-G by NCR during WWII. *GOLDBERG - OP-20-G advanced version of Bush's Comparator. HYPO - Analog optical crypanalytic machine built by Eastman-Kodak, during WWII. ICKY - OP-20-G special microfilm machine. IC MACHINE - Film plate machines, MIT-Eastman made for OP-20-G, WWII. *LETTERWRITER - Special data entry machines IBM built for OP-20-G, WWII. *LOCATORS - OP-20-G and SIS [US Army Cryptanalytic Agency] machines built for identifying locations of code items, but not for counting or tallying. Built during WWII. MADAME X - SIS relay-based machine to attack German ENIGMA. MATHEW, MIKE - U.S. electro-mechanical cryptanalytic machines, WWII. *PURPLE - SIS/OP-20-G analog machine built for attack on Japanese diplomatic ciphers. PYTHON - OP-20-G electrical analog of Japanese enciphering machine, during WWII. *RAPID ARITHMETICAL MACHINE - An unbuilt Vannevar Bush computer of the 1930s. *RAPID SELECTOR - Bush's ill-fated bibliographic micro-film device. RATTLER - U.S. Navy electronic machine to attack Japanese automatic encryption systems. ROBINSON - Britain's tape-based electronic machines, similar to the COMPARATOR. ROCKEFELLER ANALYSER - Vannevar Bush/MIT updated version of Differential Analyser, financed by Rockefeller Foundation, completed in late 1930s. WAVELENGTH ANALYSER - MIT optical-electric analog scientific measuring device, 1930s. *WHIRLWIND - Postwar electronic digital computer built at MIT by group outside of Bush's circle. There you are. A veritable fleet of dead (military) media waiting to be explored. These machines are, in many ways, 'missing links' in the popular conception of computer evolution. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.3 Dead medium: the Stenograph From Darryl_Rehr@lamg.com (Darryl Rehr) Source: Early Typewriter Collectors' Association Bruce, I submit the following for the Dead Media Database: THE STENOGRAPH The first shorthand typewriter on the American market was a device patented in 1879 called the "Stenograph." It was invented by Miles M. Bartholomew, of Trumbull County, Ohio. Bartholomew was fascinated by mechanical things as well as the art of Stenography. His combination of interested led him to design his shorthand machine after he saw the first Typewriter (Sholes & Glidden, manufactured by Remington) in 1874. Bartholomew applied for his first patent in 1878. The Stenograph has 5 keys, 4 of which are grouped in pairs, one key button for each side of the machine. Thus, each finger of each hand controls a single key with key buttons both right and left of center. A single key in the center is controlled by both thumbs. The keys produce dashes on a narrow paper tape in a code representing letters of the alphabet. One to five dashes in any combination could be produced using the chord method. In practice, the user is intended to form one letter at a time, pressing as many keys as necessary, but always using alternate hands. This skill is key to whatever speed might have been achieved with the machine. As one hand finishes one letter, the next hand pounces on the keys to print the next letter. The user would be expected to reduce each word to its phonetic minimum and eliminate most vowels. This would reduce the number of strokes needed to an average of two to three for each word. Learning to read the code of dashes was the other essential skill in becoming an accomplished user of this odd machine. Later stenographic typerwriters printed actual letters instead of dashes, and using the chord principle, the user could print a whole word (or at least a whole syllable) for each stroke. This idea evolved into modern- day machines. Despite its limitations, the Stenograph appears to have had a quiet success. It was never promoted with massive advertising, but as we have seen, it was on the market for at least ten years. Several models were produced during that time, varying in the shape of their bases and various other details. Today, "Stenograph" is the brand name applied to a modern stenotype machine produced by Stenographic Machines of Skokie, IL. The brand name has no connection to Bartholomew's Stenograph. Stenograph Patents: (U.S.) 215,554 - May 20, 1879 255,910 - April 4, 1882 Further information: Early Typewriter Collector's Assoc. 2591 Military Ave. LA, CA 90064 (darryl_rehr@lamg.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.4 Dead media: Canada's Telidon network; Australia's "Viatel" and "Discovery 40" From: geoffrey@astral.magic.ca (Geoffrey Shea) TELIDON Dear Bruce, For three years during the early 80's I was involved with an artists' collective exploring the potential of Telidon, the Canadian version of videotex (Minitel is France's version). Graphical, on-line, "interactive," just a decade ahead of its time, the whole thing didn't go very far. Several artists did create tentative works and some of these were included in an exhibition I curated with Paul Petro at A Space, and another one I prepared with Tom Sherman for some Venice Biennale, but which never got shown due to the ever-present "technical difficulties." The whole medium was far too technology-dependent. Viewers had to use a dedicated decoder box and the hardware manufacturers were the only ones who really benefitted from these government-sponsored trials. The artworks still exist on 8" floppies somewhere in a filing cabinet, but as far as I know there is not an existing operating decoder which can display them. (A friend of mine, Norman White, has an extensive computer museum of sorts with a couple of possibly salvagable ones). Sure, some of the art is on slides, etc., but the actual works in their crude "interactivity" cannot be seen. Dead as a doornail, that medium is. I'd be pleased to try and dig up more about the artists' involvement with this short-lived medium if you are interested. Probably by consulting with Bill Perry, one of the main driving forces in the attempt to subvert this government/industry initiative. Good luck with the project. Geoffrey Shea VIATEL and DISCOVERY 40 From: avatar@aus.xanadu.com (Andrew Pam) The Australian Prestel system, licensed from Britain, was originally named "Viatel" but was renamed to "Discovery 40" (alluding to the 40 column text, as opposed to their newer 80-column ASCII service) last year. Telecom Australia (now "Telstra") finally put the poor thing out of its misery a couple of months ago. I can refer you to some people who might be able to help you. I used to work for a company called ProNet who were a Viatel service provider, and I created a Unix toolkit for developing Viatel applications. (It ran on a 386 under SCO and manipulated the Prestel database on the mainframe at the Telecom exchange over a 9600bps X.25 leased line). I believe this was in 1993. ProNet also had a permanent 9600bps connection to AARNET, then the Australian Internet. It was one of the last 9600bps connections left, as AARNET was no longer offering permanent connections at such a low speed. Using this toolkit, I wrote software to telesoftware encode binary files from the unix filesystem. I also wrote an Internet email gateway and a service to post Usenet newsgroups on the Viatel pages. This included proper 40-column word wrapping, paragraph breaks at Viatel pages where possible, alternating paragraphs between yellow and white, and converting quoted portions of other messages from the indented "> " format to green text. My employer was Lachlan Arnott and the job was brought to my attention by Craig Sanders who had worked for Telecom. I'm sure they could help you with more info. Share and enjoy, *** AVATAR *** Andrew Pam Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.5 Dead media: The Copy Press, the Hektograph, Edison's Electric Pen, Zuccato's Trypograph, Gestetner's Cyclostyle, Dick-Edison Mimeograph, the Gammeter aka Multigraph, the Varityper, the IBM Selectric From: Darryl_Rehr@lamg.com (Darryl Rehr) Source: The Office Magazine, Early Typewriter Collectors' Association Bruce, Here is another submission for Dead Media Database. This is an article by me and originally published in THE OFFICE magazine. ====== EARLY DESKTOP PUBLISHING Desktop Publishing is a phenomenon of the late 20th century. Modern products have made it possible for any office staff to produce material that looks professionally printed. However, office managers have had other kinds of small-scale publishing methods available to them for more than a century. The words used to describe them were more modest, of course. At first, they talked about office "copying," and later they called it "duplicating." Only today, with computers, coupled with high-definition laser output has the technology grown up enough to earn the term "Desktop Publishing." Desktop Publishing's first century began in 1856, when British chemist William Perkins discovered the first synthetic dye, aniline purple. This dye pointed the way to a wide range of new inks, including "copying ink" used in the first practical method of reproducing business documents. An original written with copying ink was placed against a moistened sheet of tissue, the two were pressed together in a massive iron press, and a copy would appear on the tissue. Since the copy was backwards, the tissue had to be held up to the light to be read. The copy press became a fixture in every Victorian office. Today, they are sold in antique shops as "book presses," their true function long forgotten. Aniline dyes also made another copying process possible. It was invented during the 1870's, and although it was sold under many brand names, generically it was known as the "hektograph." The device used a stiff gelatin pad coupled with special hektographic ink made with aniline dye. A document written with the ink was pressed to the pad. The gelatin absorbed the ink after a few minutes, and the original was removed. Blank sheets were then pressed against the pad, and the gelatin released a little of the ink each time, producing a positive copy. The hektograph was good for about 50 copies. 20th-century spirit duplicators (such as "Ditto") were a later outgrowth of the hektograph and much easier to use. About the same time as the invention of the hektograph, the first stencil duplicators began to appear. These used various devices to perforate waxed tissue paper, creating stencils through which ink could be passed. The first of these was Thomas Edison's Electric Pen of 1876. This gadget used current to vibrate the point of a stylus, creating tiny holes in the stencil to form the image. A simpler solution came from Eugenio Zuccato who invented the Trypograph in London in 1877. Zuccato put his stencil on the surface of an iron file. When he wrote with a plain stylus, the rough file surface punctured the stencil from below. Edison obtained a U.S. patent for a similar process in 1880, although he did nothing with it for several years. In 1881, David Gestetner, working in England, invented another simple stencil perforator. Known as the Cyclostyle, it was a pen with a miniature toothed wheel on the end. By writing on the stencil, the wheel rolled along and punched tiny perforations in the sheet. The last major player to enter the stencil game was A.B. Dick of Chicago. Dick was a lumber merchant who needed a way to duplicate the often-needed inventory lists in his business. Experimenting on his own in 1884, he came up with a file-plate stencil process similar to Zuccato's and Edison's, but more practical. Dick saw real market potential in the product and applied for a patent only to find that Edison had beaten him to it. Dick contacted Edison, and proposed the idea of selling the device to the public. Dick's most brilliant idea in the venture, however, was not the invention itself, but his plan to use Edison's name on the label! Edison's name had true star quality in the 1880's. Dick coupled it with an intriguing brand-name taken from the Greek, and in 1887 the Edison "Mimeograph" duplicator was born. For several years, the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle duplicators coexisted, each performing the same function using their slightly different methods. With each, finished stencils were placed in a wooden frame so that ink could be pressed through them with a roller. It was messy but effective. At this earliest stage, however, neither device effectively exploited the Typewriter, another new invention which seemed perfectly suited to be teamed with duplicators. The Typewriter had been around for about ten years when the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle appeared. Duplicator stencils, however, were backed with thin tissue which was often torn to pieces under the pounding of typewriters. A.B. Dick pounced on the solution to the problem when he bought rights to an 1888 patent for a new stencil backed by a sturdy porous tissue. The typewriter would penetrate the wax, but not the tissue. Suddenly, the potential for producing thousands of copies from a typewritten original was created. In 1891, Gestetner helped the technology along another step, by creating an "automatic" printing device, which worked much faster than the old manual wooden frame. A rivalry between Dick and Gestetner might have developed, but instead, their relationship was cordial. In 1893, they agreed to share patents, each using the typewriter stencil and the automatic printer in his own products, and each prospering in the process. The turn of the century brought the development of rotary stencil machines, which meant that copies could finally be "cranked out" in the literal sense. A.B. Dick's version of this device was a single drum model with ink inside the drum and forced directly through the stencil. Gestetner marketed a double-drum design, inking the stencil with rollers, which picked up the ink from a tube. Other manufacturers introduced their own models, but for years the two principal names in the industry were Mimeograph from Dick and Cyclostyle from Gestetner. As stencil duplicators developed for long runs, carbon paper began to replace the copy press for short runs. Carbon paper was invented in 1806, but was not practical for making copies written with the light pressure of pen and ink. Typewriters changed the situation. Copying with carbons was called "manifolding," and some typewriters were sold claiming the ability to make up to 25 carbon copies at once! An alternative duplicating method for very long runs became available after the turn of the century in a device called the Gammeter or Multigraph. This was actually a small rotary printing press, with grooves in its cylinder allowing type to be easily set on the surface. Setting the type took more work than producing a stencil, of course, so the Multigraph's use was limited. The 20th century brought other new potentials to "office duplicating" advancing it considerably toward "desktop publishing." Among the new devices was the Vari- Typer, an evolved form of the old Hammond Typewriter, which had been on the market since 1884. The Hammond was distinctive in that it typed with a single type element, a simple curved strip which could be quickly changed for a variety of typestyles. In the 1920's Hammond added variable pitch to its machines, making typestyles in widely different sizes practical for the same machine. Later, the Hammond was renamed Vari- Typer, and the Ralph Coxhead Corporation took it over. The Vari-Typer was electrified and equipped with differential spacing and line justification. Lines were justified by typing them twice. The first typing determined the number of letters on the line, which was set on a dial. This altered the word spacing to align the right margin for the second typing. No longer was this machine called a typewriter. It was known as a cold typesetter, and Vari-Typers using the basic Hammond design were in production until the 1970's. The Vari-Typer could be used to type Mimeograph stencils, although this was a bit cumbersome. Much easier was its use with photo-lithography, which appeared in the 1930's. As today, an original was created on plain paper, and a litho plate was produced from it by photography. Back then it was not as easy as it is today, but the concept was the same. Special materials were also available allowing the original to be typed directly on a thin, flexible printing plate. Thousands of copies could be printed on a small offset printing press from a Vari-Typer original. Such devices were used to produce the surrender documents signed by Japan aboard the Battleship Missouri at the end of World War Two. The combination of typewriters, Vari-typers, Mimeographs, Multigraphs, offset litho machines and spirit duplicators carried our developing desktop publishing technology through to the end of its first century in 1956. Electrostatic copying, which first appeared in 1938, was just beginning to make a big impact as the 1960's approached. "Xerox" was starting to become a household word, but high-volume plain paper copiers would take a while to become the inexpensive fixtures they are today. In 1956, computers had not reached desktop publishing capability, and the instant print shop was still years away. The Vari-Typer, however, would soon find a competitor in IBM's Selectric Typewriter, introduced in 1960, and later available in typesetting versions with all the features offered by Vari-Typers. The first century of desktop publishing offered tremendous progress for people who wanted to turn out printed material on a small scale. However, the second century so far has been nothing less than amazing. Who, after all, would have ever dreamed that an entire publication could be written, edited, typeset and composed before even the first drop of ink was applied to the first piece of paper? Early Typewriter Collector's Assoc. 2591 Military Ave. LA, CA 90064 (darryl_rehr@lamg.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.6 Dead Media: Military Telegraphy, Balloon Semaphore From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: French Inventions of the Eighteenth Century by Shelby T. McCloy, Kernel Press, 1952. # T26.F8.M2 1952 page 22 BALLOON SIGNAL CORPS: "Balloons were used for observation in the sieges of Conde (1793), Maubeuge (1794), and Charleroi (1784); in the battle of Fleurs (1794) and Gosselins (1794); and later in the campaign along the Rhine (1795).... In each instance two balloonist officers went aloft in a balloon held captive with two ropes by sixteen men. "Messages to the ground crew were communicated by the use of red, yellow, and green flags some eighteen inches square; messages to the general were dropped in bags weighed down with ballast and marked by a pennant or streamer. No one might handle these last save one of the Ballooning Corps officers. The balloon made a great impression on the Austrians, who on one occassion attempted with near success to shoot it down, but oddly enough did not attempt to imitate it." [Author's footnote to page 22 : At Valenciennes (1793) a French balloon was captured by the Allies, and with it a pigeon carrying dispatches. The enemy indulged their humor by eating the pigeon and by firing the balloon back into the town from a cannon.] Source: The Military Telegraph during the Civil War in the United States: with an exposition.... by William Rattle Plum, 1882; Dewey 973.7 P73M. or microfiche (MIC) LAC 22395 (((This book is a real trip! Plum's headspace seems pretty visionary for his time. The first paragraph has all the gushy sweep of an Alvin Toffler book-on-tape or a speech by Labor Secretary Reich:))) "Ours is an age of rapid achievements. Cultivated aptitude has revolutionized the world. Performance has been reduced to a minimum of time and space to a question of time. Long lives are compassed in an ordinary span: distances are no longer appall: we are making the most of time and least of space...the opinion of the world has become a powerful international factor." Then Plum takes us through an expository evolution of speed in warfare via several advancements: running, fires, trumpets, reflections, posts, semaphore, balloon, cipher, and telegraph. (((Of particular historical interest to those of us in DMP:))) pages16-17 HOT-AIR BALLOON RECON: "In 1794, two companies of French military aeronauts were first deployed in balloons at Fleurs, Maubeage, Charleroi, Mannheim, Ehrenhreitstein, Solferino, and elsewhere... "They were not used as couriers, but to observe an enemy below, and sometimes flag signals were used to telegraph from [balloon locations]. This was done in the United States Army on the Potomac and during the Peninsular campaign, in the [US Civil War]. On all such reconnaissances, the balloon was held by ropes. "On several occasions, electrical telegraphic connection was had with the aeronaut in the sky. This was first accomplished June 17, 1861, when the War Department in Washington, was placed in instant communication with Professor Lowe, who, from his 'high estate', caused the operator at his side to telegraph as follows: BALLOON [codename] 'ENTERPRISE' WASHINGTON, JUNE 17, 1861. TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Sir: This point of observation commands an area of fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I take great pleasure in sending you the first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in acknowledging my indebtedness to your encouragement, for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of country. Yours Respectfully, T.S.C. Lowe" (((Note that the Yankee tradition of naming war/exploration machines "Enterprise" even extended to a balloon.))) Cheers, Brad Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.7 Dead Media: Mirror Telegraphy: The Heliograph, the Helioscope, the Heliostat, the Heliotrope From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: Plum, William Rattle, 1845-1927. TITLE The military telegraph during the Civil War in the United States with an exposition of ancient and modern means of communication, and of the federal and Confederate cipher systems; also a running account of the war between the states. Microform. PUBLISHER Chicago : Jansen, McClurg & Co.,1882. PHYSDESC 2 v. : ill., port., maps, facsim. SERIES 1) Microbook library of American civilization; LAC 22395. All (((comments))) by Bradley O'Neill. pages 29-30 HELIO-TELEGRAPHY: "As of late (((read: late-mid 1800s in Europe/US))) the rays of the sun are doing courier service where the electric telegraph could not be built or operated, and such has been the success of sun telegraphing, that it constitutes a new and rapidly developing wonder. This mode of signaling is variously designated as mirror telegraphing, heliographic, helioscopic, heliostatic and heliotropic, all of which seem to be essentially identical in the main principles. But the instruments by which the rays are concentrated and reflected differ somewhat, and hence some are better calculated than others to work at great distances. The heliostat was invented by Gravesande, about a century and a half ago.(((circa 1718?))) ...In 1861, officers of the United States Coast Survey, at work in the Lake Superior regions, demonstrated the usefulness of the mirror, equatorially mounted, for telegraphic purposes, and succeeded in conveying their signals with ease and rapidity a distance of ninety miles. During the same year, Moses G. Farmer, an American electrician, a man of infinite invention succeeded in thus telegraphing along the Massachusetts coast from Hull to Nantasket. The next year some English officers introduced the system into the British navy, with modifications and improvement, using at night an electric or calcium light. The signals communicated are made by alternately exposing and cutting off continuous rays of light reflected from one station to another. page 30 MANCE HELIOGRAPH, "an instrument used by the English, telegraphing is done by pressing a finger key, whereby, flashes of light, of long or short duration, are emitted. These flashes and intervals or spaces are easily made to indicate what in the Morse alphabet are shown by dots, spaces, and dashes...In this way the Morse alphabet may be telegraphed as easily as by an electrized wire. Indeed, ungodly parties have before now, at church, telegraphed across the room without awakening suspicion, by a mere movement of the eyelids. It is reported that during the seige of Paris (1870-1), messages were telegraphed therefrom twenty and thirty miles, by the reflection of calcium lights....The Mance Heliograph is easily operated by one man, and as it weighs but about seven pounds, the operator can readily carry it and the tripod on which it rests...During the Jowaki Afridi expedition sent out by the British-Indian government (1877-8), the heliograph was first fairly tested in war. page 30 THE HELIOSTAT, "is said to be the first instrument for mirror telegraphy used in war (((which war is not explicitly indicated, but likely the US Civil War))). The mirror receives and reflects the sun's rays, and a clockwork attachment keeps the mirror position to receive the direct sunbeams,which in Nevada, U.S., are said to be so bright as to be hurtful to the eye at a distance of forty miles. Behind the mirror, in the very center, some of the quicksilver is removed, leaving a very small, round, clear space in the glass, through which the operator looks and may watch the reflection from the next station. page 30 THE HELIOTROPE reflects the rays by mirrors but has no clockwork. Enjoy, Bradley. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.8 Dead Medium: Schott's Organum Mathematicum From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: A History Of Computing Technology by Michael R. Williams; Prentice-Hall, 1985. LC#QA71.W66 1985 (((This machine was essentially an encyclopedia for the various mathematical tasks any 17th century 'learned gentlemen' might face. The bone tablets mentioned herein can be thought of as 'applications' in the contemporary sense. Each tablet was a long strip swathed with specific calculation rules and tables for specific areas of learning. All of the tablets can be catalogued, retrieved, and cross-referenced from within a large slanted dais.... To my knowledge, this device was one of the first western efforts to collect disparate and specific mathematical applications together in one body.))) pp. 94-96 ORGANUM MATHEMATICUM: Built by Gaspard Schott, Rome(?), 1666. Based on John Napier's multiplying rulers (aka Napier's Bones) of the previous century, the Organum Mathematicum was "a large box in which are stored ten different sets of bone-like tablets for performing a variety of different tasks." There were tablets used for: ARITHMETIC: a standard set of Napier's bones together with addition and subtraction tables. GEOMETRY: tablets whose primary purpose was to solve problems encountered in survey work. FORTIFICATION: tablets which would aid the gentleman soldier in constructing military fortifications. CALENDAR: tablets used in determining the date of Easter and the dates of the other major Christian festivals. GNOMICS: tablets to calculate parameters to construct sun dials on all surfaces independent of their direction or inclination. SPHERICS: tablets which would help in calculating the movement of the sun, determine the times of sunrise and sunset for any given day or year, and other similar problems. PLANETARY MOVEMENTS: tablets to perform calculations to determine the motion of the planets and to cast horoscopes. EARTHWORKS: two sets of tablets dealing with the calculations involved in cut and fill problems for the construction of canals and civil engineering. MUSIC: tablets which would aid the novice in composing music and creating melodies. (((The Organum Mathematicum looks quite cumbersome, taking up the space of a large desk. Of course, portability in computation was not yet a big issue, so the size probably quite impressed users of the day.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 02.9 Dead Media: The Voder, The Vocoder, the Cyclops Camera, the Memex From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: From Memex To Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the mind's machine. James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn (eds.); Academic Press Inc, 1991. #QA76.4F76 1991 page 94, from the essay "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush, 1945. THE VODER: "At (((the 1939)))World's Fair a machine called a Voder was shown (((created by AT&T))). A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal cords entered into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electronically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loud-speaker." page 44 by editors Nyce and Kahn "The American Telephone and Telegraph exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair featured "Pedro the Voder" (Voice Operated Demonstrator), an electronic human voice synthesizer which produced...English-language speech using 50 phonemes" page 94, Bush, ibid. THE VOCODER: "In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of [the Voder] called a Vocoder. The loud-speaker is replaced by a micro-phone which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move." (((Think your PC has limited voice capabilities? Consider the situation in the 1930s and 40s. Bush suggests how to improve the interface:))) page 95 "Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing (((a human language))) which is better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman. "One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments...." (((Mobile photography would have come from Bush's never-produced 'Cyclops Camera' headband, sporting a microfilm cartridge.)))..."If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination." (((That is,a "projection" on the Memex bibliographic/hypertext machine, a Vannevar Bush thought-experiment that was also never built.))) Bradley Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.0 Dead Medium: C. X. Thomas de Colmar's Arithmometer From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: A History Of Computing Technology by Michael R. Williams; Prentice-Hall, 1985. LC#QA71.W66 1985 (((I don't believe this qualifies as an outright *medium*, but the Arithmometer was a commercial mainstay of 19th century calculation. Arithmometers were in fact produced up to World War I. This indicates the ever-increasing public demand for calculating machines during the early industrial era.))) page 150-151 THOMAS ARITHMOMETER: The first commercially produced calculating machine, produced by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar in France. Based on Leibniz's calculating machine, the device utilized stepped drum gears for calculation. However, the major innovation was to reverse the operating function in the result registers (up to sixteen digits), allowing for reliable and stable calculation over extended periods of time without gear re-alignment. The machine took up an entire desk and required two people to carry it. It spurred on many rivals, eventually leading to quite sophisticated calculating machines that overcame the pitfalls of the stepped-drum design. Thomas received France's Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for the product. Brad Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.1 Dead Media: Toy telegraphy; toy telephony Source: Peck and Snyder's Catalog (aka "Price List of Out & Indoor Sports and Pastimes") 1886, reprinted 1971 by Pyne Press (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4) Peck and Snyder offered toy versions of the major electrical media of 1886 -- toys clearly aimed at the children's market, but also available in workable adult versions for the hobbyist or experimenter. A later epoch might have called these devices "personal telegraphy" and "personal telephony." It is well to let the Peck and Snyder copywriters speak for themselves. My comments in (((triple parens))). THE BLISS TELEPHONE. CHEAP ENOUGH FOR A TOY AND GOOD ENOUGH FOR PRACTICAL USE. This simple little instrument is sure to meet a general want in supplying the place of Speaking Tubes and Electric Bells at less than one quarter of the cost. While it may safely be warranted to work a mile, its principal recommendation lies in the readiness with which it may be put to practical use in connecting separate rooms in the same or adjoining buildings, such as Manufactories, Shops, Stores, Dwellings, Offices, &c., &c. It has been thoroughly tested and its satisfactory working, together with the low price at which it is offered, must insure its general use. Complete directions for setting up, also 100 feet of composition wire accompany each Telephone. Additional wire will be furnished by us at the rate of twenty five cents per hundred feet. Price complete, $1.00. (((To judge by the illustration, this "Telephone" was simplicity itself. At each end of the wire, a single diaphragm unit, apparently about the size and shape of a hockey puck, served as both speaker and microphone. There was no off switch, no way to hang up, no switchboard and no central office. The Bliss Telephone was simply a permanently open telephone line between two devices at two different locales, the electric equivalent of a speaking tube. There is no indication of the power source for this device.))) THE POCKET TELEGRAPH. No battery, acid, or wire needed for operating this little wonder. With this little instrument any person can learn the art of Telegraphing, and messages may be sent and received after a few hours' practice. The instrument, blued steel, with Morse's Alphabet and full instructions, will be mailed. Blued steel, 25 cents. Nickel plated, 50 cents. (((This cheap and utterly simple pocket device simply makes metallic clicking noises that mimic the sound of a telegraph key. The nickeled version, however, might have been quite the status item for the technically inclined boy genius of the period. One imagines two friends mystifying adults in class and church with cricketlike clicks of Morse code from a hidden hand in the pocket.))) INSTRUCTIVE AND AMUSING. MINIATURE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. This Telegraph consists of a sending and a receiving instrument, a spool of wire for connecting them together, and the elements of a galvanic battery for working them, the whole contained in a box with directions. The term is that known as the single needle instrument, and is used with the ordinary Morse Alphabet, which is composed of dots and dashes. A movement of the needle, on the dial, to the right indicates a dot, and a movement to the left a dash. It is very simple, and easily arranged, and any child can understand and operate it. Price each. $1.50, $2.50, $5.00 (((Oddly, the accompanying illustration shows a needle dial on an upright board, with a double circular rim displaying all the letters of the alphabet, the numerals zero through nine, and their Morse equivalents. The ad copy, however, states that the needle moves only to the right and left, rather than indicating specific letters on the dial. This "term" looks wonderfully impressive, but apparently it was mere window-dressing. It appears to be French, as it bears the word DE'POSE on the face of the dial. Perhaps these fancy terminals were left over from some failed earlier version of telegraphy.))) THE ECLIPSE TELEGRAPH. PRICE $4.00 OUR NEW TELEGRAPH OUTFIT. The only low priced instrument that is made entirely of BRASS, all others are merely cast-iron painted or japanned black. This outfit consists of a full-size Morse Key and Sounder, a cell of Gravity battery, a package of Blue Vitriol, a coil of insulated office wire, and instructions for learners, the whole forming a complete FIRST-CLASS outfit for learners, home practice, or for short-line service. The key is of the latest approved style, with long curved lever, and switch circuit closer. The Sounder has rubber headed magnets, and perfect adjustments. Both Key and Sounder are made entirely of brass, finished and lacquered, and are mounted on a polished mahogany base. The whole outfit, complete with battery and 50 feet of insulated wire, is carefully packed in a light wood box for shipping .... By express, $4.00 The Telegraph complete, except battery ... By mail, 3.75 Prices of extra parts and fixtures of the Eclipse Telegraph Lightning Arrester .... each, 0.75 (((A later century would definitely have devoted more attention to the surge protector and the prospect of electrocution.))) Battery... 0.50 Insulated wire, per 100 feet, 50 cents; extra zinc .... 0.25 Persons when buying the outfit, without Battery, can use any ordinary tumbler. (((If, that is, the person buying the outfit doesn't mind having an open tumbler of Blue Vitriol battery acid in his home. Let's hope the children are snug in their beds this Christmas.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.2 Dead Medium: Phonographic Dolls Source: AUTOMATA AND MECHANICAL TOYS, an illustrated history by Mary Hillier. Bloomsbury Books, London 1976, 1988. ISBN 1 870630 27 0. (((Many forms of media began as toys, magic, or parlor amusements. Some incubate in the toy market and then move to wider mass influence. Some stay toys indefinitely. Some toys die. The talking head, talking doll, talking automaton or artificial talking intelligence is an ancient ideal which seems to have a powerful attraction for the inventive mind.))) (((Mary Hillier's Foreword well describes this highly entertaining, lavishly illustrated book, which abounds in curiosa for the enthusiast of dead mechanical tech.))) "This book seeks to trace the history of automata and travels through the curious realms where they were exhibited and among some of the amazing characters involved in their invention. The special emphasis in from the eighteenth century onwards when the awakening of technological interest produced both the frivolous and luxury toys to amuse people and the clever robot machines which eventually were to transform industry." pages 93-94 "Inventions have often been produced by researchers who little dreamt of the far-reaching consequences. Those who first experimented with electricity had no inkling of how the new-found force would one day illumine and power the world and adapt itself for use in the manufacture of toys. Thomas Edison, assembling his first crude phonograph in 1877 was actually experimenting with a machine that could reproduce the message given by a voice on the telephone." ((( I find Hillier's assertion that the phonograph was born as a telephone recording/answering machine to be particularly intriguing. Was the phonograph originally a network peripheral?))) "Only afterward, when others recognised the significance of significance of recording the human voice and realised the terrific potential of such an instrument for entertainment did he develop it further along these very lines. It was the realization of the 'talking head' man had dreamt of through the ages. Others researching along similar lines exploited the talking machine. The motorised phonograph with wax cylinders was presented to the public and for the first time actual facsimiles of the human voice were obtained and the 'industry of human happiness,' as it had been called, had begun. (((Can anyone identify the source of this astonishing quote?))) The search for a talking doll was over: no automaton could compete with true reproduction - however imperfect in the earliest attempts. "Edison first took up a patent for a phonograph doll in 1878. (((Note how quickly Edison sought a killer app in the children's market.))) His first idea was to build up a doll around a phonograph, but it was obviously more practical to use factory made doll parts and place a miniature phonograph within. It does not seem that such a veritable talking doll was mass-produced by his company until 1889. "When wound up, this precocious creature recited nursery rhymes by virtue of a little needle tracing grooves on a wax covered disk. The unknown girls who recorded the words in his factory acheived a curious immortality. The doll was made up with a steel torso which contained the works but had a head of German bisque and jointed wooden limbs. The Edison factory is said to have turned out 500 such dolls a day but other manufacturers soon entered into competition producing similar novelties. "In France the famous Jumeau doll-making firm produced *Be'be' Phonographe* in 1893; her mechanism was covered by a small plate in her chest and she was wound from the rear. The doll herself had all the charm of the Jumeau type with bisque head, beautiful eyes, jointed arms and legs and the additional sophistication of speaking in French, English or Spanish (according to changed cylinders). She measured 25 inches as against Edison's 22 inch baby. "At the Paris Exhibition 1900, a special room was devoted to the Phonograph doll with girls actually recording at benches. 'Each one sits before a large apparatus, singing, reading, crying, reciting, talking with all the appearance of a lunatic! She dictates to a cylinder of wax the lesson that the little doll must obediently repeat to the day of her death with guaranteed fidelity.' "Edison's phonographic doll set the fashion for dolls with a bigger repertoire in their performance (and cheaper imitations). The progress of talking machines outran the patents and there was, one suspects, a good deal of poaching of ideas on both sides of the Atlantic with all the variations produced both before and after the 1914- 1918 war. The Jenny Lind Doll Company of Chicago produced a doll in 1916 which could sing, talk and recite. "Some of the dolls must have been unwieldy indeed. The 'Primadonna' produced by the Giebeler Folk Corporation of New York was not only made of aluminium but when the real hair wig on the crown of her hinged head was lifted up it contained a turntable for playing 3 1/2 inch records! The doll was made in sizes 25 or 30 inches and the mechanism in the body was wound from the back. "In 1923 the Averill Manufacturing Company also designed a phonograph doll, called Dolly Rekord, in their famous Madame Hendren line. "Talking dolls, one suspects, became far less of a novelty when the radio and gramophone proper became more generally in use, just as cinematograph toys were displaced by television. Each phase of development introduced its new toys. and some interesting and ingenious working models were allied to the gramophone and its revolving turntable. Some were actually distributed by the company involved in producing the machines (figures 84-86)." [FIGURE 84. Page from *Scientific American,* 1890, showing Edison's Talking Doll and manufacturing processes.] [FIGURE 85. Rare phonograph doll, Siam Soo, 1909; she shimmies and twists her head when mounted on a record shaft, as the record revolves. "SIAM SOO She puts the O- O in Grafonola. Strikingly new and novel. Works on any phonograph with a Columbia Record. Patented."] [FIGURE 86. Uncle Sam appears to chase the Mexican bandit, Pancho Villa, as the record revolves.] Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.3 Dead Medium: IBM Letterwriter From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex, by Colin Burke, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen N.J. 1994. LC# HD9696.C772B87 1994. pages 248-249 IBM LETTERWRITER: 1941-1942. Analytical/data processing machines cobbled together as a stopgap immediately following Pearl Harbor, built for the US Naval cryptanalytic branch, OP-20-G. "[Letterwriters] linked teletype, tape, card, and film media together. From unpretentious beginnings as data input equipment, the IBM Letterwriters blossomed into a number of increasingly complex machines that were used for a wide range of analytical tasks. The Letterwriter system tied special electric typewriters to automatic tape and card punches and eventually to film processing machines. Such automation of data processing was badly needed at OP- 20-G. Without automation, [OP-20-G] would have been unable to receive and process its wartime load of a million words a day." pages 249-250 "The system centered about a special electric typewriter, a tape punch, and a tape reader. The typewriter was a modified version of IBM's expensive Electromatic machine. The tape punch and tape reader were bread-box sized metal frames filled with relays and sensing pins. The relays controlled reading and punching and were used to convert the teletype code to the signals needed by OP-20-G's other machines. Linked together, the punch, the reader, and typewriter covered the top of a large desk. It was hoped they would eventually allow the creation of machine-ready data directly from OP-20-G's new international telegraph system." "Simple changes made the Letterwriter equipment useful for another very important but time consuming task, the analysis of (((encryption device))) wheel settings. When an analyst thought he had found the correct combinations on an enemy system he would set a copy of the encryption machine's wheels, lugs, and plugboards and type in parts of the encrypted message. He then examined the output to see if it was sensible." "Despite their usefulness and reliability, there was a drawback to the Letterwriters. They were not rapid machines. Because of the limits set by the mechanical nature of typewriters and the punches, the system ran at eight characters per second or only 480 characters per minute." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.4 Dead Medium: the Zuse Ziffernrechner; the V1, Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 program-controlled electromechanical digital computers; the death of Konrad Zuse (((Konrad Zuse, legendary computer pioneer, died December 18, 1995. The following obituaries and personal reminiscences cast several interesting sidelights on the birth of digital computation and the mishaps of Zuse's museum-piece computers.))) From the Guardian newspaper in Britain: FIRST ON THE DIGITAL TRACK by Jack Schofield KONRAD ZUSE, who invented the digital computer while no one else was looking, has died in Berlin at the age of 85. He was born in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and built his first mechanical calculating machine in his parents' living room between 1936 and 1938. In Britain and the US. similar but later developments were supported for their military significance, but Zuse's work was largely ignored. When he and his colleagues later proposed the construction of a 2,000-tube computer for special use in anti-aircraft defence, they were asked how long it would take. Zuse says they replied: "Around two years." The response to this was: "And just how long do you think it'll take us to win the war?" Zuse started to develop his ideas about computing in 1934, a year before he graduated from the Technische Hochschule with a degree in civil engineering. He then went to work for the Henschel aircraft company as a design engineer or statiker. This involved solving tedious linear equations, which stimulated Zuse to apply his ideas and try to build a system to solve them automatically. His first machine, the V1 (with hindsight renamed the Z1) was made of pins and steel plates, but it represented two dramatic advances. First, it was a general purpose machine, whereas most calculating machines were dedicated to specific tasks. Second, it used binary (on/off or stop/start) numbers instead of decimal ones, as Babbage's far earlier machines had done. This made Zuse's machine far easier to construct, although it was to remain somewhat unreliable. Although both decisions seem obvious now, they were far from obvious at the time. Zuse's choice of a general purpose approach was based on his separation of the different elements: an arithmetic unit to do the calculations, a memory for storing numbers, a control system to supervise operations, plus input and output stages. This is still the basis of modern computers. Babbage had taken the same line 100 years earlier with his analytical engine, but it proved too difficult to build. Zuse succeeded partly because he chose the binary numbering system instead of using decimals. Binary means counting in twos, which is far more long-winded than counting in tens. However, to count in twos you only need an on/off switch, which is very much easier to construct than the 10-position decimal equivalent. Each operation mav not do much work. but the speed of the simpler switching operation makes up for it. Of course, mechanical switches are still somewhat primitive, and Zuse started to replace bulky mechanical ones in Z1 with second-hand electro-magnetic relays - the switches used in telephone systems. At the time, Zuse's college friend Helmut Schreyer "suddenly had the bright idea of using vacuum tubes. At first I thought it was one of his student pranks." Vacuum tubes, or valves, would work the same way but work at least a thousand times faster. Zuse was soon convinced it was the right approach, and this led to the design of the Z3, which was probably the first operational, general-purpose, programmable computer. Zuse sold the idea to the Aerodynamics Research Institute, and set up a 15-man company to construct it. The machine was completed by December 1941, though it was later destroyed by Allied bombing. As Zuse recalled, the "construction of the Z3 was interrupted in 1939 when I was called up for military service. However, in my spare time, and with the help of friends, I was able to complete the machine." Only one of Zuse's computers survived the war: the Z4. This was started in 1942, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to find parts, and in 1943, the Berlin blitz began. The machine was moved around the city to avoid air raids, and then moved to Gottingen, before finally being shifted to Hinterstein, a small village in. Bavaria. After the end of the war, the Z4 was moved to Zurich in Switzerland, and in 1950, this Ziffernrechner, or number calculator, was installed at the Federal Polytechnical Institute. Zuse's developments attracted the attention of IBM which seemed mainly interested in his patents - and Remington Rand, amongst others, but discussions came to nothing. In 1949, he founded his own computer company, Zuse KG, which developed a line of Z computers, and eventually employed about 1,000 people. However, short of capital, he gradually sold out to Siemens, the giant industrial conglomerate, and devoted himself to research. In later life, Zuse received many honours, and in 1984 a research institute, the Konrad Zuse Centre for Information Technology (ZIB) was named after him. A copy of his first programme-controlled electro-mechanical digital computer, the Z3, was made in 1960 and put on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. A copy of the Z1 was constructed in 1989, and can be found in the Museum for Transport and Technology in Berlin. Konrad Zuse, scientist and inventor, born June 2, 1910 died December 18, 1995. ((("J. A. N. Lee" (janlee@VTOPUS.CS.VT.EDU) offers a second Zuse obituary.))) Subject: Konrad Zuse The last of our great pioneers of the 1930's died Monday, December 18. Konrad Zuse, developer of the Z-1 through Z-4 machines was clearly one of those who foresaw the development of the computer and did something about it well before those whom we will acknowledge next year in Philadelphia. Zuse's image suffered from his location both in geography and time, since we now know that his work included in an elementary way many of the features of modern machines. I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Zuse on several occasions, the last at the IFIP World Computer Congress in Hamburg in August 1994 where he drew standing room only audiences in a conference that was not that well attended elsewhere. I have only seen one obituary so far, and I am disappointed that it did not also mention his artistic capabilities also. His paintings were magnificent, and his recent portraits of German computer pioneers (prepared for the IFIP Congress) showed yet another side of this multi-talented pioneer. I was hoping that we could attract him to attend the ENIAC celebrations in February next, but sadly that opportunity is gone. I for one will miss him. He was always the one with the joke and for greeting one with humor. I was in a meeting with him the day the Berlin Wall came down. I asked him what he felt about this, to which he replied "Now we can get on with our work!" (((From: Paul Ceruzzi (NASEM001@SIVM.SI.EDU) ))) Subject: Konrad Zuse I learned this morning of the death of Konrad Zuse, at age 85. As many of you know, Zuse conceived of the notion of a general purpose digital computer, using binary arithmetic, while a student in Berlin in the 1930s. With the help of his parents and a few friends he set out to build one in his parents' apartment. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was released from service in the German army to work at the Henschel Aircraft Company, where he was a stress analyst. He continued working on his computing ideas, and in December 1941 he completed a machine that computed in binary, using floating point, with a 64-word memory, and which was programmed by paper tape. This machine is regarded as the first general purpose, functional digital computer in the world. It was destroyed during the war. Later on Zuse gave it the name "Z3," by which it is now known. In 1962 Zuse, now the head of a commercial computer company, built a reconstruction based on drawings that did survive. This computer, which I saw in operation at the Deutsches Museum a few years ago, is now itself one of the oldest operable computers in the world! Zuse actively promoted his role as a computer pioneer, and he always stressed the historical claims of the Z3. I think that he felt less proud of the fact that he also founded a company, since it did not survive (it was eventually absorbed by Siemens). My guess is that as time goes on he may be more remembered for being one of the first "start-ups" as for his Z3. Zuse was the last of the "first tier" of computer pioneers: Aiken, Stibitz, Eckert, Mauchly, Atanasoff, Turing. Incredible to think that so many of them were alive while all the madness of computering in the past couple of years has been going on. I knew him personally and will miss him very much. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.5 Dead Medium: Loutherbourg's Eidophusikon (((The eighteenth-century Eidophusikon has been variously described as a mechanical theater, a miniature stage, a diorama, a panorama, or a physiorama. Featuring lighting, mechanical motion, sound effects, architectural simulation, dramatic special effects and something akin to a storyline, the Eidophusikon would probably be described today as "multimedia" or "virtuality."))) Source: AUTOMATA AND MECHANICAL TOYS, an illustrated history by Mary Hillier. Bloomsbury Books, London 1976, 1988. ISBN 1 870630 27 0. page 33 "Even more intriguing was the mechanical theatre of Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812) which he called the Eidophusikon. Loutherbourg was born at Strasbourg, son of a miniature painter to the court of Darmstadt. Trained as a painter himself, success came quickly to him. The spirit of the age was one of inspired inventiveness and when he arrived in London in 1771 he was introduced to David Garrick the actor manager at Drury Lane who 'loved all art and artists' and designed scenery for him. "He was one of the first to build actual miniature stage maquettes and in love with the world of theatre he set up the Eidophusikon in 1782 at his home for public performance. This soon had the whole London art world flocking to see it. There was a miniature stage which moved its scenery by means of pulleys and produced the illusion of changing sky effects, clouds, storms, sunrise by a moving backcloth of tinted linen lit from behind by lamps. Loutherbourg called it his 'movable canvas' and accompanied with telling sound effects as tiny mechanical actors appeared automatically and reenacted some such drama as Milton's Satan arraying his troops on the Fiery Lake. His work had a lasting effect on the London stage and the art of mise en scene, for he emphasized the need of lighting and picturesque scenery." Source: Ceram, C. W.: Archaeology of the Cinema. Harcourt, Brace and World, New York (1964?) PROSPECTUS OF AN EXHIBITION TO BE CALLED THE Eidophusikon. W. DALBERG, A German Artist, in reviving this Exhibition, (originally produced by the celebrated De Loutherbourg,) begs leave to present to the Nobility and Gentry, a description of his intended Exhibition. The Interior will be a Model of a beautiful Classic Theatre; the dimensions of the stage, 10 feet by 12; devoted entirely for Picturesque Scenery, Panoramas, Dioramas, and Physioramas. The following is a Programme of the Scenery: SCENE 1. A view from the summit of One Tree Hill, in Greenwich Park, looking up the Thames to the Metropolis; on one side, conspicuous upon its picturesque eminence, will stand Flamstead House; and below, on the right, that grand mass of building, GREENWICH HOSPITAL, with its imposing Cupola, cut out of pasteboard, and painted with architectural exactness. The large group of Trees forming another division, beyond which the towns of Greenwich and Deptford, with the shore on each side stretching to the Metropolis. In the distance will be seen the hills of Hampstead, Highgate, and Harrow; and the intermediate space will be occupied as the pool, or port of London, crowded with Shipping, each mass of which will be cut out of pasteboard, and receding in size by the perspective of their distance. On the rising of the Curtain, the scene will be enveloped in that mysterious light which is the precursor of daybreak; the mist will clear away, the picture brighten by degrees, until it assumes the appearance of a beauteous summer's day, gilding the tops of the trees and the projections of the lofty buildings; the clouds will pass to a clear and beautiful moon-light night. To make the view as true to Nature as art will allow, the Shipping and Steam Boats will sail up and down the river. SCENE 2. Diorama of the "Ladyes Chapel," Southwark, with the effects of Light and Shade. SCENE 3. The effect of a Storm at Sea, in which will be described all the characteristic horrors of wind, hail, thunder, lightning, and the roaring of the waves, with the loss of an East Indiaman. SCENE 4. A moving Panorama of English Scenery, from Windsor to Eton, the Exhibition of which was so universally admired at the Drury Lane Theatre. SCENE 5. A Calm, with an Italian Sea Port, in which will be represented the rising of the Moon, the Mountains, and the Water will be finally contrasted by a lofty Light House of picturesque ((((quoted prospectus ends here))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.6 Dead medium: Karakuri; the Japanese puppet theater of Chikamatsu Source: AUTOMATA AND MECHANICAL TOYS, an illustrated history by Mary Hillier. Bloomsbury Books, London 1976, 1988. ISBN 1 870630 27 0. page 36 "In the book *Karakuri Zui* published in 1797 (kindly translated for me by Suzume Matsudaira) an historical account is given of the founding of a famous mechanical theatre and the family who carried it on for over 100 years. Early in the 17th century, a man called Yasui Doton created a favorite pleasure spot in Osaka by joining two branches of the Yohori River with a canal. (...) On 25th May 1662, a little theatre for the performance of karakuri was opened here by Takeda Omi. The performances may be judged to have been a clever combination of working devices, conjuring and showmanship. (...) During the next 100 years there were at least five generations who adopted the name of Takeda Omi or Takeda Izumo (...) "The founder, Takeda Omi I, was born in Awa and seems originally to have made his name as a clockmaker. (...) Originally he made 'sand clocks' (((sand pouring from a hopper to drive a series of gears and wheels.))) A famous clock he presented to the Emperor of Japan worked by lead weights suspended from a key-wound cylinder. This was his piece de resistance; he took eight years to construct it (...) The 'Eternal Clock' not only struck the time of day but showed the seasons, the months and the days (...) It brought Takeda great fame and more especially permission from the Emperor to open a theatre for the mechanical toys which (...) Takeda had exhibited publicly to earn a living. "After establishing the little theatre by the waterside and running it for some twelve years, Takeda left the operation of it to his young brother Kiyotaka (Takeda Omi II). The repertoire (...) is pictured in a lively manner in a little three-volume book published in 1730, *Karakuri Kimmo Kagamigusa* ('Instruction in Kamakuri') with woodcut illustrations by the well-known Ukiyo-e artist Kawaeda Toyonobu. (...) The show was obviously intended mainly for adults although a few children are also watching the curious mixture of wizardry, trickery and mechanical expertise. (...) "Among 28 separate items pictured in *Karakuri Kimmo Kagamigusa* some seem to have been worked by actual clockwork (always with wooden cogs and gear wheels) others by purely physical power, driven by running sand or water movement or even on a system of levers and pulleys. (...) "One of the acts is a fortune-telling doll pointing in turn to portraits of different gods. From the snatch of conversation it is clear that this also involved a sort of lottery. (...) One of the cleverest inventions was a little tumbling man: 'An acrobatic doll that turned head over heels down three steps.' This (...) seems to have inspired later European toymakers who were producing a miniature version based on the same idea by the end of the eighteenth century. "The fame of the theatre and these makers of automata spread, and through the first half of the eighteenth century there is reference to them in various books. *Kagami Choja Kagami* 1714 described a very rich man's house and how it contained an artificial tiger made by Takeda Omi I. It blew wind from its mouth into the guest room when the weather was hot like a sort of automatic fan. "The Karakuri performances enjoyed such a vogue that competitors also opened up other theatres. A young man called Yasagoro was spoken of as an unrivalled master of the art in 1705 and especially good at 'Water Magic:' the close proximity of the river meant that wheels and machinery could be worked by water power. "With the second generation of Takeda Omi the mechanical devices were put to a more serious purpose. The great Japanese playwright Chikamatsu, who devised dramas in the classical tradition of the Kabuki stage, was no more than a child of eight when the Takeda theatre opened in 1662. (...) By 1705 when he was already famous, we find Chikamatsu settling down as the playwright of another prosperous Osaka theatre, Takemoto, run by yet another member of the Takeda family (Takeda Izumo, himself a playwright). Instructions which accompany some of his plays include such comments as 'Grand karakuri in which Princess Jamateru changes into a mermaid,' or 'Princess Ikoma's spirit runs after Izuta along the pine tree branch. Grand karakuri will be shown in this scene.' (((Takeda Omi III had his greatest triumph in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1741.))) "This was the greatest performance in his lifetime and created such a furore that the crowd rushed his theatre and the doors were closed at opening time for three consecutive days. (...) Apart from their skill in performance, the dolls must have been most beautifully constructed and attractive in appearance since they appealed to so many contemporary artists. But perhaps the public taste became more sophisticated (...) It is possible also that the standard of performance had deteriorated (...) We are told that by 1758 the theatre performed 27 programmes a day, starting at 8 in the morning and ending at 4 in the afternoon. (...) By 1772 the last of the theatres had closed down and a tradition which had flourished for over 100 years died. "(...) In modern times enthusiasts have skillfully reconstructed some of the toys after Takeda's originals, and using the same materials, Professor Tatsukawa built a model of the tea-serving doll which worked so successfully it was given a programme on television." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.7 Dead medium: Dead memory systems From: boneill@allinux1.alliance.net (Bradley O'Neill) Source: A History of Computing Technology by Michael R. Williams; Prentice-Hall, 1985. LOC#QA71.W66 1985 pages 304-305 1. THERMAL MEMORIES "The idea of thermal memory was tried by A.D. Booth, who, through the lack of other suitable material being available in Britain after the Second World War, was forced to experiment with almost every physical property of matter in order to construct a working memory. The device was never put into production because of the inherent unreliability of the system. "Booth's thermal memory consisted of a small drum whose chalk surface was capable of being heated by a series of small wires. These wires would locally heat a small portion of the surface of the drum and, as the drum rotated, these heated spots would pass in front of a series of heat detectors. When a hot spot was detected, it was immediately recycled back to the writing mechanism which would copy it onto a clean (cool) part of the drum. The back of the drum was cooled (erased) by a small fan so that, by the time the drum had rotated to a bring the same area under the heating wires again, a fresh surface was available to receive the recycled information." 2. MECHANICAL MEMORIES Built by A.D. Booth in post-WWII, mechanical memory "(...)consisted of a series of rotating disks, each of which contained a tiny pin which was allowed to slide back and forth through the hole, and as the disk rotated, a solenoid was used to push the pins so that they protruded from one side of the disk or the other. A small brush made electrical contact with those pins which were sticking out of one edge of the disk. It was this brush which enabled it to read the binary number stored by the pin positions. "By putting a number of such disks together on one shaft, it was possible to produce either a serial storage unit (where one number is stored on each disk and the readout is done bit by bit as the disk rotates) or a parallel storage unit (where one number is stored on the corresponding positions of a series of disks and the readout of all the bits of a number takes place at the same instant)." (((Booth constructed a 'disk-pin memory device', which looks like a small typewriter. About 20 reading heads are lined up along the spool, which houses the rotating disks. Booth's ARC computer used this technology at one point in its early development.))) pages 308-311 3. ACOUSTIC MEMORIES The first reliable memory system.. Utilized in the following computers: EDSAC EDVAC UNIVAC 1 the Pilot ACE SEAC LEO 1 "The basic concept behind the device was to attempt to delay a series of pulses, representing a binary number, for a few milliseconds which, although a very short time, was a relatively long period as compared to the electronic cycle time of the machine. After they had been delayed for a short time, the pulses would be fed back into the delay system to again store them for a further short period. Repeated short delays would add up to a long-term storage." "The mercury delay-line was developed by William Shockley of Bell Labs and was improved upon by J. Presper Eckert, one of the people who designed and built ENIAC.... "(T)he mechanism would take a series of electrical pulses and convert them into sound waves by the use of a piezoelectric quartz crystal. The sound waves would then make their way, relatively slowly, down the mercury-filled tube. At the far end of the tube, the sound waves would be detected by another quartz crystal and the pulses, amplified and reshaped, would then be fed back into the front of the delay again." (((Various problems including computer temperature, modulation/demodulation electronics, and delay time ultimately doomed this memory format. In the 1950s, advances led to the magnetostrictive delay, extinct by the 1970s.))) OTHER DEAD MEMORY STORAGE SYSTEMS: 4. Electrostatic storage (early CRT based systems) 5. Rotating Magnetic Memory (used in proto-disk drives, as in the 'Mail-a-Voice' recording machine) 6. Static Magnetic Memory (magnetic cores) Bradley Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.8 Dead medium: the Kinetophone; the "Kinetophone Project" From: abs@master.mte.com (Andrew Siegel) Source: Videography Magazine, December 1995, Letters to the Editor, pp. 20-21. "I was quite amazed to learn in Mark Schubin's September column ['Synching Fast'] of the existence of sound films dating back before 1900. Yet more amazed was I to read that said films had been transferred successfully to videotape. "Can you tell me where I might see these films, or better yet, acquire copies? Joe Salerno Industrial Video Services Bellaire, TX "Mark Schubin responds: In 1894, Century Magazine carried an illustration of a projection room with a phonograph attached to a film projector for synchronized sound. The process was known as either Kinetophone or the Kinetophonograph. William Dickson claimed to have demonstrated sync-sound motion pictures as early as 1889, but that date has been disputed by others. Between the Century illustration and other American and European sources, however, there's little doubt that there were sound movies sometime in the Nineteenth century. "More recently, while poring through the archives of Sveriges Radio (the Swedish Broadcasting Corp.), American Art Shifrin came across some Edison sound recording cylinders of unusual size. These turned out to be Kinetophone cylinders. Searching various archives, Shifrin found 48 existing Kinetophone cylinders and seven existing Kinetophone films, six of which match sound cylinders. "Films were transferred to 1-inch videotape, and, after much construction of appropriate playback mechanisms, the sound was synchronized to the images and recorded on the same tape. The results were shown at a meeting of the New York section of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers in 1983. Neither picture nor sound quality match today's standards, but there's no question that they are sync-sound movies. Exact dating of these films has not yet been determined. "Shifrin would be willing to show you the tape version if you are in the New York area. He would also very much like to continue to pursue the "Kinetophone Project," improving the transfer of both sound and image with modern digital techniques and searching for more old sound movies. Readers who might be able to provide financial assistance are urged to contact him at (718)468-5383." Andrew Siegel Manhattan Transfer New York, NY abs@mte.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.9 Dead Medium: Clockwork wall animation -- "living pictures" From Austex23@aol.com (Bill Wallace) Source: >From *Mechanical Toys*, by Athelstan and Kathleen Spilhaus, Random House, 1989, $7.99 ISBN 0-517-0560-4 "Animated or 'living' pictures made by Schoenhut, a Philadelphia toy maker, adorned Victorian walls. In one entitled A Good Joke (ca 1890) two clerics enjoying their wine move their arms and jaws while rocking with laughter. Concealed behind the lithograph is an array of clockwork, string belts, cardboard cams, and wire levers with counterbalancing weights. The scene is animated by a belt-driven cam from a slow-moving shaft in the clockwork while the highest speed axle carries a fast-moving fan that acts as a governor. "Other patterns for living pictures were provided on flat, lithographed printed sheets to be cut out and animated according to the pleasure of the assemblor." Also intriguing, but brief, is the description of the serinette, a miniature hand-operated barrel organ "used by 18th century ladies to teach canaries to sing." The illusionist Houdin allegedly built an automaton of a young lady winding a serinette, followed by her mechnical bird singing. Dead media within dead media. Bill Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.0 Dead medium: Skytale, the Spartan code-stick From: montfort@well.com (Nick Montfort) Source: THE LYSISTRATA OF ARISTOPHANES, a Modern Translation by Douglass Parker. Mentor Books, NY 1964, 1970. Parker, Parageographer and Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, writes in a note to his 1964 translation of the Lysistrata, on page 121 of the paperback edition: "...a *skytale*, a tapered rod which was Sparta's contribution cryptography. A strip of leather was wound about the rod, inscribed with the message, and unwound for transmission. A messenger then delivered the strip to the qualified recipient, who deciphered it by winding it around a rod uniform in size and shape with the first. Any interceptor found a meaningless string of letters." If I correctly recall my conversations with Professor Parker on the matter of this code-stick, the device is pronounced something like SCOO-TA-LA. In the Lysistrata, the women of Sparta and Athens conspire to deny their husbands sex until the two cities end their ongoing war. The men, therefore, wander around with hard- ons the whole time. The code-stick appears in Aristophanes's comedy in the following scene between an Athenian commissioner and a Spartan messenger: (From page 92 of Parker's Translation) COMMISSIONER [Throwing open the Spartan's cloak, exposing the phallus.] You clown, you've got an erection! HERALD Hain't got no sech a thang! You stop this-hyer foolishment! COMMISSIONER What *have* you got there, then? HERALD Thet-thur's a Spartan *e*pistle. In code. COMMISSIONER I have the key. [Throwing open his cloak.] Behold another Spartan *e*pistle. In code. Dead Media Working Notes 04.1-06.0 04.1 The pigeon post 04.2 The pigeon post 04.3 The pigeon post 04.4 The pigeon post 04.5 The pigeon post; the balloon post 04.6 The pigeon post 04.7 Vidscan 04.8 Miniature Recording Phonograph, Neophone Records, Poulsen's Telegraphone, the Multiplex Grand Graphophone and the Photophone 04.9 Kids' Dead Media 1929: The Mirrorscope, the Vista Chromoscope, the Rolmonica, the Chromatic Rolmonica 05.0 The Speaking Picture Book; squeeze toys that 'speak' 05.1 SHARP, a microwave-powered relay plane 05.2 Refrigerator-mounted Talking Note Pad 05.3 The Experiential Typewriter 05.4 Kids' Dead Media 1937: the Auto-Magic Picture Gun 05.5 The 'writing telegraph;' Gray's Telautograph; the military telautograph; the telewriter; the telescriber 05.6 The Heliograph, the Heliotrope 05.7 The Heliograph 05.8 Russolo's Intonarumori 05.9 The Agfa Geveart "Family Camera" 06.0 The CED Video Disc Player Dead Media Necronauts: Trevor Blake, Adrian Bruch, Charlie Crouch, Frank Davis, Dan Howland, Stefan Jones, Matthew Porter, Marcus J. Ranum, Jack Ruttan, Larry Schroeder, Bruce Sterling, Bill Wallace Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.1 Dead medium: the pigeon post Source: *Ancient Inventions* by Peter James and Nick Thorpe Ballantine Books 1994 $29.95 ISBN 0-345-36476-7 An extraordinarily interesting new book that deserves a place of honor on the shelf of any dead tech enthusiast. Some of its speculations (the ancient Peruvians may have had hot-air balloons, the Parthians apparently had chemical batteries) seem a tad far-fetched; but the book is all the more interesting for that. This book is remarkably erudite, well- documented, very wide-ranging, over six hundred pages long, and its illustrations are particularly apt. The book's brief chapter on "Communications" in very close in spirit to my idea of an eventual tome on Dead Media, if I ever get around to writing one. page 526 "Airmail Service "The earliest mention of domesticated pigeons comes from the civilization of Sumer, in southern Iraq, from around 2000 BC. Most likely it was the Sumerians who discovered that a pigeon or dove will unerringly return to its nest, however far and for however long it is separated from its home. The first actual records of their use as carrier birds comes from Egypt. By the twelfth century BC pigeons were being used by the Egyptians to deliver military communications. And it was in the Near East that the art of pigeon rearing and training was developed to a peak of perfection by the Arabs during the Middle Ages. "The caliphs who ruled the Moslem Empire after the death of Muhammed in AD 632 developed the pigeon post into a regular airmail system in the service of the state. Postmasters in the Arab empire were also the eyes and ears of the government, and with the local postal centers stocked with well-trained pigeons there was little chance of the caliphs failing to be warned of potential troublemakers in the provinces. "The state airmail was occasionally employed for more lighthearted purposes. Aziz, the caliph of North Africa between AD 975 and 976, one day had a craving for the tasty cherries grown at Baalbek, in Lebanon. His vizier arranged for six hundred pigeons to be dispatched from Baalbek, each with a small silk bag containing a cherry attached to its leg. The cherries were safely delivered to Cairo, the first recorded example of parcel post by airmail in history. "The Arab pigeon-post system was adopted by the Turkish conquerors of the Near East. Sultan Baybars, ruler of Egypt and Syria (AD 1266-1277), established a well-organized pigeon post throughout his domains. Royal pigeons had a distinguishing mark, and nobody but the Sultan was allowed to touch them. Training pigeons for postal work became an industry in itself, and a pair of well-trained birds could bring as much as a thousand gold pieces. The royal pigeon post was also invaluable as an advance warning system during the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. When Timur the Mongol conquered Iraq in AD 1400, he tried to eradicate the pigeon post along with the rest of the Islamic communications network. "The Chinese seem to have learned the art of pigeon training from the Arabs. Strangely, for a civilization with such a well-organized bureaucracy, the state never established an intelligence network using carrier pigeons, which were generally used only for commercial purposes. The Arabs also reintroduced the skill to medieval Europe, where it had lapsed after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD. After the collapse of the Roman light telegraph system, the pigeon post was left as the fastest means of communication in the world. And so it remained until the perfection of the electric telegraph (by Samuel Morse in 1844) and radio (by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895). "It was normal practice, even well into this century, for navies, military installations and even businessmen to have pigeons on the payroll. The range of tasks for which pigeons have been employed has changed little since ancient times." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.2 Dead medium: the pigeon post Source: The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870-1871 by John Douglas Hayhurst Published by the author at 65, Ford Bridge Road, Ashford Middlesex 1970 Dewey: 383.144 H331p University of Texas Library Since discovering this privately printed work, I've come to suspect that the strange story of the pigeon post during the seige of Paris is the sine qua non of dead media. In the 1870s the pigeon post was a hobbyist's niche medium. Under the intense conditions of warfare between major industrial powers, this medium mutated and grew explosively. With the energy of a whole nation diverted into a desperate need to communicate with the capital, there emerged a sudden technical nexus of hot-air balloons, magic lanterns, and photography (all of these were experimental technologies, all of them pioneered by the French). Unknown entrepreneurs suddenly became the linchpin of a seamless national communications system, combining pigeons, balloons, telegraphy, trains, messenger boys, magic lanterns, typesetting, handwriting and microphotography. There was explosive, repeated growth in bandwidth, until the message-space within one gram of weight suddenly became too cheap to meter (though it was still metered). Large-scale currency transfers took place through pigeons (via microdot mail-orders). Encoded, compressed post- cards were invented (the *depeches responses*). Cryptography was used (by and for the government). There was hacking by the system administrator (when Dagron the microfilmist and war profiteer suddenly became the de facto postmaster of Paris, he discovered that he had many friends who didn't care to bother with normal allocation of channels). And last but not least, information warfare took place, practiced by the besieging Prussians, who used forged messages sent through captured pigeons. It was all over in 6 months, a skyrocketing arc of development followed by near-total media extinction, commemorated with medals, folklore and bronze pigeon statuary, but never to be repeated on such a scale again. John Douglas Hayhurst, O.B.E., would appear to be (or have been) primarily a postal historian and philatelist. His slender 45-page history is a real treasure. (((My comments are in triple parens.))) page 2 "As had been expected, the normal channels of communication into and out of Paris were interrupted during the four and a half months of the siege, and, indeed, it was not until the middle of February 1871 that the Prussians relaxed their control of the postal and telegraph services. With the encirclement of the city on 18th September, the last overhead telegraph wires were cut on the morning of 19th September, and the secret telegraph cable in the bed of the Seine was located and cut on 27th September. Although a number of postmen suceeded in passing through the Prussian lines in the earliest days of the seige, others were captured and shot, and there is no proof of any post, certainly after October, reaching Paris from the outside, apart from private letters carried by unofficial individuals. "Five sheep dogs experienced in driving cattle into Paris were flown out by balloon with the intention of their returning carrying mail; after release they were never again seen. (((So much for "Sheepdog Post," a truly abortive medium.))) Equally a failure was the use of zinc balls (the *boules de Moulins*) filled with letters and floating down the Seine; not one of those balls was recovered during the seige. (...) (((A pity for enthusiasts of floating zinc-ball media.))) page 3 "Millions of letters were carried outward from Paris by balloon but free balloons could not offer a reliable means of inward communication since they were at the mercy of the wind and could not be directed to a predetermined destination. The only balloon which made even a start of a return flight to Paris was the *Jean Bart 1* which left Rouen on 7th November but, after a first hop which took it 20 km towards Paris, the wind changed and further attempts were abandoned. During January 1871, a fleet of free balloons was being assembled at Lille but the armistice prevented it from being put into operation. Self- propelled dirigible balloons were then in their infancy and whilst, on 9th January, the *Duquesne,* fitted with two propellers, left Paris bound for Besancon and Switzerland, it got only as far as Reims. For an assured communication into Paris, the only successful method was by the time-honored carrier pigeon, and thousands of messages, official and private, were thus taken into the besieged city. (...)" page 8 "Savelon has deduced the monthly statistics as: September & October 1870 : 105 released, 22 arrived November 1870: 83 released, 19 arrived December 1870: 49 released, 12 arrived January 1871: 43 released, 3 arrived February 1871: 22 released, 3 arrived "The weather was not the only hazard facing the pigeons: there were their natural enemies the hawks and there were countrymen with their shotguns seeking food for their families. (...) The best pigeons would have been the first to be used and as time passed the birds would have been less trained and so less likely to return safely to Paris. It was therefore no mean achievement that, on 59 occasions, they did succeed in getting back to their lofts. Their achievement was commemorated in the monument by Bartholdi and Rubin at the Porte des Ternes in Paris which was unveiled on 28th January 1906 and melted down by the Germans in 1944; around the central representation of a balloon were four pedestals each bearing a pair of bronze pigeons. (...)" Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.3 Dead medium: the pigeon post Source: The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870-1871 by John Douglas Hayhurst Published by the author at 65, Ford Bridge Road, Ashford Middlesex 1970 (((We return to Hayhurst's tale of the pigeon post during the seige of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war -- bruces))) page 13 "The service was formally terminated on 1st February 1871 (...) The successful operations must have been performed by about 50 birds only. These 50 pigeons served France well; they carried official despatches of great importance as well as an estimated 95,000 private messages which went far to keep up the morale of the besieged Parisians. (...) "The very last pigeon to complete its return to Paris must, if La Perre de Roo can be believed, have been one from *Niepce* captured in in November 1870 by the Prussians and which was presented to Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, the commander of the Second Army. He sent it home to his mother Princess Charles of Prussia who placed it on the royal pigeon cote. Two years later, tired of its Prussian lodging, it escaped and flew back to Paris. "The photographic reproduction of messages "The first pigeons each carried a single despatch which was tightly rolled and tied with a thread, and then attached to a tail feather of the pigeon, care being taken to avoid old feathers which the bird might lose when in molt. From 19th October, the despatch was protected by being inserted in the quill of a goose or crow, and it was the quill which was attached to the tail feather. Although a pigeon could have carried more, the maximum weight it was asked to carry was about 1 gm, and, as the service developed, the aim was to get the greatest possible number of messages inside this weight. Initially, the messages were written out by hand in small characters on very thin paper(...) "A great step forward was taken in early October from the idea of Barreswil (or Barreswill) a chemist of Tours who had been the co-author in 1854 with Davanne of *La chimie photographique.* He proposed the application of photographic methods with prints of a much reduced size and of which an unlimited number of copies could be taken. His death in late November robbed him of the satisfaction of seeing his proposal accepted and extensively applied. (...) "The messages were written, still by hand, but in big characters on large sheets of card which were pinned side by side and photographically reduced. (...) A further improvement occurred when Blaise succeeded in printing messages on both sides of the photographic paper. "Yet another improvement was the introduction of letter-press as a partial replacement of manuscript." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.4 Dead medium: the pigeon post Source: The Pigeon Post into Paris 1870-1871 by John Douglas Hayhurst Published by the author at 65, Ford Bridge Road, Ashford Middlesex 1970 (((Hayhurst's tale continues and the highly intriguing figure known only as "Dagron" makes his appearance on the dead media stage.))) "At the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris, a photographer, Dagron, had demonstrated a remarkable standard of microphotography which he had described in "Traite de Photographie Microscopique" published in Paris in 1864. (...) Arrangements were made for him to leave Paris by balloon, accompanied by two colleagues, Fernique and Poisot, the latter being his son-in-law. For making the journey by balloon, Dagron was to receive 25,000 francs (to be paid by the delegation at Tours) and Fernique 15,000 francs (to be paid before he left Paris). In the event of their deaths during the journey, their widows would each have an annual pension of 3,000 francs for life. "They departed on 12th November in the appropriately named balloons *Niepce* and *Daguerre,* but the latter, with the equipment and pigeons in it, was shot down, fell within the Prussian lines and was lost. The *Niepce* was also shot down and landed in Prussian-held territory, but Dagron and his companions just escaped capture, losing still more of their equipment and becoming separated. "Shorn of his equipment and finding unsatisfactory replacements at Tours, Dagron failed to achieve what he had promised by way of.... images 'prenant le nom du point,' in other words, microdots. Dagron had sought to reproduce a page of the *Moniteur* in 1 sq mm (...) Dagron finally attained success on 11th December (...) Thereafter, all the despatches were on microfilm, with a reduction of rather more than forty diameters, a performance that even today evokes admiration and yet he was achieving it a century ago. These later microfilms weighed about 0.05 gm and a pigeon would carry up to 20 of them. (...) "The introduction of the Dagron microfilms eased any problems there might have been in claims for transport since their volumetric requirements were very small. For example: one tube sent during January contained 21 microfilms, of which 6 were official despatches and 15 were private (...) In order to improve the chances of the despatches successfully reaching Paris, the same despatch was sent by several pigeons; one official despatch was repeated 35 times and the later private despatches were repeated on average 22 times. (...) The practice was the send off the despatches not only by pigeons of the same release but also of successive releases until Paris signalled the arrival of those despatches. "When the pigeon reached its particular loft in Paris, its arrival was announced by a bell in the trap in the loft. Immediately, a watchman relieved it of its tube which was taken to the Central Telegraph Office where the content was carefully unpacked and placed between two thin sheets of glass. The photographs are said to have been projected by magic lantern on to a screen where the enlargement could be easily read and written down by a team of clerks. This should certainly be true for the microfilms but the earlier despatches on photographic paper were read through microscopes. "The transcribed messages were written out on forms (telegraph forms for private messages, with or without the special annotation 'pigeon' ) and so delivered. (...) The first private messages got to their destinations fairly quickly, but with the increasing volume of traffic during and after November and the deterioration of the weather from mid-December, from handing in to delivery could easily span two months." page 20 "The despatches "The content of nearly every despatch, official and private, which was photographed is known today. As has already been said, the letterpress of each set of private despatches was used to provide a permanent printed record and a total of 580 pages were bound together in six volumes, a set of which is in the Musee Postal. (...) "The official despatches (...) were in a mixture of numerical cypher and clear language (...) The greater part of all the official despatches was in manuscript; messages in manuscript could be produced more quickly than in letterpress (...) "Before leaving the official despatches , it is appropriate to mention two bogus official despatches sent by the Prussians. When the *Daguerre* fell within enemy lines on 12th November, 6 pigeons were saved from the Prussians and used to notify Paris of the loss of the balloon. The remaining pigeons were caught by the Prussians who later released 6 of them with messages calculated to dismay Paris. One message was: 'Rouen 7 decembre. A gouvernement Paris -- Rouen occupe par Prussians, qui marchent sur Cherbourg. Population rural les acclame; deliberez. Orleans repris par ces diables. Bourges et Tours menaces. Armee de la Loure completement defaite. Resistance n'offre plus plus aucune chance de salut, A Lavertujon' "The pigeons reached Paris on 9th December going to the loft of Nobecourt, whose father carried the message to Rampont. The fraud was apparent; it was known that Nobecourt had been captured and Lavertujon, a French official, was actually in Paris. Another message in similar terms arrived addressed to the editor of *Figaro.* These messages were tied to the pigeons with ordinary thread, whereas the French always used wax thread; further evidence of the attempt at deception. The conclusion that the message had come from the enemy was, however, scant consolation for the bitterness of learning almost immediately that they were partly true: Rouen and Orleans were in Prussian hands." page 30 "(((The pigeon post service))) permitted the transmission of postal orders with a maximum value of 300 francs (...) 1,370 orders with a value of 190,000 francs were sent by pigeon. "(...) the use of *depeches responses.* The method of operation was announced to the public inside and outside Paris in a special supplement to No 7 of the *Gazette des Absents* (one of the miniature newspapers published for carriage out of Paris by balloon) and again in No 8. In a letter written in Paris and addressed outside, a correspondent could ask four questions, each capable of being answered by a 'yes' or 'no.' With the letter would go a card purchased at a post office for the price of the 5 centimes postage stamp affixed to it. The recipient of the letter then entered in four columns his answers as *oui* or *non* on the card, taking care to get the order right, affixed a 1 franc postage stamp to the card, and sent it to the designated post office. (((The cards were sent to the microfilmist Dagron at his labs in Tours and Bordeaux.))) The message, consisting of the address, the ouis and nons transcribed as o's and n's, and the replier's name, was included in a page among messages in clear language, and the whole photographed and, in due course, formed part of a despatch. (...) There were about 30,000 messages so abridged, representing about one-quarter of all the private messages. "Also included in the private despatches were messages under the heading 'Services et Autorisations' which were intended to be official messages (...) There were many abuses and numerous messages which were so sent were personal message from officials with access to the service. Dagron himself sent many messages on behalf of others; these can be recognized by the real sender's name being followed by that of Dagron. "The success of the pigeon post (...) did not pass unnoticed by the military forces of the European powers and in the years that followed the Franco-Prussian War pigeon sections were established in their armies. The advent of wireless communication led to a diminution of their employment although in certain particular applications pigeons provided the only method of communication. But never again were pigeons called upon to perform such a great public service as that which they had maintained during the seige of Paris." (((Dagron died in Paris on 13th June 1900 at the age of 81.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.5 Dead medium: the pigeon post; the balloon post From: mjr@switchblade.v-one.com (Marcus J Ranum) Source: Encyclopedia Britannica 11th edition "The use of homing pigeons to carry messages is as old as Solomon, and the ancient Greeks, to whom the art of training birds came probably from the Persians, conveyed the names of Olympic victors to their various cities by this means. Before the electric telegraph this method of communication had a considerable vogue amongst stockbrokers and financiers. "The Dutch government established a civil and military pigeon system in Java and Sumatra early in the 19th century, the birds being obtained from Bagdad. "Details of the emplyment of pigeons in the siege of Paris in 1870-71 will be found in the article Post and Postal Service: France. This led to a revival in the training of pigeons for military purposes. Numerous private societies were established for keeping pigeons of this class in all important European countries; and, in time, various governments established systems of communication for military purposes by pigeon post. "When the possibility of using the birds between military fortresses had been thoroughly tested attention was turned to their use for naval purposes, to send messages between coast stations and ships at sea. They are also found of great use by news agencies and private individuals. Governments have in several countries established lofts of their own. Laws have been passed making the destruction of such pigeons a serious offence; premiums to stimulate efficiency have been offered to private societies, and rewards given for destruction of birds of prey. "Pigeons have been used by newspapers to report yacht races, and some yachts have actually been fitted with lofts. It has also been found of great importance to establish registration of all birds. (((mjr: bird escrow? Clipper birds?))) "In order to hinder the efficiency of the systems of foreign countries, difficulties have been placed in the way of the importation of birds for training, and in a few cases falcons have been specially trained to interrupt the service in war-time, the Germans having set the example by deploying hawks against the Paris pigeons in 1870-71. "No satisfactory method of protecting the weaker birds seems to have been evolved, though the Chinese formerly provided their birds with whistles and bells to scare away birds of prey. "In view of the development of wireless telegraphy, the modern tendency is to consider fortress warfare as the only sphere in which pigeons can be expected to render really valuable services. Consequently, the British Admiralty has discontinued its pigeon service, which had attained a high standard of efficiency, and other powers will no doubt follow the example. Nevertheless, large numbers of the birds are, and will presumably continue to be, kept at the great inland fortresses of France, Germany, and Russia. (((POST AND POSTAL SERVICE: FRANCE))) "The ingenuity of the French postal authorities was severely tried by the exigencies of the German War of 1870-1. The first contrivance was to organize a pigeon service carrying microscopic despatches prepared by the aid of photographic appliances. The number of postal pigeons employed was 363 if which number 57 returned with despatches. "During the height of the siege the English postal authorities received letters for transmission by pigeon post into Paris by way of Tours subject to the regulation that no information concerning the war was given, that the number of words did not exceed twenty, that the letters were delivered open, at 5d a word, with a registration fee of 6d prepaid as postage. At this rate the postage of the 200 letters on each folio was L40, that on the eighteen pellicles of sixteen folios each, carried by one pigeon, L11,520. Each despatch was repeated until its arrival had been acknowledged by balloon post; consequently many were sent off twenty and sometimes more than thirty times. "The second step was to establish a regular system of postal balloons, fifty one being employed for letter service and six for telegraphic service. To M. Durnouf belongs much of the honour of making the balloon service successful. On the basis of experiments carried out by him a decree of the 26th of September 1870 regulated the new postal system. Out of sixty-four several ascents, each costing on the average L200, fifty-seven achieved their purpose, notwithstanding the building by Krupp of twenty guns, supplied with telescopic apparatus, for the destruction of the postal balloons. Only five were captured, and two others lost at sea. "The aggregate weight of the letters and newspapers thus aerially mailed by the French post office amounted to about eight tons and a half, including upwards of 3,000,000 letters; and besides the aeronauts, ninety-five passengers were conveyed. "The heroism displayed by the French balloon postmen was equalled by that of many of the ordinary letter carriers in the conveyance of letters through the catacombs and quarries of Paris and its suburbs, and, under various disguises, often through the midst of the Prussian army. Several lost their lives in the discharge of their duty, in some cases saving their dispatches by the sacrifice." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.6 Dead medium: the pigeon post Source: The Early History of Data Networks by Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjorn Pehrson, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995 TK 5115 H67 1994 ISBN 0-8186-6782-6 copies can be ordered from: cs.books@computer.org IEEE Computer Society press Los Alamitos CA (book # 6782-04) $35 Phone 714-821-8380 FAX 714-821-4010 (((Gerard Holzmann is from the Computing Science Research Center at AT&T Bell Labs. Bjorn Pehrson is with the Department of TeleInformatics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. This book is obviously a labor of love involving years of tireless efforts in the archives, and it's hard to imagine a better book being written about the history and the technical details of optical telegraphy. Truly a must-have item for any serious dead media researcher; the book is worth the price for the meticulous bibliography alone. As a bonus, the entire first chapter is about long-distance media that are even older and dead than optical telegraphy -- including pigeon post.))) (page 6) "It is said that the outcomes of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, around 776 BC, were sent by pigeons. But even in those days this must have been old news. As noted in a book by David Woods (((A history of tactical communications techniques, New York, Arno Press, reprint 1974))): '...in the days of the Pharaohs the Egyptians announced the arrival of important visitors by releasing pigeons from incoming ships. This may have been common as early as 2900 BC.' "The writer Harry Neal noted another ingenious use of pigeons from a few centuries later. He stated that King Sargon of Akkad, who lived ca. 2350 BC in Mesopotamia, had each of his messengers carry a homing pigeon. If the messenger was attacked en route, he released the pigeon. The return of the pigeon to the palace was taken as a warning that the original message had been 'lost,' and that a new messenger should be sent, presumably by another route. "Homing pigeons were also used by the Romans, around the fourth century AD. In 1641, John Wilkins referred to it as follows ((("Mercury, or the secret and swift messenger, showing how a Man may with Privacy and Speed communicate his thoughts to a Friend" 1641, republished in Foundations in Semiotics Vol 6 1984))) 'Lypsius relates out of Varro, that it was usual for the Roman magistrates when they went unto the theatre, or other such public meetings, whence they could not return at pleasure, to carry a pigeon with them; that if any unexpected business should happen, they might thereby give warning to their friends or families at home.' "The system was still in use some eight centuries later. Woods reports that in the twelfth century Genghis Khan (1167-1227) used a pigeon relay system to communicate messages across Asia and much of Europe. (...) "Another seven centuries later, in 1918, the British Air Force kept over 20,000 homing pigeons, handled by 380 pigeoneers. The system was organized by Colonel A. H. Osman. Woods quotes him as follows: 'A small balloon was constructed with a metal [release-] band worked by clockwork. To this band was attached a small basket containing a single pigeon with a message holder on its leg, and to each basket was attached a small parachute. The balloons were liberated in favourable conditions of wind and at intervals automatically released from the special ring a single basket with a bird. These were dropped into Belgian and French territory when occupied by the Germans, and in French and Flemish a request was made to the finder to supply intelligence information that was needed, at the same time giving the finder hopefulness and cheer as to the ultimate success of the allies' cause and promising reward for the information supplied. "Woods adds a sobering note: 'The Germans tried to stop this activity by replacing captured pigeons with their own birds, and then arresting and shooting anyone foolish enough to sign his name and address to the note.' "With this much history, it is not surprising that pigeons were still used in 1981 by a group of engineers at a Lockheed plant in Sunnyvale, California, to transmit negatives of drawings to a test station 40 km away. As Jon Bentley described it: (((More Programming Pearls, Confessions of a Coder, Addison-Wesley 1988))) The pigeon took just half the time and less than one percent of the dollar amount of the car (the birds worked, literally, for pigeon feed). Over a 16-month period the pigeons transmitted hundreds of rolls of film and lost only two." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.7 Dead medium: Vidscan From matthew@brickwork.smart.net (Matthew Porter) Source: Mondo 2000 Fall 1989 issue VidScan The only information I could find about this (Dead? Stillborn?) medium is from a two-page advertisement in the first issue of MONDO 2000 magazine. (This was the Fall 1989 issue. My copy of the issue says #7 on the cover, since it followed Issue #6 of its predecessor publication, REALITY HACKERS. The cover shows a goggle-eyed Todd Rundgren reading REALITY HACKERS #6.) The first page of the two-page VidScan ad describes the new medium. VidScan was to have been a paperless magazine distributed over regular broadcast or cable TV signals. The magazine would be broadcast in the form of a 30-second commercial spot, which the reader would record on a VCR and then read by viewing the tape on freeze-frame; each frame of the 30-second spot would be a "page" of the magazine. The ad states that "We now have the capability to freeze video frames without 'jitter.' Jitter-free imaging is the necessary prerequisite for this convergent technology. ... New computer animation software and sophisticated 24-bit color graphics software combined with new 16 and 24-bit color NTSC frame-buffer cards open up the capacity to transmit sophisticated still images over broadcast and cable television channels." (The 30-second spots may have been interesting to watch at full speed, too. Something like Max Headroom "blipverts"?) The second page of the two-page ad is a questionnaire about the prospective VidScan reader's access to TV and computer hardware, as well as questions about local broadcast and cable TV outlets (probably for the purpose of finding carriers for the 30-second VidScan spots). The ad states that the information gathered through these questionnaires would be used "in convincing advertisers (a notoriously monolithic lot) that they should buy a frame or two." The ad does not say anything about the content of the VidScan paperless magazine, but given the ad's placement in MONDO 2000 and its hype of the technology involved, I expect it was to have been aimed at a tech-head audience. The ad promises that anyone who sends in the questionnaire and a SASE would receive a subscription to the newsletter INSIDE VIDSCAN, including the table of contents for the VidScan magazine and a transmission schedule. The address was (is?): Future Media -- Inside VidScan PO Box 11632 Berkeley, CA 94701 I never did send in my questionnaire, and I never heard anything about VidScan after this advertisement. I don't know if an issue of the paperless magazine was ever broadcast. Certainly today VidScan is an idea whose time has gone -- paperless magazines are here, thanks to the internet and the World Wide Web, with far greater capabilities than flipping frame-by-frame through a videotape. But the idea was an interesting one in 1989. It would have been a great to see the infrastructure of a stagnant medium -- television -- give birth to some strange new mode of publishing. Matthew Porter matthew@brickwork.smart.net Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.8 Dead Media: Miniature Recording Phonograph, Neophone Records, Poulsen's Telegraphone, the Multiplex Grand Graphophone and the Photophone. From: roommate@teleport.com (Dan Howland) Source: "The Wonder of the Age, Mr. Edison's New Talking Phonograph," a boxed set of two 12" LP records with separate sheet of notes, Argo, ZPR-122-3, (P) 1970, Great Britain (((Transcribed by Dan Howland. My comments appear in triple parens))) Pirate tactics (side 2, band 2) (Original source: Peter Dawson, "Fifty Years of Song", Hutchinson & Co Ltd) "In order to get popular songs recorded by artists who possessed recording voices, it was necessary to carry out a fair amount of pirate tactics. Songs had to be taken down in some way or other as they were being sung, either at a music hall or theater. A miniature recording phonograph was taken into the theater or hall to record the melody. A stenographer took down the words verbatim. It was sometimes necessary to make three or four visits before a satisfactory result was obtained. From these records and the stenographer's notes an orchestration was made, and an artist selected to make the record." (((This "miniature recording phonograph" must have been small enough to be hidden on the pirate's person. How small were the cylinders and the horn? Did they fit, say, in a top hat? Note that these live bootleg recordings were not released, but were used to re-create the performance by someone other than the original artist. It was difficult enough to make a decent recording under the ideal conditions of a recording studio, let alone on remote.))) Neophone records (side 2, band 9) (Original source: Joe Batten, "Joe Batten's Book", Barrie & Rockliffe Ltd) "Neophone records were made of papier-mache, and were advertised as 'Warranted Indestructible'. To prove this, Dr. McKaylis (sic?), the inventor of the Neophone Indestructible Record, would assemble a group of potential buyers at the top of a four floor building, then standing at the corner of Worship Street and the City Road, and demonstrate by throwing a record out of the open window into the street below. A boy then dashed down the stairs and retrieved the record. This was then played, and as it emitted its normal noises, this was clear evidence that it was none the worse for its rough treatment. But, although customers did not buy records to drop on the heads of unsuspecting pedestrians, yet all might have gone well had not the records, when displayed in shop windows, curled up in the sun and assumed pathetic, surrealistic shapes." (((Not only is it dead media, but it curled up and died.))) Talking Tapes, the records of the future (side 2, band 19) "Will the talking machine record of the future be made on a tape? A number of inquirers are asking themselves and others that question now. In Poulsen's Telegraphone the sounds are recorded on and reproduced on a metal strip. Could a talking machine record be made in the same way?" The Multiplex Grand Graphophone (side 2, band 23) "The Multiplex Grand Graphophone built for the Paris Exposition of 1900 monopolizes a large share of public attention. This is the largest talking machine ever constructed. The cylinder is of giant size, and there are three recordings on each cylinder. There are three horns which amplify the sound, which comes simultaneously from the three reproducers tracking 'round the same cylinder. The machine is constructed so that the music may be divided into parts; one horn playing bass or contralto, the second, tenor, and the third, a piano or orchestral accompaniment." The Photophone (side 4, band 15) "Professor A. O. Rankin (sic?) foreshadows a new sort of gramophone which will be known as the Photophone. It is really an optical gramophone in which a beam of light is photographed onto moving film. The fluctuations of this beam of light give a record of sound, so that the film actually records the words or song transmitted, which can be produced at leisure by simply passing the film at the same speed between a source of light and a selenium cell connected up with a battery and a telephone receiver." (((Some of this documentary LP set consists of period gramophone and phonograph recordings from the 1890's to the 1920's; the items transcribed here were read by actors when the documentary was made in 1970. Some of these items have specific citations in the liner notes, while others are listed under the following blanket explanation:))) "The majority of the spoken items on this set of records have been taken from contemporary newspapers and journals, including 'Scientific American,' 'The Times,' 'Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.' 'Punch,' 'New York World,' 'The Talking Machine News,' 'The Phonogram,' 'The Sound Wave,' 'Musical Opinion,' 'The Daily Telegraph,' 'The Daily Mail,' 'The Standard' and 'The Phonorecord.'" Dan Howland roommate@teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~roommate/ Subject: Dead Media Working Note 04.9 Dead Media: Kids' Dead Media 1929: The Mirrorscope, the Vista Chromoscope, the Rolmonica, the Chromatic Rolmonica From: SeJ@aol.com (Stefan Jones) Source: _The Whole Fun Catalogue of 1929_, Chelsea House, New York, 1979 (ISBN 0-87754-079-9) If you have ever read a comic book, then you almost certainly know about the Johnson Smith Company. They're the folks that have been placing jam-packed advertisements in the backs of DC and Marvel comics since the dawn of time. You know: the ones that push whoopee cushions, fake dog crap, ventriloquism kits and glow-in-the-dark yo- yos. In addition to supplying generations of class clowns with stink bombs and squirting daisy buttoneers, Johnson Smith's mail order business offers more respectable educational and recreational items. I recently reread my reprint edition of the 1929 Johnson Smith catalog -- and a genuine copy of the 1947 catalog that my brother picked off a garbage heap -- with the intention of finding some examples of Dead Media. I was somewhat disappointed, particularly in the 1947 catalog, but I did find some items of interest in the 1929 reprint edition. Note: I'd love to supply page numbers, but there are none. The reprint is at least 300 pages long, with no index or table or contents. I am still finding new things after owning the thing for over a decade. In blocks of quoted copy, my comments are in (((triple parens))). Many of the media we are familiar with today were already well established by 1929. The catalog offers: Two portable, spring-driven phonographs. Nothing radical here. If it weren't for the crank, one of them would look like the Beany & Cecil portable my sister and I got when we were toddlers. Two movie projectors ("Be a Movie King. Oh Boy! Some Sport! Surprise the bunch--have a barrel o' fun!" Keystone Moviegraph, No. 6575, $5.75; Keystone Rewind Model Moving Picture Machine, No. 6198, $12.50. ). These had electrical lamps, but were hand-cranked. The kits came with a free roll of film (Johnson Smith's choice, apparently), tickets, badges and arm bands for the crew, and a "U-Draw- Em" slide for announcements. Both models could also be used to project "lantern slides." Johnson Smith sold "Extra Reels of Movie Film" for $5.00. These were _generic_ pieces of motion picture entertainment; the buyer got what the folks in Racine had on hand. (Note that if these potluck offerings were on nitrate stock, an unlucky junior theatre operator would be getting bombs even if the features on the reels happened to be good.) Interestingly, the projectors -- and all other electrical devices in the catalog -- had power cords that ended in screw-type plugs shaped like the base of a light bulb. Two opaque projectors. ("The Mirrorscope or Projecting Lantern: The MIRRORSCOPE is a great improvement upon magic lanterns because you have an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF PICTURES free of cost. Post-Cards, photographs, engravings from illustrated papers and, in fact, any opaque object, such as moving works of a watch, living insects, and so on, can be projected upon the screen in exactly the same manner as the transparent slides in a magic lantern.") The cheaper model (No. 6011, $5.00) had one "carbon electric" bulb; the fancier two. Stereoscope slides were still around. A two-page spread invited browsers to "See the Wonders of the World Through THE VISTA CHROMOSCOPE. Magnified Life-Like Views and Scenes of America, Europe, The Holy Land, The World War, etc. Interesting! Instructive! (((DRUM ROLL PLEASE!))) Educational!" Despite the hype, this appears to be a standard stereoscope. Its chief advantage was that it was cheap (No. 6608, Vista Chromoscope (without the Views), $1.50). Stereo pairs, also offered in the catalog, cost $.35 for a set of 25. Thirty-nine sets are offered. They range from #48101, Historical Spots of America, to #48139, Big Cities of Europe. Some of the sets caused me to raise an eyebrow (#48108, "A Trip to the Philippines with Uncle Sam's Soldier Boys," #48121, "French Cook and Comic Lover Series. No. 1"). Hmmm. Near the beginning of the catalog is a small section devoted to musical instruments. Most of these are variants of the kazoo and harmonica. The capper: two nifty items that qualify as genuine dead media: The Rolmonica and The Chromatic Rolmonica. (No. 4470, THE ROLMONICA, Complete with 1 Roll, $1.50) The engraving shows a flat box, opened clamshell style, with a projecting mouthpiece and two metal crank handles. A sliver of a roll is visible within; it looks quite a lot like a small player piano roll. "ROLMONICA The Pocket Player Piano Mouth Organ that Plays with a Music Roll ANYONE CAN PLAY IT WITHOUT PRACTICE A Wide Selection of Rolls to Choose From A VERITABLE POCKET SIZE JAZZ-BAND!" "Rolmonica is an automatic harmonica, that plays a music roll just like a player piano. It is a whole brass band all in one -- the biggest sensation of the musical world in the last few years." (((etc.))) "The Rolmonica has a very simple mechanism, yet so strongly built that it may be entrusted without hesitation to children. The volume can be regulated by the user. When sounding at is [sic] full power reproducing a band performance, it can be almost deafening in the strength of its tones, yet it will deliver with perfect clearness a pianissimo passage in an instrumental solo." (((I imagine parents regretting the Rolmonica's sturdy construction after a few nights of "Turkey in the Straw" played at "deafening" power.))) Over a hundred rolls are offered at $.10 a piece. They range from the familiar ("Swanee River," "Yankee Doodle,") to the obscure ("It's Unanimous Now," "True Blue Lou," "Chant of the Jungle"). It's possible that a _lot_ more than the hundred or so titles shown in the reprint version were available; the numbering scheme runs from 201 to 263 on one page and 477 to 536 on the second page. A significant number of the popular songs of the day may have been transcribed on these things. (No. 4471, THE NEW CHROMATIC 16-NOTE ROLMONICA, $2.50) The first part of the copy, verbatim: "The tremendous success and popularity of the Rolmonica has induced the manufacturers to bring out this new 16- note CHROMATIC ROLMONICA. This new model is larger than the $1.50 12-note model described on the following page and is ENTIRELY CHROMATIC. (((Do not confuse this with cheap imitations that only have a thin _veneer_ of chromatic!))) "This enables you to get a larger range of music, to play in various keys, and to get the beautiful tremolo effects as produced on the regular harmonica, which is impossible with the lower-priced Rolmonica. The CHROMATIC ROLMONICA is a bigger and better Rolmonica, still built to conveniently slip into the pocket upon the same happy principle of the player-harmonica operating with a music roll, but with certain additions and refinements of its tone varieties and combinations, so that now in the CHROMATIC ROLMONICA you have an instrument that enables you to play your favorite composition, either classical or jazz, with all the trimmings." (((If you can read that last sentence of copy out loud without taking a breath, YOU may have the lung capacity required to take full advantage of the CHROMATIC ROLMONICA!))) Only sixty rolls are available for the Chromatic Rolmonica; they are apparently incompatible with those made for the lesser model ("Do not confuse these with the Rolls for the ordinary Rolmonica.") Judging from the trademarked Rolmonica logo proudly displayed on the top of the page, these were gadgets with name recognition. The Rolmonica company also had heavy hitters pitching product for them: In one of the very few photographs in the entire catalog, five of the early Little Rascals are seen blowing and cranking away. Their ring-eyed dog, Pete, is seen cowering at the bottom of the picture, a paw over one ear. Stefan Jones sej@aol.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.0 Dead media: The Speaking Picture Book; squeeze toys that 'speak' From Austex23@aol.com (Bill Wallace) Source: *Mechanical Toys* by Athelstan and Kathleen Spilhaus, Random House, 1989, $7.99 ISBN 0-517-0560-4 "A most beautiful toy that demonstrates synthetic speech is the Speaking Picture Book, made in Germany in 1895. The mechanism, which produces nine different animal sounds, consists of seven bellows with complicated flute pipes with stops reminiscent of the Kratzenstein pipes. When the cover is opened, one reads a verse about a cow, sees a picture of it, and follows an arrow pointing to a string. When the string is pulled, a realistic moo sounds out... "...this Victorian toy, primitive though it is, is probably still the best synthetic speech toy to reach the market, and was certainly the predecessor of the Vocoder and of modern electronic voice synthesizers." There is also some discussion of toy animals that emit accurate sounds when the toy is turned or squeezed -- crude examples can still be found today, but the variety and accuracy of older specimens probably represent a lost art. My favorite toy of this kind is a 1940s piggy bank designed for war-bond savings, bright yellow and painted with Hitler's face. Whenever a coin was deposited, der Fuhrer squealed. Bill Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.1 Dead medium: SHARP, a microwave-powered relay plane From: jackr@intrepid.axess.com (Jack Ruttan) Source: the summary description of the SHARP project (May 1995), courtesy of Cecillia S. L. Cheung of the CRC (Communications Research Centre), Ottawa, Canada: "SHARP - Stationary High Altitude Relay Platform "OVERVIEW OF SHARP "SHARP is the acronym for the Stationary High Altitude Relay Platform that is a microwave-powered, unmanned aircraft designed to stay aloft for months at a time. To be situated physically between satellite and terrestrial facilities, the SHARP system offers new opportunities for communications, as well as a host of scientific and military applications. "The SHARP system will utilize a high altitude unmanned airplane as a platform for collecting and relaying telecommunications and broadcasting signals as well as scientific and environmental information. The platform would circle slowly at an operating altitude of 20 km (70,000 ft) and relay signals over an area on the ground of 600 km in diameter. "With this large coverage area, SHARP will provide a cost effective alternative for delivery of specialized communications services such as mobile and portable telephone, wide-area paging, radio trunking and TV and digital audio broadcasting. In addition, such applications as round-the-clock-surveillance of territorial waters, continuous long-term monitoring of the atmosphere, and remote sensing of the earth are possible. "The innovative design feature of SHARP is the use of microwave signals transmitted from the ground as the source of propulsive power for the airplane. The entire underside of the aircraft is covered with thousands of printed circuit antennas which capture the microwave energy and convert it into direct current. This provides the power required to operate the platform's electric motor and payload." (((end quote))) The drawings show what looks like a t-tailed power glider, with wings on a pylon that also contains the tiny engine and propellor. There is no place for a pilot, of course, and the other big difference is a huge disk mounted on top of the fuselage taking up nearly the entire length of the craft between wing and tail, making it look something like an AWACS plane. This disk is covered underneath with microwave collector cells, as is every other surface on the underside of the aircraft, including the flattened bottom of the fuselage. A pair of rodlike antennas stick out from the nose of the aircraft, swept back like the whiskers of a cat. The wingspan would be 25 metres. The ground array of antennas would measure 80 metres in diameter, and put out approximately 500 Kw of microwave power, focussed in a beam of 20 metres diameter aimed at the aircraft 20 Km up in the air. A 1/8 scale prototype developed by the CRC flew on Sept 17, 1988, at 0720h, for twenty minutes. It ultimately reached flight times of up to 95 minutes, after some difficulties. I quote from the paper presented at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium, New York, N.Y., May 25- 27, 1988 by Joseph J. Schlesak, Adrian Alden and Tom Ohno: A MICROWAVE POWERED HIGH ALTITUDE PLATFORM: "Investigations found [...] that a rectenna with this format had serious limitations in many power transmission scenarios. One of these disadvantages stemmed from the use of linear dipoles for the antenna array. For the powering of moving platforms, or in cases of depolarization due to Faraday rotation rain etc., the transmission antennas, providing the power beam, would have to have polarization track to stay aligned with the dipoles on the platform, a costly and complicated process. "Another limitation, and of major concern, were the high levels of radiated EMI observed from VHF to beyond S-band. The Schottky diodes, used for microwave to dc conversion, exhibited intermediate frequency (I.F.) negative resistance when 'pumped' at 2.45 GHz by the powering beam, causing spurious oscillations. These high levels of EMI could interfere with payload and platform electronics, as well as distant electronic systems." (((end quote))) Though the project was intended to be developed through 1995 to the year 2000, according to Cecillia Cheung, (who graciously and very promptly provided me with hard copy of all this information) work on it has been terminated at the CRC due to lack of funds. Via e-mail, Ms. Cheung informs me that CRC owns several patents related to the project, research is taking place at institutions in other countries, and such programs usually take from 20 to 30 years to 'get off the ground.' "Just for your information, this is NOT a 'dead media' project," she stresses. I thought you'd want the information anyway. See: A. Fisher "Beam-Power Plane", Popular Science, Vol. 232, No. 1, pp. 62-65, January, 1988. CRC is on the web at http://www.crc.doc.ca/ Jack Ruttan jackr@intrepid.axess.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.2 Dead medium: Refrigerator-Mounted Talking Note Pad From: house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) The Talking Note Pad is around three inches high, one deep and eight long. It is constructed of white plastic, with a small clear plastic hinged compartment, one large red Message Waiting button, one small gray on/off button, one L-shaped Record slider, a volume knob, a microphone and a speaker. It was powered by four AA batteries. The Record slider causes the Message Waiting button to pop out. The Talking Note Pad is labeled as follows: "PATENTS PENDING / MAVERICK IND. INC. / UNION NJ 07083 / USA TN-100 SERIES / MADE IN TAIWAN." Magnets were apparently mounted on the back so the Talking Note Pad could be affixed to refrigerator doors. The most significant feature of the Talking Note Pad is the 20 Second Tape beneath the clear plastic Delorian- like hinged door. The tape is approximately one inch by one inch by 1/4 inch. The ribbon inside is very close to if not identical in width to a standard cassette ribbon, and is wound in a central-feed loop like an 8-Track or radio station cart. The Tape is removable, and labeled as follows: "20 SECOND TAPE / #88020 Made in Taiwan / MAVERICK INDUSTRIES INC. / UNION NJ 07083 USA." It seems unlikely that this 20 Second Tape component was used in many other recording/playback devices, if any at all. 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology Post Office Box 2321 Portland OR 97208-2321 United States house127@teleport.com - http://www.teleport.com/~house127 Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.3 Dead medium: The Experiential Typewriter From: larrys@mail.utexas.edu (Larry Schroeder) Sources: Timothy Leary. HIGH PRIEST. College Notes and Texts, Inc., New American Library, NYC, 1968. Library of Congress 68-9031. Timothy Leary. The Experiential Typewriter. Psychedelic Review #7, pp 70-85. University Books, New Hyde Park, NY, 1966. (((Following excerpts outline the article. I give the terminal summary in full, and move it to the beginning in lieu of an abstract. Breaks not indicated.))) *Summary* A communication device - the Experiential Typewriter - is described, consisting of a twenty-key manual keyboard linked to a moving pen-recorder. Subjects are pretrained in a code of experiential categories. The recording paper then gives a moment-to-moment record of the flow of experience. The uses of such a device are outlined in 1) recording the flow of experience, 2) session programming, 3) ESP research, 4) correlation of experiential with physiological recordings, 5) developing languages of consciousness. Different codes should be developed for different kinds of experiential research. A code based on "*The Psychedelic Experience*" and an illustrative experiment using a single subject are presented. (((End of summary))) The communicating device known as the Experiential Typewriter was designed by Dr. Ogden Lindsey of the Harvard Medical School and William Getzinger, electronic engineer with MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. Certain requirements had to be met: the device should allow for touch tying of messages by subjects lying or sitting in darkened rooms. The keyboards had to be separate and the keys had to be engineered to fit the structure of the hand and fingers. The recording had to be set up so that a separate finger- movement had to be made to register an experience. It was anticipated that during high points of sessions subjects would lose contact with the instruments and might hold down a key for long periods. To avoid this eventuality, each time a key is depressed a mark is made on the polygraph, but if the key is held down no further impression is recorded until the key is released. Mr. Getzinger's description of the four major parts of the typewriter is as follows: 1. Twenty-pen Recorder a. The registration of reactions is accomplished by an Esterline-Angus Operation Recorder with internal wiring modified so that operation with pulsed D.C. is possible. 2. The Console d. The phone recept connects with a similar recept on the left-hand keyboard to allow spoken communication between keyboard location and console location. e. The round button on the sloping panel energizes a lamp in a similar button on the left-hand keyboard, and vice versa, thus allowing simple visual signaling between keyboard and console. 3. Connecting Cables 4. The Keyboards 1 2 3 4 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 15 16 17 18 9 10 19 20 *The Keyboard of the Experiential Typewriter* The usefulness of the Experiential Typewriter depends on the meaningfulness of the experiential language to be coded. At this point, *ad hoc* languages should be set up for each session: for each raid into the uncharted. We divided the two ten-unit boards of the typewriter into: Game-concepts from conventional language: left-hand keys. Hallucinatory, revelatory, and transcendental experiences: right-hand keys. *Experiential Modes Based on Self Games* 1. Bodily sensations (e.g., pain, itch, tickle) 2. Moods and emotional states 3. Interpersonal felings towards others 4. Cognitive modes of perception *Experiential Modes Based on Cultural Games* 5. Awareness in terms of body-maintenance games, including sex 6. Awareness in terms of social-cultural games, including family 7. Awareness in terms of aesthetic-recreational games 8. Awareness in terms of intellectual-scientific games 9. Awareness in terms of religious-philosophic games *The Negative Experience Key* The right thumb key (of the left hand) is a master key which can modify any other key to indicate a negative experience. 10. Negative modification or interpretation of experience (((The right-hand keys are reserved for the, uh, far-out stuff.))) *Transcendental and Transitional-Experiential Modes* (((Discussion includes "DPIs," *direct process images*, "LFIs," *learned form images*, and "trans-language" based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.))) *The Two Basic Transcendental States* 20. Awareness of physical energy processes, phenomenologically labeled "void," "white light," "pure energy," "vibratons," etc. 19. Biological processes. Phenomenologically the subject experiences the life energy directly and without the imposition of any conceptual LFI. *The Four Basic Transitional States* 12. Immediate sensory awareness (without cognitive contact) 13. Revelation 17. Ecstacy-unity-liberation 18. Hallucinations 11. Internal modifier of awareness (((used to signify an internal (eyes-closed) awareness))). THE USES OF THE EXPERIENTIAL TYPEWRITER After a trained subject has over-learned the keyboard and has practiced sending experiences it is now possible to use the typewriter in a wide range of empirical studies. 1. Basic Recording of a Flow of Experience 2. Sessions Programming The typwriter console and keyboards have telephone sockets which make it possible for a person in another room to communicate with the subject. If the observer reads the typewriter and sees that the subject is not experiencing what he has planned he can immediately communicate with the subject and get instant feedback as to whether his intervention has changed the subject's consciousness in the direction of the plan. 3. Extrasensory Perception Research 4. Physiological Studies of Consciousness (((Used in conjunction with bio-telemetry))) 5. Detailed Languages of Consciousness (((To evolve and tailor the language of the keyboard. Given the foregoing and Dr. Leary's subsequent career, the concluding sentence of this paragraph aroused some bemused cynicism))) The day of the psychologist imposing his game, his roles, rules, rituals and above all his language on the subject is about over. *Example of Experiment Using the Experiential Typewriter* (((This used a simplified 10-key typewriter, a lad of 24, and 250 gamma of LSD. Results are summarized and comments follow.))) The subject reported drifting off into areas of reduced awareness during [the last part of the test]. He was apparently no longer aware of the room, the E.T. and the task. Larry Schroeder, larrys@mail.utexas.edu Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.4 Dead Medium: Kids' Dead Media 1937: the Auto-Magic Picture Gun From: Crouch/Apple@eworld.com (Charlie Crouch) Auto-Magic Picture Gun Manufactured by Stephens Products Co., New York City, copyright 1937, patent pending. This device is a hand-held, miniature filmstrip projector made to resemble a small automatic pistol. It was used to project still pictures from an internal 16mm film loop onto a screen. Each film loop contained 28 frames, and was advanced using a ratchet film advance mechanism, operated by the trigger. The Picture Gun used a small bulb and two AA batteries to provide the projection light. The company's literature promotes the Picture Gun for general entertainment and education, but it was also used for business purposes. The one film loop I have was produced for Shell Oil Company. Titled "The Return of Jimmy Whitaker," it concerned a gas station attendant who gives instructions on pump-side selling and merchandising. (((My uncle ran a GMC truck dealership.))) An accompanying flyer pictures a line of accessories including: 1. Auto-Magic Film Rolls in sets of 3 (25c per set). Ten sets, or thirty films, are listed in the flyer with subjects ranging from nursery rhymes, to ships of the world, to Cortez in Mexico. Some of the films are available in Spanish. All films are promoted as made from non-inflammable safety film. 2. An Auto-Magic Theater to show pictures in realistic stage surroundings. (25c) 3. A Flash Light Attachment to connect the gun to larger external batteries, either 2-cell or 3-cell models. (25c) 4. Spare lamps available for either 2.5 or 3.8 volts (10c) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.5 Dead Medium: The 'writing telegraph;' Gray's Telautograph; the military telautograph; the telewriter; the telescriber From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States by Lewis Coe TK 5115 C54 1993 McFarland and Company, Publishers ISBN 0-89950-736-0 (((Mr Coe's lovingly detailed, too-brief work is soaked with heartfelt nostalgia for the world of dead telegraphy.))) page 20 "It was not until 1886 that inventors became interested in the idea of transmitting handwriting by wire. The first machine, the 'writing telegraph,' actually saw some limited commercial use. The writing was received on a moving paper tape, and since there was no pen-lifting mechanism on the receiver, all of the individual letters were joined by a continuous line on the tape. "Telegraphic writing soon attracted the attention of Elisha Gray, the man who lost the telephone patent to Bell (...) Gray developed a practical machine, which he patented and christened the "telautograph." Gray's machine had a pen-lifting mechanism, and the received message was written in conventional format on a wide sheet of paper. "A company called the Gray National Telautograph Co. was chartered in 1888 and purchased the patent rights to the machine from Elisha Gray. The telegraphic writing created a sensation at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. An improved machine in 1895 staged an impressive demonstration in transmitting handwriting 431 miles from Cleveland to Chicago. "In 1900, Foster Ritchie, a former Gray assistant, perfected a new design that represented a great improvement over the original. This was the machine that was marketed for the next 30 years. At this time, telautographs were normally short-range instruments. They had technical limitations that prevented reliable performance at distances much over five miles. "Even with its limitations, the telautograph managed to find a sphere of useful applications and held its share of the market in competition with the rapidly expanding telegraph and telephone industry. It remained a device that was little known to the general public since the applications were mostly in large metropolitan areas. A typical application was in the old Dearborn Street railroad station in Chicago where a telautograph in the main concourse kept baggage and mail handlers informed of train movements. "Perhaps the ultimate triumph of the telautograph came in the late 1890s when it was selected by the U.S. Army for fire-control communication in the coastal defense system. "First tested at Fort Wadsworth, New York, the system was eventually installed in the most important coastal forts of both Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The nineteenth-century equivalent of Star Wars, the coastal defense guns were the wonder of the age. Before the days of air power and submarines, the only defenses needed against enemy attack were the coastal artillery batteries placed to protect important seaports. As typified by the guns at Sandy Hook and Fort Hancock, New Jersey, that protected New York harbor, the installations utilized the highest technology then known and were shrouded in extreme secrecy. In an 1898 article, the *Scientific American* lamented that no one from the media had been permitted to inspect the Sandy Hook installations since 1895. "The guns were aimed on the basis of data received from observers stationed some distance away, and a reliable method was needed to transmit the data. Telephone or telegraph was not practical due to the deafening noise in the gun pits when the battery was firing. Special military models of the telautograph were designed to enhance ruggedness and reliability. The receiver units at the guns were enclosed in heavy brass, waterproof cases suspended on shockproof mounts. A plate- glass window enabled the message to be read without opening the case, and a small electric bulb illuminated the paper for night reading. None of the coastal guns was ever fired at an enemy, although there were active concerns when tension mounted with Spain in 1898. "Redesign of the telautograph instrument that took place between 1940 and 1960 incorporated the latest developments in electronics. The modern versions are not limited in range and will operate on any channels normally used for telecommunication, including microwave and satellite facilities. Large numbers of the telewriters, or telescribers, as they are now called, are still in use throughout the world. Hospitals, hotels and factories find them ideal for quick, errorless interchange of written information. The current machines are a far cry from the first models, yet they still do the same thing -- transmitting a written message by wire. Officials of the Telautograph Corp. say that facsimile machines have now taken over most of the needs for communication that were first filled by the 'writing telegraph' of 1888." Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 05.6 Dead Media: The Heliograph, the Heliotrope From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States by Lewis Coe TK 5115 C54 1993 McFarland and Company, Publishers ISBN 0-89950-736-0 page 8 "One of the most successful and widely used visual signalling systems, the heliograph, did not appear until 1865, long after most visual systems were considered obsolete. The factor that established the heliograph was the existence of the Morse alphabet of dots and dashes, widely used for land telegraph and submarine cable operations. The ancients understood the principles of reflected sunlight, but no one ever got around to devising a code for the letters of the alphabet. Signal codes of some type had existed long before Morse, but none of them ever reached a level of universal acceptance, and they were mostly forgotten by the time Morse published his code. "Early in the nineteenth century, Gauss, a German mathematician, had discovered the tremendous potential of the sun's rays reflected from a plane mirror. Through experiments he was able to demonstrate that even a small mirror one inch square could send flashes that could be seen over a distance of seven miles. The silvered glass mirror, invented in 1840 by Justin Liebeg, paved the way for the heliograph. (...) "Like the American army, the British did not have a separate Signal Corps organization until the 1860s. The first British signal school was established at Chatham in 1865. Shortly after, a young officer named Henry Christopher Mance (1840-1926) became interested in signalling with the sun. Mance, later to be knighted for his achievements in engineering, knew of the use of mirror instruments called heliotropes in the triangulation of India. The Indian survey, one of the great engineering projects of the nineteenth century, required accurate location of high mountain peaks to serve as control points fot the ground survey. Bright fire pots were used at night and the heliotropes by day. It is not know whether any Morse code signalling was done by heliotrope, but it is certain that prearranged signals were exchanged. (...) "The simple and effective instrument that Mance invented was to be an important part of military communications for the next 40 years. Limited to use in sunlight, the heliograph became the most efficient visual signalling device ever known. In preradio days it was often the only means of communication that could span ranges of up to 100 miles with a lightweight portable instrument. "The Mance instrument employed tripod-mounted mirrors, with one mirror linked to a key mechanism. The key tilted the mirror enough to turn the flash on and off at the distant station in accordance with the dots and dashes of the Morse code. Range was line-of-sight, with atmospheric conditions establishing the upper limit. The British army found the Mance heliograph ideally suited to field operations in India and Afghanistan. It was used to transmit daily reports and orders to and from the remote mountain posts and for tactical communications when troops were in the field. (One hundred ten years later, TV pictures were to show Afghan guerilla units using British pattern heliographs in their conflict with the Russians.) The present Afghans have found the helio useful for the same reason as their British enemies of old; namely, a simple uncomplicated mechanism that requires no batteries or complex maintenance." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.7 Dead Medium: The Heliograph From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Telegraph: A History of Morse's Invention and its Predecessors in the United States by Lewis Coe TK 5115 C54 1993 McFarland and Company, Publishers ISBN 0-89950-736-0 "In 1877, Chief Signal Officer Albert J. Meyer of the U. S. Army obtained some heliograph instruments from the British for experimental purposes. Meyer sent the instruments to Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who was assuming command of the Yellowstone Department in Montana. Miles became an enthusiastic users of the heliograph. When he was transferred to Arizona in 1886 to take command of the Apache Indian campaign, he saw it as the ideal place for heliograph operations. There were few roads and telegraph lines, and widely separated army commands were often at a disadvantage through lack of communications. Miles established a heliograph communications network throughout a large part of Arizona and New Mexico, taking advantage of strategically located mountain peaks for relay stations. "The annual report of the secretary of war for the year 1895 contains the chief signal officer's report on the Glassford expedition that established the world's heliograph distance record. It reads as follows: "'In developing the more important electrical communication devices of the Signal Corps, other methods of signalling that are absolutely essential adjuncts have received due attention. Heliography is perhaps the most important of these methods to a rapidly moving army, operating over a country where the use of electrical instruments is inadvisable or temporarily impracticable. 'The former world's record for long range heliographing was surpassed 58 miles during the year though the zealous and intelligent exertions of Capt. W. A. Glassford, Signal Corps, and a detachment of signal sergeants by the interoperation of stations on Mount Ellen, Utah, and Mount Uncompahgre, Colorado, 183 miles apart. This unprecedented feat of long distance intercommunication by visual signals was made on Sept 17, 1894, with Signal Corps heliographs carrying mirrors only 8 inches square. It was accomplished only after much discomfort and some suffering, due to severe storms om the mountains and to the rarefied air to which the parties were subjected for ten days. The persistence, skill and ingenuity of Captain Glassford and of the signal sergeants engaged in this result are highly commendable.' (...) "Remnants of some of the old heliograph stations are still found on the mountaintops today. At Fort Bowie, Arizona, ceremonial demonstrations of the heliograph are sometimes staged on Bowie Peak, an important relay point during the Indian campaign. The American army at first used the Mance pattern instruments from England. Later the United States had its own version that employed a leaf shutter to interrupt the light beam for keying instead of the mirror-tilting method used by Mance. The heliograph was used in the Spanish-American war in 1898. By the time of World War 1, wireless and field telephones had pretty well taken over the army's communications, but heliograph instruments were kept on hand until the mid 1920s. Some were kept at Corregidor in the Philippines for backup communication with the mainland in case of radio failure. "The last great use of the heliograph was during the Boer War in South Africa, where both sides used it. The terrain and climate, as well as the nature of the campaign, made the heliograph the logical choice. For night communications, the British used some naval searchlights, brought inland on railroad cars, and equipped with leaf-type shutters for keying the beam of light into dots and dashes. In the early stages of the war, the British garrisons were besieged in Kimberly, Ladysmith, and Mafeking. With land telegraph lines cut off, the only contact with the outside world was via light-beam communication, helio by day, searchlight at night. "In an effort to improve communications, five Marconi 'mobile wireless units' were sent out from England. Unfortunately, with wireless still in its infancy, these units were of little value. In the siege of Ladysmith, telegraph lines were cut off on November 2, 1899, and from then until the relieving army arrived on February 28, 1900, the heliograph was the only connecting link with the outside world. Cloudy days were tedious for the inhabitants of Ladysmith because no news could be received. One person recorded such a day in his diary, writing, 'Heavy weather had settled upon us and had blinded the little winking reflector on Monte Cristo Hill.' "As the relieving army, commanded by Sir Redvers Buller, approached the city, his signal officer, Capt John Cayzer, attempted to establish communication by helio. There were problems with Boer operators who intercepted the British flashes. When Cayzer finally reached a station claiming to be British, he devised a test. 'Find Captain Brooks of the Gordons,' he signalled. 'Ask him the name of Captain Cayzer's country place in Scotland.' Captain Brooks, when found, did not immediately grasp the purpose of the question and remarked, 'Well, I always thought Cayzer was an ass, but I didn't think he'd forget the name of his own home!' "Canada was the last major army to keep the heliograph as an issue item. By the time the mirror instruments were retired in 1941, they were not much used for signalling. Still, the army hated to see them go. One officer said, 'They made damn fine shaving mirrors!'" Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.8 Dead Medium: Russolo's Intonarumori From: viktrola@nai.net (Frank Davis) Source: ELEVATOR MUSIC by Joseph Lanza St. Martin's Press 1994 ISBN 0-312-1-0540-1 Page 15: "Luigi Russolo, an Italian Futurist, lauded the modern era's beautiful machine clangor. A painter, not a musician, Russolo was nonetheless committed to being the Futurist movement's musical activist. His 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noises" rejected inherited preferences for harmony in favor of the dissonant masterpieces that serenade us everyday without our conscious awareness. Conventional pianos, violins, harps, and horns were inferior to 'the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning mills, printing works, electric power stations, and underground railways.'" "To realize his dream of a life when 'every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises', Russolo created Intonarumori (Noise Intoners) - gangly speaker boxes that transmitted such chainsaw melodies as an internal combustion engine gurgling in ten whole-tones. He concocted four main noise families: the Exploder, the Crackler, the Buzzer, and the Scraper; the pitch and timbre of each were manipulated by a side lever." (((It is of note that Russolo's influence can be seen years later in not only the name of a once popular British sampling collective, The Art Of Noise, but also in the industrial movement of the 80's with such groups as Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten re- discovering the "noise as music" principle.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.9 Dead Medium: the Agfa Geveart "Family Camera" From: ABruch@VTRLMEL1.TRL.OZ.AU (Adrian Bruch) In early 1981 Agfa Gevaert Australia released the "Family" camera. I think it was also released in Europe. This was a fixed-focus lens, modern design super 8mm film camera with easy to use controls (meaning a minimal opportunity for enthusiasts to fiddle and adjust anything). The accompanying "Family" projector held a 25', 50', or 200' spool of colour film. The film was internally projected onto an acrylic screen (similar to a telecine screen) and had no capability to play sound. The camera sold for under $400 Australian. It could shoot one still frame (snapshot) whenever the still button was pressed. Or it could shoot normal motion footage. The camera had a built-in hole puncher, which made a small dot on the sprocket. When the dotted frame was projected on the Agfa "Family" player it would hold for 8 seconds, thus showing a still frame. The projector/player had an optional attachment for the Kodak instant camera, so that users could print out favourite snaps. The Agfa Family Camera failed to be marketed successfully. Several things caused its demise within 18 months. First, the State Electricity Commission refused to allow the release of the existing model until the wiring of the player was rewired to Australian standards. (This reduced the profits considerably.) Second, the Kodak Instant camera infringed Polaroid patents and was withdrawn from worldwide markets. Third, the rival video camera portapak technology arrived in Australia. By the time the Agfa "Family" was withdrawn from the market it was reduced in price to less than $99. Agfa Australia claims to remember nothing of this camera, but I found a camera repairer who will allow me to use the manuals, or take photos of his own camera/player if that is of use. Adrian Bruch ABruch@VTRLMEL1.TRL.OZ.AU Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.0 Dead Medium: The CED Video Disc Player From: roommate@teleport.com (Dan Howland) Source: the CURRENT catalog of Fair Radio Sales, 1016 E. Eureka St. P.O. Box 1105, Lima OH 45802, (419) 223-2196, 227-6573, FAX (419) 227-1313. "VIDEO DISC PLAYER "SGT-100W RCA VIDEO DISC PLAYER with CED (capacitance) pickups; plays video discs like record player plays LP records. Unit is 'play only' device and discs must be 'flipped' to Side 2 for complete play. Functions FOR-REV for 'Rapid Access' & 'Visual Search' plus 'Pause.' This manually-loaded CED-type player will NOT play laser-type video discs. 6x17x16, 24 lbs sh. "Used-operational, but some adjustments may be required! $33.00" "SGT-100W, 'AS-IS complete, not tested,' just as we find it! May be it will work and maybe it will not! NO RETURNS! $16.00" "USED CED VIDEO DISCS for use with above; titles as recent as 1985. Write for list! Discs may have 'blip-skips' during play. If intolerable, advise us within 10 days of intent to exchange; 2 lbs sh. Used, $10 each. 2-disc movies, $15.00/set. "AS-IS DISCS, not tested--NO RETURNS! $5 ea." (((The CED disks themselves resemble giant floppy discs, approx 12" square (but a wee bit longer than wide). Like 8-track tapes, another clunky dead medium, the CED discs have a label glued to the plastic shell. Apparently, inside the shell is a grooved (vinyl?) disc.))) Dan http://www.teleport.com/~roommate/ E-Mail: roommate@teleport.com Dead Media Working Notes 06.1-08.0 06.1 Eighteenth Century English mail hacks 06.2 The pigeon post 06.3 Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope 06.4 The Player Piano; the Pianola; Reproducing Pianos; Reproducing Rolls 06.5 Atari Video Music 06.6 The Elcaset cartridge tape and player 06.7 Bell Labs Half-Tone Television 06.8 Popular Science 1932: Naumburg's Visagraph, the Electric Eye Linotype, Ordering Music by Phone 06.9 Piesse's Smell Organ 07.0 Scott's Electronium 07.1 Candle-Powered Radio; Bayliss's Clockwork Radio 07.2 Cahill's Telharmonium 07.3 Soviet "bone music" samizdat recordings 07.4 The Talking View-Master 07.6 The Luba Lukasa 07.7 Dead Video Discs: Telefunken Teldec Decca TeD, TEAC system, Philips LaserVision, RCA SelectaVision CED, JVC VHD/AHD 07.8 PhoneVision 07.9 Sonovision 08.0 Union telegraph balloons, Confederate microfilm Dead Media Necronauts: Eleanor J. Barnes, Trevor Blake, Rich Burroughs, Dan Howland, Jael, Stefan Jones, Richard Kadrey, Nick Montfort, David Morton, A. Padgett Peterson, Jack Ruttan, Bruce Sterling, Alan Wexelblat Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.1 Dead medium: Eighteenth Century English mail hacks From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: OLD POST BAGS: The Story of the Sending of a Letter in Ancient and Modern Times by Alvin F. Harlow D Appleton and Company, New York 1928 383 H227o University of Texas (((It's very clear that the postal system is not a dead medium. However, the physical and economic structure of the posts has undergone profound, elaborate changes over the centuries. Early postal systems often doubled as espionage networks, and were often proverbially corrupt. (((Before the introduction of the flat-rate penny post in Britain, prices were high, yet geographically and socially inconsistent. Posts were also riddled with off-the-books "franking" privileges exercised by various privileged classes of users. Recipients were billed for posting through a 'collect on delivery' practice. These structural weaknesses in the postal system created a booming underground in black-market mail-fraud. Alvin F. Harlow's avuncular and chatty history takes a deep prurient interest in these illicit goings-on.))) "There were scores of devices for the sending of a few elementary facts by mail without paying for their carriage. One of the commonest media was the newspaper, which at that time the post carried free of charge. (...) A line drawn under the name of a Whig politician meant that the sender was well; under a Tory meant 'not so well.' There were other signals which told other things. Apparent instructions to the post written on the wrapper were secret messages. Among those which the Post Office detected and for which it assessed fines were, 'With Speed,' 'Send soon,' 'To be punctually forwarded,' 'With my compliments,' 'Postman, be you honest and true,' 'It is requested that this letter be delivered without delay, otherwise a complaint will be made to headquarters;' all of which meant something entirely different. "Business men had code systems based on the writing of the address. One man's address might be varied thus: William Henry Perkins, 97 Pump Court, London William Henry Perkins, Pump Court, London Wm. Henry Perkins, 97 Pump Court, London Wm. Henry Perkins, Pump Court, London William H. Perkins, 97 Pump Court, London William H. Perkins, Pump Court, London W. Henry Perkins, 97 Pump Court, London W. Henry Perkins, Pump Court, London Will H. Perkins, Wm. H. Perkins, W. H. Perkins, William Perkins and so on were other variants; then a change could be made by putting Mr. before each of the names, or adding Esq. after them. Mr Perkins' address could be differently stated: 'At the sign of the Golden Dog,' or 'Opposite St. Somebody-or-Other's Church.' Actually hundreds of changes might be made, all of which were recorded in a key book and each one having its meaning; the state of the market, bids, quotations, orders, cancellations, notice of arrival and transmission, etc. "The manner of using the collect-on-delivery postage system for the free transmission of news is illustrated by an anecdote told by the poet Coleridge. While travelling in the north of England he halted at a wayside inn just as a postman was offering a letter to the barmaid. The postage was a shilling. Sighing sadly, the girl handed back the letter, saying that she was too poor to pay it. Coleridge, over the girl's objection, insisted upon paying the shilling. When the postman was gone, she opened the letter and showed the poet that it was only a sheet of blank paper; but there were a few hieroglyphics on the back of it, alongside the address, which she had glanced at while she held the letter and which told her the news. 'We are so poor,' the girl explained, 'that we have been forced to invent this method of franking our letters.' "Franks were the curse of the mail service then, not only in England, but in America and other countries as well. One twelfth of the letters sent from London went free. Members of Parliament and government officials by the hundred were authorized to frank letters, and few of them were averse to handing out whole batches of letter paper with their names written thereon to friends and constituents. By one clever scheme of the evaders of postage, a frank was made as elastic as a rubber band. Three or four friends or associates in as many cities would agree to use the name of one of them in their correspondence. *A* at London would then send a letter to *B* at Dublin, having the cover wafered and sealed so that it could be opened without breaking the seals. *B* would write a letter, enclose it in the same wrapper (...) and without changing the name would mark out his own address and write *C*'s address in Edinburgh, as if *B* had removed to that place. *C* would receive the letter, alleging that *B* was visiting him, write another letter and enclose it to *D* at York. Thus one frank would carry at least three or four letters before it became so covered with addresses as to arouse suspicion." Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 06.2 Dead medium: the pigeon post From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: OLD POST BAGS: The Story of the Sending of a Letter in Ancient and Modern Times by Alvin F. Harlow D Appleton and Company, New York 1928 383 H227o University of Texas (((Harlow's charmingly dated work takes an extensive interest in the pigeon post.))) page 447 "(..) it is said that during the siege of Acre by Lion- Hearted Richard of England, the town kept up communication with Saladin, the Saracen leader, by pigeon. Another good story is that during the siege of Ptolemais the crusaders captured a pigeon carrying to the city news that the sultan was bringing an army to its relief, and would arrive in three days. The captors substituted a forged letter in which the sultan was made to say that he could do nothing at the moment, and released the bird again; and by this the town was so much discouraged that it promptly surrendered. When the sultan arrived three days later he found the stronghold in the hands of the Christians. "(...) it seems probable that they were used by the Venetian Admiral Dandolo in the siege of Candia in 1204, at the siege of Haarlem by Frederick of Toledo in 1572 and of Leyden by the Spaniards in 1575, and coming down to a later day, at the seige of Antwerp by the French in 1832. "Early in the nineteenth century, when the lottery craze was in full blast, pigeons were sometimes used to hasten the announcement of the winning number, especially by shrewd tricksters. This was common between Paris, a great lottery center, and Brussels, a large consumer of lottery tickets. One operator, by means of very swift pigeons, gave his Belgian confederates the winning numbers, which they proceeded to buy up, if possible, before the official news arrived. In this manner the schemer acquired a considerable fortune; but his device was finally discovered, and being somehow construed as fraudulent, he spent the rest of his life at hard labor in the galleys of Toulon. "Nathan Meyer Rothschild, head of the London branch of his family's banking business, was one of the earliest of modern financiers to use pigeons to bring the latest market news from other capitals of Europe. He spent considerable sums on his pigeon cotes, and was always ready to buy birds noted for unusual speed. There is a story that he received by pigeon the new of the French defeat at Waterloo, which he at first pretended had been a British defeat, and thus made a killing on the Stock Exchange. (...) "Pigeons were thereafter used by stock brokers, especially in England and France (where they were called *pigeons de la Bourse*) until the invention of the electric telegraph. They usually flew between London and the French coast in an hour and a half. (...) "Julius Reuter, founder of the great press-dispatch service bearing his name, used pigeons in his first press line. (...) there were telegraph lines from Paris to Brussels, and from Berlin to Aix-le-Chapelle; and to hook these two together he established a pigeon line between Brussels and Aix. (...) "Probably the most famous pigeon messenger service in all history was that which was carried on during the German siege of Paris in 1870-1871. (...) "One by one the great city's communications with the outer world were severed. A telegraph line cunningly hidden in the bed of the Seine was discovered by the Germans and cut. The Director-General of Posts and Telegraphs caused light copper balls to be made, in which letters were floated down the Seine by night; but the enemy soon discovered the trick, stretched a net across and gathered them all in. (...) "Parisian balloons continued to land in various parts of Europe, sometimes just where they should not be. One travelled all the way to Norway and landed eight hundred and forty miles from Paris. Another fell into the North Sea and the aeronaut was drowned, but his letters were saved. The Germans devised anti-aircraft guns, but did not hit any of the mail carriers. One aeronaut told of seeing cannon balls come almost to his basket, then fall back. Some balloonists fell in or near the German lines and underwent heroic adventures. "The Parisian balloons were made of thin cotton cloth, covered with two or three coats of a varnish composed of linseed oil and oxide of lead, and were inflated with the illuminating gas used to light the streets. From Metz, during its seige, smaller balloons made of various materials were sent out without human occupants. The correspondent of the *Manchester Guardian* planned the first one, which was made of strong white paper and inflated by means of a wisp of lighted straw under it, the stock of coal in the city being too small to permit the use of gas. It carried eight thousand letters in a rubber cloth wrapper, accompanied by a note promising one hundred francs reward to anyone who found the package and took it to the nearest postmaster or the mayor of the commune and got a receipt for it. Others sent out later were made of thin paper lined with muslin, or of varnished cotton cloth, inflated with atmospheric air by means of a rotary fan. (...) "After this modern demonstration of the value of pigeons, they were taken up by nearly all the European armies, and special attention given to their breeding and training. During the recent Great War in Europe they were extensively used. The First and Second American Armies in France had one thousand birds each, and the Third Army six hundred and forty. Counting the instruction and breeding sections, we had over five thousand three hundred pigeons in France. "In the Meuse-Argonne offensive, 442 American pigeons were used, and 403 important messages delivered by them. One bird delivered fifty messages. The pigeons were carried from their automobile 'lofts' to the trenches in baskets slung on soldiers' backs. There were gas-proof bags for the baskets in case of a gas attack. But a pigeon might be liberated during such an attack and come through safely, presumably because it rose above the gas. The pigeon-veterans' home at Fort Monmouth still houses many veterans of the Great War, some of them bearing honorable scars. 'Cher Ami,' who lost a leg on the Verdun front, frequently delivered messages over a thirty- kilometer front in twenty-four minutes. 'The Mocker' had an eye shot out. 'President Wilson' was liberated with an important message on November 5, 1918, during an intense machine gun and artillery fire, and reached his loft at Rampont, forty kilometers distant, in twenty-five minutes. On the way one leg had been shot off and his breast pierced by a bullet. The message was still hanging to the ligaments of the torn leg. A few months ago President Wilson was still alive at Fort Monmouth." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.3 Dead Medium: Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope From: richieb@teleport.com (Rich Burroughs) Sources: "Archaeology of the Cinema," C.W. Ceram, First American edition, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York; "The History of World Cinema," David Robinson, Stein and Day, New York, 1973; "Film Before Griffith," John L. Fell, editor, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983; "A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television," Raymond Fielding, editor, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967. (((My notes in triple parens.))) (((Eadward Muybridge was an Englishman, originally named Edward James Muggeridge, but it seems he changed his name for some extra flash. In the mid 1870s he was charged with murdering his wife's lover, according to Robinson. I'm assuming he was acquitted, as that was near the beginning of his experiments and I didn't see any accounts of them being interrupted do to jail time.))) (((Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope was basically a renamed phenakistiscope, according to Robinson. Ceram says that Muybridge made some improvements on the earlier device. What seems to have set Muybridge apart was his technique of photography.))) C. Francis Jenkins in "Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television": "But it is to the persistence of Eadward Muybridge that we are indebted for the most scientific research in motion analysis, work which he began in 1879. His animal studies became classics with artists. Wet plates only were then available and he used above half a million of them in a plurality of cameras arranged in order along a track over which his subject was required to pass." (p.2) Ceram: "The story goes that a wager between the Governor of California and one of his friends led Eadward Muybridge to set up his series of cameras. The year was 1877, and the point in the dispute was whether a galloping horse ever had all four legs off the ground at the same time. To settle the question, Muybridge stationed twenty-four cameras side by side along a race track. Twenty-four threads were stretched across the track, and as the galloping horses broke these, it tripped the shutters. (Later a clockwork device tripped the shutter.)" (page 80) (((Photos in Ceram's book show both the arrangement of cameras that is described, and the results. A photo of the Zoopraxiscope (the projector) and some of the disks is on page 124. By the way, Ceram's book is filled with excellent photos of dead media. I highly recommend it.))) (((Muybridge's photography was not limited to animals.))) Burnes St. Patrick Hollyman in "Film Before Griffith": "He (((Alexander Black))) saw Muybridge's exhibition of moving horses and scientific studies of motion as well as the Zoopraxiscope, which included a picture of a dancing girl in costume." (239) Robinson: "Initially Muybridge's aim was to produce instantaneous single photographs; the production of rapid series was incidental. Over the next few years however Muybridge produced and published innumerable series of photographs of every kind of human or animal motion. In the early 1880's he took the step of re-synthesising (((sic))) his analysis of motion, projecting the short cycles of movement he had recorded by means of a projecting phenakistiscope, which he called a zoopraxiscope." (page 14) Robinson, again, from a footnote on that same page: "The projected images were still not, properly speaking, photographic: Muybridge was obliged to re-draw them onto the glass disks he used in his projector, copying them by hand from his photographic originals." (((The disks were flat and circular, and loaded onto the projector's side in a vertical position. The images ran in succession around the edge of the disk.))) (((Muybridge's work was to influence Etienne Marey, and Thomas Edison. Edison developed the Kinetoscope after viewing Muybridge's system.))) Hollyman, again: "On February 27, 1988, Mr. Muybridge interviewed T.A. Edison as to the possibility of combining his Zoapraxiscope (((sic, I have seen the name of the machine spelled at least three different ways))) projector with Edison's phonograph, but without result, though Mr. Edison did exploit such a combination some years later." (page 3) Robinson confirms this: "Edison met Muybridge, whose zoopraxiscope evidently gave him the idea for a machine that could record and reproduce images as his phonograph recorded and reproduced sound. He promptly charged his English-born laboratory head, W.K.L. Dickson, with the task of developing something on these lines, and issued the first of a series of caveats designed to protect the tentative researches carried on at his establishment at West Orange, New Jersey." (page 15) Rich Burroughs richieb@teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb (((bruces remarks: the life-and-motion studies of Eadward Muybridge are widely available in Dover reprints of sourcebooks for artists.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.4 Dead medium: the Player Piano; the Pianola; Reproducing Pianos; Reproducing Rolls From: barbix@tiac.net (Eleanor J. Barnes) Dear Bruce, I just looked through the listings so far for Dead Media Working Notes and noticed there seemed to be nothing about Player Pianos. I was listening last night to a CD of George Gershwin playing his compositions == derived not from tinny, crackly, bass-deficient 78s, but from piano rolls he made himself.* The album is called "Gershwin: The Piano Rolls" and the liner notes are copious on the technology and history of piano rolls as a means of transmitting music otherwise available only as sheet music. It struck me that though today we usually think of the player piano (when we think of it at all) as a novelty instrument, it is really not an instrument for playing by a musician, but a playback device for *recorded music* == just as was the hand-cranked Victrola == hence it, and piano rolls, are a (now-dead) medium. Here is my writeup of Player Pianos as derived from the liner notes of the CD I mentioned. Best, E.J.Barnes barbix@tiac.net ======================================================= The Player Piano Notes excerpted from the liner notes for the 1993 CD, "Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls." The outside blurb: "George Gershwin's virtuosic piano technique and ebullient style bring the Jazz Age to life in this digital recording of 12 of the composer's piano rolls. Rare tunes never before recorded in any form (((sic))) are joined with Gershwin's singular performance of 'Rhapsody in Blue,' all transferred from the original 1920s rolls to a contemporary concert grand piano. Using the Yamaha Disklavier, a computer-driven descendant of the player piano, Artis Wodehouse has captured note-for-note Gershwin's own arrangements of his music, in a landmark recording as entertaining as it is historic." The liner notes: "George Gershwin recalled that one of his first musical memories went back to the age of six: 'I stood outside a penny arcade listening to an automatic piano leaping through Rubinstein's Melody in F. The peculiar jumps in the music held me rooted. To this very day I can't hear the tune without picturing myself outside the arcade on 125th Street, standing there barefoot and in overalls, drinking it all in avidly.' "The player piano was a central force in American musical life between 1900 and 1930. Referred to variously as automatic pianos, pianolas and reproducing pianos, players of all types were found not only in penny arcades, but in homes, concert halls, restaurants, saloons, stores; virtually anywhere music was heard. Player pianos are normal acoustic pianos except that an internal piano- playing mechanism works as a computer using air pressure instead of electrical energy. The paper piano rolls are the 'software' used to activate the notes to play. A punched hole in a paper piano roll causes a corresponding note to play as it goes across a 'reader'; a five-note chord has five perforations, and so on. Air pressure in player pianos is established by foot-pumping the bellows te exhaust the air. In later models, the bellows were motor-driven. "Gershwin's second contact with a player piano was more sustained than the chance encounter in the penny arcade. At around the age of 10, he began teaching himself to play at the home of a friend who had a player piano. Slowly foot-pumping through the roll, the boy placed his fingers over the keys as they were depressed by the roll-playing mechanism. This method of learning was so successful that when a piano intended for brother Ira Gershwin was hoisted into the family's flat, Ira recalled that 'No sooner had the upright been lifted through the window of the front room than George sat down and played a popular tune of the day. I remember being particularly impressed by his left hand.'... "Gershwin's keyboard skills led him to make piano rolls, beginning when he was a song-plugger and continuing through his early career as an accompanist to vaudevilians and as a rehearsal pianist on Broadway. Before the late twenties, only a player piano could compete with a live performance for sonic presence. The phonograph was still in its infancy, and the old 78 discs produced a thin, bass-weak sound. While Gershwin was growing up (he was born in 1898) player pianos and piano rolls became a huge, lucrative and lavish industry. Happily, Gershwin's roll making years trace the rise of the player piano; of the approximately 130 rolls he made, the first was issued in 1916 and the last in 1927. "Unfortunately, improvements in the sound of the much less expensive phonograph and radio undermined the popularity and perceived affordability of player pianos. During the late 20's the once thriving roll industry declined, crashing decisively at the onset of the Depression in 1929. As with many other smart and successful musicians of the era, Gershwin went on to make disc recordings and to host his own radio program. "Making piano rolls that were spin-offs of his other keyboard work was a relatively easy way for Gershwin to make some quick extra money. Pop piano rolls had to be made and released quickly because they capitalized on the popularity of tunes that had recently been released as sheet music. Intended either for singing or dancing, stereotyped formats and stock devices permeated the medium. Still, roll arrangers were always looking for new musical tricks to amaze and excite the prospective purchaser. One such trick was to overdub; many more notes could be encoded into a roll than a single pianist could lay down by hand. The result was a full, busy and exhilarating sound.... "Gershwin recorded two types of rolls. The first (his Perfection, Mel-O-Dee and Universal rolls) was designed for playback on player pianos equipped with levers, knobs and/or buttons that the player pianolist foot-pumping the roll could interactively manipulate to create an expressive performance. The pianolist could often see a dynamic line ranging from soft to loud printed on the roll and follow it to guide the interpretation. The second and more technologically sophisticated type of roll (Gershwin's Duo-Art and Welte rolls) were called reproducing rolls. These were intended for playback on instruments called reproducing pianos that could automatically execute dynamics.... "The last selection on this CD is Frank Milne's 2- roll arrangement of An American in Paris.... "The piano used to play the rolls for this recording [the CD] is a 9-foot Yamaha Disklavier grand piano. This instrument was chosen because its computer capability offered unprecedented opportunities to refine the performances. In addition, this particular Disklavier piano is a high-quality full-sized concert grand producing a richness of sound and dynamic range which until now has been unusual for piano rolls recorded for CD. "...Disklaviers are fitted with a computer and optic sensors that record a hand-played performance on floppy disk. On playback from the disk, the Disklavier's keys move up and down like the old player piano. "A rare 1911 88-note Pianola was used for this project for those of Gershwin's rolls requiring a pianolist's interpretive intervention. During the heyday of the player piano this comparable piano-playing device was also available for roll playback. A heavy, bulky machine, the Pianola is equipped with expression levers and felt-tipped fingers and can be rolled up to any piano. Its fingers are positioned over the keys, and a roll is inserted. Foot-pumping activates the roll to move the fingers; the pianolist can play with expression by skillful foot- pumping and manipulating the expression levers. "When the 1911 Pianola operated by Artis Wodehouse played the rolls on the Disklavier, the Disklavier in turn recorded the same way it does any live pianist. The best takes of each roll captured on disk were then further edited to improve the interpretation. Finally, the 9-foot Disklavier was taken to the auditorium of the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City where it played Gershwin's rolls from a floppy disk for the microphone, as if Gershwin's ghost were present at the session. "Gershwin's reproducing rolls were prepared quite differently. Using a piano roll reader, Richard Tonnesen of Custom Music Rolls converted the paper rolls into computer files which specified the location and length of each hole on the roll. Computer programmer Richard Brandle wrote a computer simulation of the reproducing pianos which translated the computer files into MIDI representing the notes, their duration and position in time and relative loudness as executed by the old reproducing pianos. The resulting performances could be played on any Disklavier from floppy disk. Placed in front of the recording microphone, the Disklavier concert grand then played Gershwin's reproducing rolls from floppy disks for the CD recording...." Liner Notes by Artis Wodehouse Dead Media Working Note 06.5 Dead medium: Atari Video Music From: montfort@well.com (Nick Montfort) Sources: VIDEO MUSIC MANUAL (Owner's Manual Model No. Model C-240), Atari, Inc. (No date, but previous to 1978); ZAP: The Rise and Fall of Atari, Scott Cohen, McGraw-Hill, 1984. ISBN 0-07-011543-5. The cover to the manual has an image of a headphone- wearing woman with a pair of VR-like goggles. On the outside surface of these goggles, a pixelated geometric pattern with rainbow colors is overlaid. The Atari Video Music, however, does not look like a set of VR goggles. It looks like a stereo rack component. It plugs into the stereo for input and TV for output. From the manual cover (((my comments in triple parens))): "Video Music adds a totally new dimension to the high fidelity listening experience. For the first time ever, you actually SEE the music you hear. You can explore a limitless pattern of brilliant shapes, patterns and colors, visually synchronized on your TV screen to the music from your stereo system. "Video music generates images from digital selection, responding within milliseconds to the intensity and tempo (((I wish I could figure out the tempo of a piece of music within milliseconds!))) of the music being played. You can control colors, shapes, and patterns while creating an audio-visual concert. Or, set the controls to automatic and let the unit function with its own random selection." There are four buttons for shape (solid, hole, ring, and auto), as well as knobs for gain, color, and contour, and buttons to set the scan rate. The manual explains the complex-looking process of adjusting the image, with illustrations suggesting the different results you can get. The obligatory amusing anecdote about this dead medium comes from Zap, pages 49-50: "Bob Brown, an engineering supervisor from Atari, had just designed Video Music, a game (((Atari's manual does not claim that this thing is a game))) that hooked up to the TV set and the stereo so that the sound from the stereo produced psychedelic visuals on the TV screen. It was Atari's most off-the-wall product. The man from Sears asked what they were smoking when they designed it, and one of the technicians stepped out from the back room and produced a lit joint." Dead Media Working Note 06.6 Dead Medium: the Elcaset cartridge tape and player From: dmorton@rci.rutgers.edu (David Morton) Sources: Reference 1: Larry Zide, "Will the Elcaset Make It," High Fidelity's Buying Guide to Tape Systems (1978), pages 28- 30 Reference 2: "Elcaset" Hi-Fi/Stereo Buyers Guide volume 13 (January/February 1978), pages 48, 82. The Elcaset was a cartridge tape format introduced by several Japanese electronics firms in the late 1970s for use in high fidelity audio home systems. "Basically, Elcaset is a king size cassette [i.e. Large cassette, hence the name] measuring about six by four inches, versus about four by two and a half inches for the Philips cassette. It is three quarters of an inch thick; the Philips is a half-inch thick. The Elcaset runs at 3 3/4 ips [inches per second]; the Philips at 1 7/8 ips. " [reference two] The Elcaset was a compromise between the all-out performance of an expensive reel-to-reel deck and the convenience of a cartridge format. The machines were heavy, sturdy devices more like professional equipment in construction than most home tape recorders. Although the tape was stored in a plastic cartridge, when it was inserted in a player a loop of tape was drawn into the workings of the machine, where the precision mechanism pulled it smoothly past the tape heads: "In the new format the tape transport is responsible for accurate movement of the tape past the tape heads. The tape is 'pulled' out of the Elcaset and moved between guides built into the transport. In the Philips system, tape movement accuracy is controlled by guides built into the cassette." [reference two] The tape was divided into six tracks; four were used to store two stereo music programs, the other two were control tracks used to store cueing information. Machines used a form of Dolby noise reduction and some (like the TEAC AL 700) could use optional, external Dolby units to achieve slightly better performance. Introduced at a time when ordinary audio cassettes could not meet reel-to-reel performance, the Elcaset seemed to have some appeal for serious home recording enthusiasts. However, the machines were more expensive than high-end cassette units ($650-1200) and record companies never offered a catalog of recorded Elcasets. The machines were pulled off the market within a couple of years, following slow sales. Models actually offered for sale included the JVC LD-777 ($800), the Sony EL-5 and EL-7 ($630 and $880), the TEAC AL-700 ($1100), and the Technics RS-7500US ($650). Marantz announced a line of Elcaset recorders, but I have not confirmed that they actually were offered. Dave Morton IEEE Center for the History of Electrical Engineering Rutgers University d.morton@ieee.org Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.7 Dead Medium: Bell Labs Half-Tone Television From: house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) Source: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE / An Elementary Text Book on Electricity and Radio by Alfred A. Ghirardi, E. E. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, Eighth Impression June 1937 Radio & Technical Publishing Co. 45 Astor Place, New York City (((In discussing how an image may be sliced into elements for transmission, the half-tone process used in newspaper photography is explained. Immediately following is this curiosity.))) "It is evident from this discussion of half-tone reproductions, that in television, it is really not necessary to transmit and reproduce the entire scene as a single unit each 1/20 of a second. We may split up the scene viewed by the television transmitter, into elementary dots, transmit electrical vibrations corresponding to the brightness or darkness of each individual dot, and reproduce the dots in the same relative order and position at the receiving end. Then our received picture will be made up of a number of dots similar to a half-tone, and if the elements are small enough it will be acceptable. This system has actually been used by Dr. Ives at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, but since a separate circuit was necessary for each element or dot (2,500 circuits in all in this particular apparatus), the system was very complicated and commercially impractical." Trevor Blake 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.8 Dead media: Popular Science 1932: Naumburg's Visagraph, the Electric Eye Linotype, Ordering Music by Phone From roommate@teleport.com (Dan Howland) Source: Popular Science Monthly, June 1932 "BLIND CAN NOW 'SEE' PRINT AND PICTURES "FOR the first time blind persons may actually 'see' pictures and read newsprint and typewritten letters, through the medium of their fingertips, with a device that was demonstrated the other day in New York City. Termed the "automatic visagraph" by its inventor, Robert E. Naumburg, it scans a printed page with an electric eye. Black and white outlines of letters and drawings are transformed at high speed into raised and magnified lines, punched by a vibrating needlelike point upon moving sheets of aluminum foil. "In this device the inventor has radically improved an earlier model demonstrated a year ago, which he called his 'printing visagraph' (((P.S.M., July '31, p. 40))). That machine, resembling an office desk in size and appearance, transformed ordinary bookprint into embossed letters that could be read with the fingers. It was hailed as an amazing development, though the user had to perform rather complicated adjustments in inserting the book, and though smaller type than bookprint was beyond its reach. These handicaps have now been removed. "So far improved is the new 'automatic visagraph' by a modified scanning system that it will reproduce the type of newspapers, magazines, and virtually anything in print. Even such things as radio diagrams and maps, hitherto inaccessible to a blind person because not even an attendant could read them to him, are now made 'visible.' "To read a book with the latest model, two of the pages are thrust through a slot, with no effort to straighten the book or align it. The volume is pushed automatically across a transverse slit, beneath which a fast-moving electric eye scans the printed line. (((Picture captions - punctuation verbatim))) "This totally blind girl is reading a novel in ordinary bookprint with the aid of the new visagraph in which and electric eye scans the printed page so raised letters appear on aluminum foil beneath the girl's fingertips. Left, radio diagram, typewriting, and handwriting made 'visible' for blind" (((One wonders how "visible" a blind person using the visagraph to read this issue of Popular Science would find the resulting bas-relief of a halftone of a photograph of a bas-relief of "a radio diagram, typewriting, and handwriting."))) "This form of visagraph reproduces a map from a newspaper so that it can be "read" by a blind man" Page 28 "Electric Eye Sets Type Rapidly Without Aid of Human Hands "HIGH-SPEED typesetting without the intervention of the human hand is forecast by the recent demonstration of an automatic linotype machine. Controlled by an electric eye, it transforms typewritten 'copy' directly into lead type. The only limit to its speed is said by its Charlotte, N.C., inventor to be that of standard linotype machinery. "Copy for use in the automatic typesetter is written upon a special typewriter which prints a symbol composed of from one to six dots beneath each letter and space. The letters are only for the guidance of writer and editor, for the dot symbols alone actuate the typesetter. "Each symbol has been chosen to represent a certain letter. When a sheet of this copy is fed into a special carriage that replaces the usual linotype keyboard, an electric eye scans the lines of dots. Each symbol, according to the number and pattern of dots, actuates the proper lever that sends the corresponding letter of type sliding from the type magazine into place. The lines of type are then cast into slugs in the conventional manner." Page 24 "PHONOGRAPH RECORDS SELECTED BY PHONE "CUSTOMERS of a British dealer in phonograph records now choose their purchases by telephone. The enterprising merchant fitted a talking machine with an electric pick-up and amplifier, and plays over the selections before a telephone fitted with a hornlike transmitter. The telephone subscriber then places his order for the desired records." "NEW ROBOT CAMERA IS DANCE PARTNER "A MOVIE camera that bobs up and down in the motions of a dance has been introduced for realistic close-ups in ballroom scenes. Cams in the automaton's rubber-tired wheels may be adjusted for a waltz, foxtrot, or tango, and the actress goes through the steps in the robot's wooden arms. It is powered by electric motors." ((("Cambot, give me rocket number nine!" - Joel Robinson))) Portland Roommate Referral Service http://www.teleport.com/~roommate/ E-Mail: roommate@teleport.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 06.9 Dead Medium: Piesse's Smell Organ From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: June 1922 issue of (the now long dead) magazine, Science and Invention, as reprinted in Experimental Musical Instruments magazine "The Smell Organ by Joseph H Kraus "Which one of us has not listened to the enrapturing tones of the church organ or the pipe organs in motion picture play houses, and not awakened to its appeal? Now an entirely new organ has been developed, which instead of inspiring and thrilling audiences by sound, translates music into corresponding odors. "The suggestions comes from Dr. Septimus Piesse, a French chemist, who claims that every perfume produces its own particular effect on the end organs of smell terminating in the mucosa, mucous membranes lining of the nose. The organs are called the olfactory cells, and just as every note has its effect upon the ear and as the colors have their effect upon the retina of the eye, so this transposed music, the music of smells, will have its effect upon the olfactory organs. "The range of notes has been carefully plotted, the heavier odors being assigned to the low notes, and sharp pungent odors to the high notes. Thus, starting with the bass clef three octaves below middles C, the musical notes, and the odors assigned to them, (are listed on a separate list at the end of this piece). (((The smell organ would be used to play olfactory transcriptions of classical music.))) "Of course, the combination of odors will creates a smell entirely different from any individual qualities of the various perfumes and it is necessary that, in the soft, dreamy compositions, the odors blend harmoniously. Discords will have a decidedly unpleasant effect but inasmuch as the composers did not dwell upon discords to any great extent, the audience will be saved the rather unusual embarrassment of smelling disagreeable combinations. Some music would perhaps have to be changed and the odors carefully graduated so that no particular perfume will predominate, except when the loud pedal, or rather in the smell organs, the *strong* odor pedal is trod upon. "It is, therefore, up to the perfumer to combine the mixtures in much that same way that an artist blends colors, or as a good florist makes a bouquet. If it is desirable to insert a little contrast into the bouquet, the appropriate blossoms or grasses are used, and so the perfumer likewise would have to employ the proper aromas. "The arrangement of the apparatus is such as to include five or more octaves of colors....These odors have been discovered and placed in their particular location after painstaking research, the odors being arranged in bottles and sprayed up into the air by an atomizer-like action. "In each of these bottles, we may note the atomizer or sprayer attachment. These atomizers are actuated by keys on the piano. Pressure upon any of these keys closes a circuit, which operates a solenoid, or suction type magnet, the latter releasing a valve and permitting compressed air from an air compressor and storage tank to blow the odorous vapor upward. In back of the individual spray nozzle is a funnel-shaped pipe likewise connected to a compressed air supply source. These create a constant drift of air blowing the odors upward and this draft is further facilitated by large rotary fans at the rear of the theatre. The strong pedal under the piano keyboard connects with the air supply compartment and operates an auxiliary valve which admits a further supply of air and consequently increases the amount of perfume and directly increases the strength of the odor. "It is possible that to rid the room quickly of any odor, ozonized air may be permitted into the funnels." BASS CLEF C patchouli D vanilla E clove bark F benzoin G frangipane A storax B clove C sandalwood D clematis E rattan F castorium G pergulaire A balsam of Peru B carnations and pinks C geranium D heliotrope E iris F musk G Pois de senteur A balsam of tolu B cinnamon C rose TREBLE CLEF C rose D violet E cassia F tuberose G orange flower A new mown hay B arome C camphor D almond E Portugal F jonquil G syringa A tonka bean B mint C jasmine D bergamot E citron F ambergris G magnolia A lavender B peppermint C pineapple D citronel E vervain F civet Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.0 Dead Medium: Scott's Electronium From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: MUSICAL LEGENDS OF AMERICA, by Justin Green (with thanks to Irwin Chusid). Tower Pulse! magazine, p. 26, July 1994 Invented by composer Raymond Scott (a sample of whose works are collected on Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights, and immortalized in countless cartons, most recently Ren & Stimpy) spent the last years of his life working with electronic composing systems that he designed. One of his devices, the Electronium, has been described as "one of the first applications of artificial intelligence in music composition." (Justin Green) Raymond Scott: "A composer (guidance control) asks the Electronium to suggest an idea, theme or motive. He listens to these on a monitor speaker. When happy with one of these ideas, he stops the Electronium and starts recording. "Faster, slower, a new rhythm design, a hold, a pause, a second theme, variation, extension, elongation, diminution, counterpoint, a change in phrasing, an ornament...ad infinitum...whatever the composer requests, the Electronium accepts and acts out his directions." The only photo I've seen of the device makes it look like an old analog computer flanked by Bauhausian monitors. Richard Kadrey kadrey@well.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.1 Dead media: Candle-Powered Radio; Bayliss's Clockwork Radio From: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat), sej@aol.com (Stefan Jones) Candle-Powered Radio From: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Source: excerpt forwarded to me from "Design for the Real World" written by Victor Papanek. I'm not sure this is a dead tech or still in use... "In 1962 I began to design and develop a new type of communications device. "An unusually gifted graduating student, George Seegers, did the electronic work and helped build the first prototype. The resulting one-transistor radio, using no batteries or current and designed specifically for the needs of developing countries, consisted of a used tin can. (...) This can contained wax and a wick that burned (just like a wind-protected candle) for about twenty-four hours. The rising heat was converted into enough energy (via thermocouples) to operate an earplug speaker. The radio was, of course, non-directional, receiving any and all stations simultaneously. But in emerging countries, this was then of no importance: there was only *one* broadcast (carried by relay towers placed about fifty miles apart). "Assuming one person in each village listened to a 'national news broadcast' for five minutes daily, the unit could be used for a year until the original paraffin wax was gone. Then more wax, wood, paper, dried cow dung (which has been successfully used as a heat source for centuries in Asia), or for that matter anything else that burns could continue to keep the unit in service. All the components: earplug, speaker, hand-woven copper radial antena, and 'earth' wire terminating in a (used) nail, tunnel diode, and thermocouple, were packed in the empty third of the can. The entire unit was made for just below 9 cents (1966 dollars). ... "After further developmental work, the radio was given to the U.N. for use in villages in Indonesia. No one, neither the designer, nor UNESCO, nor any manufacturer, made any profit or percentages out of this device since it was manufactured as a 'cottage industry' product." The Bayliss Wind-up "Freeplay" Radio From SeJ@aol.com (Stefan Jones) Source: Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times News Service, 1996 "MILNERTON, South Africa - Even in relatively rich South Africa, half the homes have no electricity. Go far enough off the beaten track and there are villages with no place to buy even a little AAA battery. So in much of Africa, the portable radio is of little use. "Maybe not for long. For about six weeks now, a small factory in this town just north of Cape Town has been cranking out radios with cranks. Give the handle a few aerobic turns and the Freeplay radio holds forth for half an hour. "It is no threat to a Sony Walkman. It weighs six pounds, it's built like an overstuffed lunch box, and it has a tinny speaker. But its wholesale price is only $40 and it gets AM, FM, and shortwave, meaning it can pick up the British Broadcasting Corporation or the Voice of America, so a circle of mud huts can zip back into the Information Age with a twist of the wrist. "There is a market out there. 'Ghana wants 30,000,' said Christopher Staines, an executive of BayGen Power, the manufacturer. "Their next product, due out next year, is a wind-up flashlight. "The manufacturer, BayGen Power, is just as offbeat as its wares. The $1.5 million in venture capital that founded the company came from British foreign aid; the Liberty Life Foundation, the philanthropic arm of a major South African insurance company, and the socially- conscious owners of the Body Shop, a British cosmetics chain. A third of the company's factory workers are blind, deaf, in wheelchairs, or mentally ill, and a consortium of agencies for the disabled owns 60 percent of the company's stock - one of Liberty Life's conditions. "The patent is the work of Trevor Bayliss, a British scientist who in 1990 was listening to a BBC program on AIDS in Africa that mentioned the difficulty of sending the safe-sex message because many villages could not afford batteries. He went to his workshop, built a prototype, and then could not market it. "There are actually 13 patents covering the mainspring and gears that drive a little dynamo. The spring does not in any way resemble a Swiss watch's. Unwound, it is 30 feet long and designed for rewinding auto seat belts. A double-spool mechanism keeps its tension constant, which is crucial, and the gearing is sophisticated." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.2 Dead medium: Cahill's Telharmonium From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: from a review of "The Telharmonium: A History of the First Music Synthesizer," review by Thomas L Rhea. Computer Music Journal, vol. 12 #3, 1988 (((Until I can get a copy of the definitive work on the Telharmonium (The Telharmonium: A History of the First Music Synthesizer by Reynold Weidenaar, NYU, 1988), here are notes from various sources.))) From the review of Weidenaar's paper published in CMJ. The review contains some interesting basic info about the Telharmonium: Reynold Weidenaar tells the story of Thaddeus Cahill and his siblings, who constructed the Telharmonium, a mammoth electrical generating plant and distribution system designed to provide music for millions over telephone lines. It is the hopeful tale of a vestige of the Industrial Age: five U.S. patents, begun in 1895; three completed instruments, including the commercial models in 1906 and 1911; multimillion-dollar investments in Telharmonic Music by otherwise astute capitalists; the euphoria of inaugural triumphs in 1907 at Telharmonic Hall in New York City; and the very early success at piping music into the very correct Manhattan restaurants and other venues. It is a sad tale, involving the construction of massive alternator tone wheels that tantalizingly predated amplification technology; a business marriage with the New York Telephone Company that soured when Telharmonic Music proved to interfere with phone service (note: according to another source, the Telharmonium's signal was too much for the old switching systems, and tended to blow them out); Thaddeus Cahill's fixed ideas about Just Intonation, and the problems his 36-note-per-octave keyboard caused Telharmonium performers; Lee DeForest's early radio transmissions of the Telharmonium, and Cahill's inability to perceive the implications; an ill-fated second season at Telharmonic Hall, that was exacerbated by the financial panic of 1907; the deterioration of the Telharmonium into a musical freak show, and the failure of the licensee companies in 1908; and an abortive comeback in 1911 that struggled all the way into 1918. It is a poignant tale of the wooden refusal of the Cahills to realize that a (200-ton) musical instrument chipped from iron was an anachronism even in the early 20th century; Arthur T. Cahill's crusade to carry forward the ideas of brothers Thaddeus and George following their deaths; and Arthur's circulation of a letter as late as 1951 trying to find a refuge for the first Telharmonium. Arthur had been keeping the historic 14,000 lb Telharmonium prototype in storage at his own expense for almost 50 years, and finally sought "a permanent and a public home for this priceless monument to man's genius." There were no takers, and not even a small part of this incredible music machine is now available to wonder at. (((From SINGING THE BODY ELECTRIC, by Mark Sinker. The Wire, September 1995, issue 139. An article looking at various early electronic instruments:))) "The first and most fabulous monster is Thaddeus Cahill's Telharmonium: 200 tons, 60 feet across, taking up a whole floor and the basement below. It looked, surviving pictures tell us, like a church organ mated with a weaving loom. Cahill, a Canadian, built it in Holyoke, MA.; partially funded by the New England Electric Music Company...it cost a then-phenomenal $200,000, and was moved in 1906 to Telharmonic Hall in New York. The idea was to transmit 'Telharmony' across America, to hotels, restaurants, theaters and private homes, via local telephone exchanges. The Telharmonium itself was a kind of keyboard-operated dynamo organ; the bulk of the machine consisted of vast teethed gears on engine-driven spinning shafts which caused alternating currents in batteries and magnets. There were no loudspeakers in those days; radio was only five years old, and Lee DeForest's audion tube, which amplified signals many thousand-fold, wouldn't exist for at least another decade- so it fed straight into the telephone system. Unfortunately, it needed huge voltages and caused interference over the rest of the telephone network, such as it then was- so that one day an enraged businessman burst in, broke it up and threw the machinery into the Hudson river, or so the story goes. "Actually, there were no less than three Telharmoniums, spread over some 20 years: the first Cahill had started in 1895 in Washington, DC, patented in 1897, finished in 1900; the Holyoke-NYC model was the second; a third begun in 1908, was finished in 1911 and certainly still in use in 1916. But the mid-teens radio broadcasts into the home were the coming thing, and the project went broke for lack of subscribers. "For a short while, however, the Telharmonium was big news. A story in McClure's Magazine, 'New Music for an Old World,' brought it to the attention of Ferruccio Busoni, a virtuoso classical pianist and critical intellectual, Italian by birth, German by temperament, respected all across Europe. Busoni (whose pupils included Edgard Varese) cited the Telharmonium in a polemic he was then writing (for some reason he calls it the 'dynaphone'). His 1907 'Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music' proposed that music pass beyond its 19th century framings- harmony as the possible combination of a mere 12 notes, a highly selective and conventional instrumentation- the embrace the 'infinite' gradations within the octave structures: 'The question is important and imperious, how and on what are these tones are to be produced. Fortunately, while busied with this essay, I received from American direct and authentic intelligence which solves the problem in a simple manner. I refer to an invention by Dr. Thaddeus Cahill. He has constructed a comprehensive apparatus which makes it possible to transform an electric current into fixed and mathematically exact number of variations.' "At which point Busoni hurtles intoxicatingly into an airborne rhetoric that flatters Cahill's 200 ton apparatus: 'Who has not dreamt that he could not float on air? And firmly believed his dream to be reality? Let us take thought, how music may be restored to its primitive, natural essence; let us free it from archectonic, acoustic and aesthetic dogmas; let it be pure invention and sentiment, in harmonies, in forms, in tone-colours (for invention and sentiment are not the prerogative of melody alone); let it follow the line of the rainbow and vie with the clouds in breaking sunbeams; let Music be naught else than Nature mirrored by and reflected from the human breast; for it is sounding air and floats above and beyond the air; within Man himself as universally and absolutely as in Creation entire...'" Richard Kadrey kadrey@well.com Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.3 Dead medium: Soviet "bone music" samizdat recordings From: montfort@well.com (Nick Montfort) Source: "A Western Boyhood, in Russia," by Joseph Brodsky. Excerpt from his essay "Spoils of War," in the recent book ON GRIEF AND REASON. Harper's Magazine, March 1995, p34. This was apparently just an unusual way of producing vinyl records (themselves a dead medium), only briefly described here. However, as this form of record reached a certain geography that was otherwise cut off, and since bone music had its own network of distribution and underground production, I think it's worth mention. The comment in parenthesis is Brodsky's. "...in the Fifties every city youth had his own collection of so-called bone music. 'Bone music' was a sheet of X-ray film with a homemade copy of some jazz piece on it. The technology of the copying process was beyond my grasp, but I trust that it was a relatively simple procedure, since the supply was steady and the price reasonable. "One could purchase this somewhat moribund-looking stuff (talk about the nuclear age!) in the same fashion as those sepia pictures of Western movie stars: in parks, in public toilets, in flea markets, in the then famous 'cocktail halls'..." nm (((bruces adds: Artemy Troitsky's BACK IN THE USSR, a history of the Soviet pop underground, also describes the very extensive Soviet practice of creating and circulating illegal recordings on used X-ray plates.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.4 Dead medium: The Talking View-Master From roommate@teleport.com (Dan Howland) Source: personal observation; thrifted one this past weekend. TALKING VIEW-MASTER. Manufactured by GAF (General Aniline & Film). Circa 197?. Two-tone beige plastic. 125mm X 125mm X 200 mm. Power supply: two C batteries. While the View-Master is not a dead medium, this 1970s variation certainly is. The Talking View-Master uses a special disc set consisting of a standard View-Master disc (fourteen 10mm X 12mm [16mm film?] slides making up seven stereoscopic views, sandwiched between two 9cm cardboard discs) and a smaller, free-spinning phonorecord behind it. The two discs are inserted into the viewer/player, the first scene is located by pressing and releasing a lever, and a red reset button is pushed. Then a Sound Bar on the front of the machine is pushed, which activates the "turntable" motor and presses the stylus into the first track. Thereafter, the stylus will advance to each subsequent track with every press of the Scene Change Lever. On this model, only the motor which spins the phonorecord is electrical; the sound is transmitted mechanically from the stylus to a speaker cone. In order to allow enough light to reach the slides through the translucent record, there is a single sheet of clear plastic (65mm X 100mm) molded into two fresnel lenses on the side facing the light source. This is not an entirely successful solution; with common household light sources like lamps, it is difficult to get an equal amount of light to each eye. Source: http://redwood.northcoast.com/~shojo/View/Vwr/vwr.html GAF Talking Viewer "Talking View-Master Stereo Viewer is sturdy and easy to use. PUT in the reel... CLICK the lever... PRESS the sound bar. SEE in 3-D, and HEAR cartoon favorites, travel thrills, adventures in science. Operates on two 'C' batteries, not included." (((From original ad copy.))) Another model featured a built-in light, volume adjustment and was two-tone blue. (Not pictured is the 80's talking viewer, completely redesigned and not compatible with the earlier talking reels.) It is worth noting that while standard, non-talking View-Master reels were first marketed in 1939, they are still compatible with currently available viewers. A complete list of Talking View-Master reels is available at: http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~number6/vm/packets-talking.html Dan Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.6 Dead medium: The Luba Lukasa From: "Jael" of HARDCORE magazine, PO BOX 1893, London SW16 2ZB, Britain c/o marks@ayla.avnet.co.uk (Mark Simpkins) Source: STAFFS OF LIFE (ed. AF Roberts, Iowa City 1994) Oi, Bruce! If you think the Quipu is extinct here is a media deader than disco. The Lukasa was a mnemonic device once used by the Luba people of Zaire. The Lukasa is a hand-held flat wooden object. The flat part is divided into male and female sections, and either studded with beads and pins, or covered with incised ideograms. It was used to teach lore about cultural heros, clan migrations and the introduction of sacred rule. It was also used to suggest spatial positions of activities and oracles within the kingdom or inside a royal compound. Lukasas were used to order the sacred prerogatives of officials with regard to their contact with earth spirits and the use of natural resources. Each Lukasa elicits some or all of this information but the narration varies with the oratory skill and knowledge of the reader. The Lukasa encodes not a symbolic representation of the information, merely a mnemonic, or spatial representation map of it. The kinds of information encoded may include journeys, kings and courtiers, genealogies, and lists of clans. The instrument was used by an association called the "Mbudye," who trained men of memory who could recall genealogies, royal lists and episodes in the founding of the kingdom. It seems to me that this is not merely a single medium but an entire approach (mnemonic encoding as opposed to symbolic representation) that is disappearing from living media. Jael Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.7 Dead Medium: Dead Video Discs: Telefunken Teldec Decca TeD, TEAC system, Philips LaserVision, RCA SelectaVision CED, JVC VHD/AHD From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: "Video on disc" By Tim Frost, http://prostudio.com/issues/viddisc.html The TeD Video Disc was an 8" disc system produced by a collaboration between Telefunken, Teldec and Decca. The TeD disc was very much like old vinyl records, but with nearly 300 groves per mm. It ran at 1500 rpm. The FM modulated video and audio was picked up by a stylus system in much the same way as an LP, but it never really made it into the commercial world. By the start of the 1980s, no less than three entirely different video disc formats were being actively touted on both sides of the Atlantic. Philips had launched LaserVision, which had been seen and discussed as early as 1972, and was the first of four different Philips video disc formats. RCA was going strong with CED, and JVC brought up the rear with VHD/AHD. Several other companies were working on video disc formats. Some like TEAC, who produced a workable laser record/write system, kept the systems purely for industrial users, keeping themselves out of the major hustles of the domestic market. On the consumer side each of the systems had their own supporters, although as far as the consumer was concerned, there was little difference in quality or functionality. The RCA CED or SelectaVision Videodisc was the most high profile of the three systems. CED stood for Capacitance Electronic Disc. The information was recorded using FM techniques creating pits and bumps on the disc surface. On playback, a small diamond stylus attached to an electrode ran over the disc as it rotated. As the electrode rose and fell, the capacitance between the electrode and the carbon loaded PVC of the disc's surface varied. This was decoded into video and audio signals. Technical quality was up to VHS levels at least, and CED offered stereo sound. It also had good initial support with pre-recorded material. When the whole system came to grinding halt in 1984, there were a good 250 titles available. The discs played an hour each side, so that a full movie could be placed on a single disc. The technology for the JVC VHD/AHD system was a half- way house between CED and LaserDisc as we know it. The disk itself resembled a LaserDisc, with the data carrier imbedded beneath a clear flat plastic surface. The video and audio information was recorded more or less in the same way as CED, using an electrode in the player to sense different capacitances created by micropits in the substrate. Each disk side offered an hour of playing time with full colour and stereo sound. An audio-only version of the 10" disc held up to three channels of PCM encoded audio. Thorn/EMI entered a joint venture with JVC to press the VHD/AHD discs. Philips LaserVision was the progenitor of the current LaserDisc. From the start it was a 'silver disc' 12" in diameter, with pits recorded into it and read by a laser, using Philips CD technology. Offering an hour of play, stereo sound, and random access to any part of the disc, in practical terms it offered everything that LaserDisc and Video CD could offer, but a whole decade earlier. In a re-launch of the system, Philips and Sony introduced CD Video. This introduced the 5" CD, carrying 20 minutes of audio and 6 minutes of video. It was intended to capture a CD/Video singles market- another forlorn hope. But CD Video did accomplish the merging of CD and LaserVision, so a single 'combi-player' could play both. It also marked the end of LaserVision and the beginning of LaserDisc. In the US this meant only a formal name change, but in Europe the LaserDisc was redesigned to carry digital sound. The new LaserDiscs would not play on the old analog FM sound LaserVision players. After a pause in production, European LaserDiscs were re-launched, with growing success. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.8 Dead Medium: PhoneVision From PADGETT@hobbes.orl.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson) Source: "The Zenith Story," an inhouse Zenith publication from 1954. Zenith had experimented with subscription *television* since 1931, and had completed a system in 1947. "Phonevision" was trademarked. In 1951, with FCC approval, a limited test involving 300 Chicago families was conducted. Each day for 90 days, Zenith broadcast a Hollywood motion picture available to any family for $1 (not cheap, a new Buick was $1800 then). The families watched an average of 1.73 movies per week. More than the average, but not enough to justify a commercial venture. In 1954, a second test of an improved system was made, this time in New York City using WOR facilities to determine the effectiveness in a high broadcast density environment. The over-the-air coding/decoding mechanism worked well and the test was considered a success. In October of 1954 the first contract was concluded for the use of Phonevision for Australia and New Zealand. I do not know what happened as a result. The mechanism lingered on until the seventies without any real success. In 1971 a test of a limited number of subscribers was made in Hartford, Connecticut, but again the setup expense was considered to be to high for commercial viability. It took the mass-market penetration of cable to make pay-per-view effective. The original PhoneVision required a dedicated phone line to each subscriber's house. Later ones used on-the- air signals, but all required a special decoder box. Two types of billing saw experimental use. The first had a coin-operated box on top of the TV. When the proper amount was deposited, it would retrieve the decoding information over the phone line to unscramble the signal. Later designs required the user to call a number on the telephone and authorize the charge in exchange for a code. Entering the code into the box unscrambled the picture. Today Zenith is one of the top manufacturers of cable TV decoders. Few realize it all started back in the '30s. Warmly, Padgett btw: Zenith began regular colour TV broadcasts in Chicago back in 1940 using a "colour wheel" mechanical method and field sequential transmission. When the American standard NTSC (known as "Never The Same Colour") was adopted in 1953 by the FCC (under tremendous lobbying pressure by RCA), the field sequential colour TV system also became "dead media." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 07.9 Dead medium: Sonovision From: jackr@intrepid.axess.com (Jack Ruttan) Source: KINETIC ART: THEORY AND PRACTICE, Selections from the Journal Leonardo, Frank J. Malina ed, New York, Dover Publications Inc. 1974. This is a book full of information about kinetic and early computer and holographic art. I'll quote something relatively contemporary, from "SONOVISION: A Visual Display of Sound," by S. R. Wagler: "A new device has been invented by Lloyd G. Cross that makes a visual display in color correlated to sound by projecting a krypton or helium-neon laser light beam on to a translucid screen or opaque surface (((below is a diagram, which simply shows a laser beam being reflected off a membrane stretched over the cone of a speaker, and hitting a screen or wall))). "When there is no sound input to the device, the beam gives only a pinpoint of light. When one simple sound or musical note is introduced into the device, the dot moves in an ellipse at the frequency of the sound supplied. The size of the ellipse is related directly to the loudness of the note and can be adjusted by turning a knob on the control panel. When the note is changed to another one, a different ellipse with a new orientation is formed. When two notes are introduced simultaneously, the laser beam produces a combination of the two ellipses, similar to the Lissajous patterns obtained from cathode- ray tubes. Thus a symphony of notes will result in a symphony of ellipse interference patterns on the display screen. [...] "Repeatability means that a way is now available for the deaf to 'see' music and obtain a new experience and the device may also be useful in speech therapy. "A second mode of operation is available in the same set. A spinning prism produces a circle in place of the dot when the beam is at rest. When one or more notes are fed into the device, petal-type deviations from the circle result. [...] "The invention of Cross has been incorporated in several kinds of commercial units under the trade name _Sonovision_. [...] Editor's note; Attempts to contact Sonovision, Inc. and S.R. Wagner in 1972 were unsuccessful. Jack Ruttan Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.0 Dead media: Union telegraph balloons, Confederate microfilm From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: SPIES AND SPYMASTERS OF THE CIVIL WAR by Donald E. Markle, 1994. Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 1-56619-976-X War and espionage seem to be great generators of dead media. They produce desperate extremes in which communication is a matter of life and death, and in which normal means of communication are subjected to severe enemy attack. Necessity gives birth to invention, and when necessity ceases those inventions often vanish, into legendry or utter obscurity. Diplomacy, espionage, courier service, scouting, reportage, and postal service are generally seen as distinct activities, but the lines between them blur under stress. Markle's book on US Civil War espionage and its tradecraft offers interesting period parallels to the 1870-1871 siege of Paris, with its microfilm, mail balloons and pigeon post. page 35 "Late in the war Confederates reportedly used an advanced form of photography to prepare their messages for courier movement to Richmond." (((Markle quotes the following letter.))) United States Consulate Toronto Prv Jany 3, 1865 Honorable W. H. Seward Secretary of State Washington, D.C. Sir- The following facts having been given to me: The Rebels in this city have a quick and successful communications with Jeff Davis and the authorities in Richmond, in the following manner. Having plenty of money at their command, they employ British subjects, who are provided with British passports, and also with passports from Col (((blank))) which are plainly written; name and date of issue on fine silk and are ingeniously secreted in the lining of the coat. They carry dispatches, which are made and carried in the same manner. These messengers wear metal buttons, which, upon the inside, dispatches are most minutely photographed, not perceptible to the naked eye, but are easily read by the aid of a powerful lens. This information is reliable, from a person who has *seen* the dispatches, and has personal knowledge of the facts.... Your Obedient Servant, R.J. Kimball "What Consular Kimball was reporting is in fact known today as microfilm! The technique had been developed by a Frenchman, Rene Prudent Dagron in 1860. The images were on a 2 X 2 mm. diameter glass plate, and could be viewed using a lens developed by Lord Stanhope around 1750." (((Dagron the microfilmist and war profiteer featured largely in Dead Media Working Note 04.4, which concerned Dagron's crucial activities with balloon, pigeon and microfilm during the Prussian siege of Paris. It is very gratifying to learn for the first time that his full name was Rene Prudent Dagron. Dagron may have invented his microfilm technique in 1860, as Merkle claims, but his "Traite de Photographie Microscopique" was first published in Paris in 1864, according to John Douglas Hayhurst. It is therefore astonishing to see Confederate/British spooks apparently employing Dagron's microfilm technology as early as January 1865. Was this an independent invention, or an unpaid adaptation of Dagron's work -- or might it have been that Dagron hinself sold his technology to the Confederates? If this were so, it would go far to explain why Dagron suddenly appeared in 1871 to boldly offer his microfilm services to the tottering French government.))) (((Concerning balloons.))) page 37: "Professor Thaddeus Lowe believed strongly in the military value of hot air balloons. On June 18, 1861, he conducted a hot air balloon experiment for President Lincoln. He ascended about Washington, D.C., in a balloon with a telegraphic keying device on board and the telegraphic wire hanging out of the balloon to a ground station. He succeeded that day in transmitting the first air-to-ground telegraphic communication. (...) (((See Dead Media Working Note 02.6.))) "Professor Lowe is also credited with taking the first aerial photograph, again from one of his balloons. (((It was my understanding that this distinction belongs to the French aeronaut and photographer 'Nadar' -- bruces))) "These successes so impressed Lincoln as to the potential of the balloons that he made Professor Lowe the head of the Union Balloon Corps. (((It would be gratifying to know if the Balloon Corps had its own uniform and official insignia.))) The Union found that while the balloons did give the scouts a real advantage, not only were they regularly shot down (as they ascended or descended) but the balloons tended to spin in the air, making the scout on board very sick. The Union Balloon Corps was officially disbanded in May of 1863. "The Confederacy, while envious of the Union efforts in the area of ballooning, made only one balloon attempt in the entire war. That effort is best described in the words of General James Longstreet: 'While we were longing for the balloons that poverty denied us, a genius arose... and suggested we.... gather silk dresses and make a balloon. It was done, and we soon had a great patchwork ship.... One day it was on a steamer down on the James River, when the tide went out and left the vessel and balloon high and dry on a bar. The Federals gathered it in, and with it the last silk dresses in the Confederacy.'" Dead Media Working Notes 08.1-10.0 08.1 Chase's Electric Cyclorama 08.2 the Optigan, the Opsonar, the Orchestron; the Mellotron, the Chamberlin 08.3 Computer Games Are Dead (Part 1) 08.4 Computer Games Are Dead (Part 2) 08.5 Computer Games Are Dead (Part 3) 08.6 Computer Games Are Dead (Part 4) 08.7 the Panorama 08.8 the Panorama 08.9 the Panorama 09.0 Daguerre's Diorama 09.1 the Panorama 09.2 A Panorama Bibliography 09.3 the Panorama 09.4 Dead Videotape Formats 09.5 The Museum of the Moving Image: Jenkins Radiovisor, Bell Picture Telephone, RGA/Oxberry CompuQuad, Philco Predicta 09.6 the theatrophone; the electrophone 09.7 the theatrophone; the electrophone 09.8 Theatrophonic televangelism 09.9 Hopi town criers 10.0 Dancer's novelty microphotographs; Dagron's balloon post Dead Media Necronauts: Ian Campbell, Chris Crawford, Paul Di Filippo, Gary Gach, Pat Lichty, Eric Mankin, Soeren Pold, Bruce Sterling, Candi Strecker Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.1 Dead medium: Chase's Electric Cyclorama From: ac038@osfn.rhilinet.gov (Paul Di Filippo) Source: Scientific American February 1896 "In our illustration, we give a general view of the electric cyclorama, or panorama, as conceived by the inventor, Mr Chase of Chicago. The projection apparatus, suspended in the center of the panorama by a steel tube and guys of steel wire, is 8 feet in diameter. The operator stands within the apparatus and is surrounded by an annular table supporting eight double projectors, lanterns and all the arrangements necessary for imparting life to a panorama 300 feet in circumference and over 30 feet in height. It is possible at will to animate such and such a part of the view by combining this apparatus with the Edison kinetoscope or the Lumiere kinematograph." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.2 Dead media: the Optigan, the Opsonar, the Orchestron; the Mellotron, the Chamberlin From: strecker@sirius.com (Candi Strecker) Source: an essay by musician and collector Pea Hicks, available on the World Wide Web: http://redwood.northcoast.com/~shojo/Optigan/ph.html For further info on Optigans, seek out The Optigan Page at: http://redwood.northcoast.com/~shojo/Optigan/optigan.html (Candi Strecker:) (((The Optigan was a musical instrument produced for the home-organ consumer market in the early 1970s, using a radically different optical technology to produce its sounds. The "Dead Medium" in this case would probably be the optically-readable disks from which the Optigan "read" and generated its sounds. The following information is extracted from a much longer (and very delightful) essay by musician/composer Pea Hicks of San Diego, describing his epic quest for Optigans and information about them.))) (Pea Hicks:) About ten years ago I first became aware of the existence of the Optigan. It was in the tenth anniversary edition of Keyboard magazine. In an article on the past and future of keyboards and synthesizers, there was a brief reference to the Optigan, and it stuck in my mind for years as it was the first time I had ever seen the word 'cheesy.' The Optigan was a kind of home organ made by the Optigan Corporation (a subsidiary of Mattel) in the early 70's. It was set up like most home organs of the period = a small keyboard with buttons on the left for various chords, accompaniments and rhythms. At the time, all organs produced their sounds electrically or electronically with tubes or transistors. The Optigan was different in that its sounds were read off of LP-sized celluloid discs which contained the graphic waveforms of real instruments. These recordings were encoded in concentric looping rings using the same technology as film soundtracks. Remember that sequence in *Fantasia* where the Soundtrack makes a cameo? Those squiggly lines are actually pretty close to what the real thing looks like. As the film runs, a light is projected through the soundtrack and is picked up on the other side by a photoreceptor. The voltage is varied depending on how much light reaches the receptor, and after being amplified this voltage is converted into audible sound by the speakers. The word 'Optigan' stands for 'Optical Organ.' Optigan discs have 57 rings of soundtrack = these provide recordings of real musicians playing riffs, chord patterns and other effects. (37 of the tracks are reserved for the keyboard sound itself = a different recording for each note.) So when you want to play a bossa nova, you don't get those wimpy little pop-pop-chink-chink electronic sounds = you actually hear a live combo backing you up! This was a pretty unique concept for the early 70's. Technically speaking, the Optigan was a primitive sampler. Sort of. I tend to think of it more like an ultra-poor-man's Mellotron or Chamberlin. These are two famous keyboards from the fifties and sixties which played back recordings of instruments on lengths of magnetic tape. These two became very popular despite some huge drawbacks. For one thing, the tapes only lasted a few seconds and could not loop. If you wanted your flute to keep playing, you would have to re-press the key after eight seconds. This also involved waiting for the tape to rewind, so fast playing was generally not possible. Also, the racks of tapes themselves were pretty huge and unwieldy = changing from a choir to an oboe was quite an undertaking compared to what today's machines can do. Not surprisingly, these instruments were quite expensive to buy and maintain. But the sounds they made were worth it = at least at the time. Mattel marketed the Optigan as something of an adult toy = the sound quality was simply not good enough for professional use. They sold mostly through stores like Sears and JC Penney and were relatively inexpensive = about $150 to $300 depending on which model you chose. They came with a "Starter Set" of four discs, and extra discs were marketed like records. Official Optigan music books were also available to help you make the most out of the minimal talent you probably had if you had bought an Optigan in the first place. The first thing you notice about the Optigan (if you have any imagination at all, that is) is how malleable this technology was. You can do all sorts of things with the discs to sabotage the sound = put them in upside down, put several in at once, manually stop and start them with your hands for record scratch effects, press all the buttons at once, and so on. Most of the sounds that were recorded for the keyboard section are different kinds of sustained organs. Since the disc spins constantly, the sounds just keep looping around and around. So the keyboard sounds can't have a beginning and end per se. [...] Some of the discs even have non- musical sound effects (such as applause) on them. You would think that, since the discs are not played by physical contact, there would be no pops or scratches such as on vinyl records. But this is not the case = tiny scratches on the discs cause irregular diffractions of light which in turn end up sounding exactly like record scratches! Most of the time, though, this actually improves the sound. You get the weird feeling that you're listening to a cheesy old Enoch Light record, but you're actually controlling where the music goes! [...] Mattel only produced the machines (at a factory in Compton, nonetheless) for a couple of years. They didn't sell very well because of several design flaws which made them amazingly unreliable and prone to breaking down. Eventually Mattel sold the whole works to the Miner Company of New York (an organ manufacturer). They continued production of the Optigan under the company name of Opsonar and also produced several new discs. But the design remained the same, and its inherent problems forced the Miner company to drop the machine as well. Later, the technology was bought by a company called Vako which made an instrument called the Orchestron. This was designed for professional use, but the sound quality still sucked. They made about 50 of these machines before they folded. Candi Strecker strecker@sirius.com "putting up Burma-Shave signs along the information superhighway" Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.3 Dead Medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 1) From ChrisCr@aol.com (Chris Crawford) Source: INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number 4, April 1996 Interactive Entertainment Design 5251 Sierra Road San Jose, CA 95132 published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US (((Chris Crawford is a computer game designer and industry activist, author of "Balance of Power" and other works, and founder of the Computer Game Developers' Conference. I have long thought that Crawford's home-published "Interactive Entertainment Design" is the best theoretical zine held together with staples. In the latest issue Crawford develops the daring thesis that the multi- zillion-dollar computer gaming medium has lost its way and is doomed to perish. I feel that his detailed speculations on the forthcoming death of his medium are worthy of close study from Dead Media devotees, so I have asked and received permission from Mr Crawford to run his essay on the DMML. The essay will be run in its entirety, but divided into four parts. Part One follows. (((A personal note: my second daughter, Laura Ivy Sterling, was born on April 12, 1996. Mother and child are doing fine -- Bruce Sterling))) Computer Games Are Dead Chris Crawford Death is an intense word. We associate it with evil, oblivion, finality. We can think of death in its narrowest meaning, the moment of termination of life. The throat rattles, the heart stops beating, and we say that death has come. But is death confined to that instant of actualization? For a person whose kidneys have failed, and medical intervention is unavailable, death is inevitable. The terminal cancer patient will surely die. The suicide in mid-plummet is just as certain of death as the victim of a major stroke. Thus, the clean line we seek to draw between life and death is often blurred by the complexities of causality. "Where there's life, there's hope" == this is one of the adages preserved by Erasmus. I propose to turn the adage around: where there's hope, there's life. When the causal factors are sufficient to give us reasonable hope of future adaptive change, then we say that the organism is alive. When those causal factors give us no reasonable hope of future adaptation, then the organism is as good as dead. A magnificent oak tree whose roots have been infected with root fungus may linger on for years, but the arborist will tell you that it's dead. Where there's no hope, there is death. This is the definition that I will use in arguing my prognosis for the computer games field. Is there hope of future adaptive change? I think not; therefore, I conclude that computer games are dead. When I speak of "computer games", I refer to a complex organism. It's not just a collection of shrink-wrapped boxes sitting on some store shelf. Nor is it encompassed by so many terabytes of code, video, imagery, text, and sound. "Computer games" are an entire field, an industry, a community. I prefer to think of it as an organism composed of a variety of subsystems, each of which contributes to the overall health of the organism. In living creatures, the process of death is a collective collapse of all the constituent subsystems. Indeed, most deaths are attributable not to any single subsystem failure but rather to a collective synergistic failure of all the subsystems. As the kidneys grow weaker, the concentration of poisons in the blood increases, reducing overall system efficiency. Metabolism slows down and the heart pumps less. Appetite is reduced, thereby reducing the supply of nutrients with which to repair damaged cells. Resistance to infection falls, and opportunistic infections arise in the lungs. The creature grows lethargic, and in this lethargic state blood flow to limbs and musculature is reduced, further reducing recuperative capabilities in these regions. The whole system grinds downward towards a collapse. I believe that much the same thing is happening with computer games, although I do not anticipate a complete collapse of the organism. Instead, I see it reaching a state of moribund stasis. The computer games industry is here to stay, but it could well spend its future in a coma, without hope of future adaptive growth: technically alive but dead in every meaningful dimension. An example of my meaning is provided by the coin-op industry. I remember, back in the late 70s and early 80s, when coin-op was the leading edge of electronic game design. The brightest and most talented designers worked in the coin-op field, because it was the field with all the creative energy. All the great games were originally designed in the coin-op arena, and were then translated to the videogame and computer game fields. Do you remember Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Centipede, BattleZone, Tempest, and those other coin-op classics? Those were heady times. But look at coin-op now. Yes, the industry is still here. They continue to ship products and make money. But where is the creative ferment? Where is the excitement of those earlier days? Who pays attention to their work? Coin-op has become a backwater, a comatose field marking time. Like old men sitting on the porch, reminiscing of the good old days, coin-op is just marking time until it dies. When it does, its passing will attract as much attention as the death of the ticker-tape machine or the telegraph; few will notice and none will care. Videogames are moving along the same track, although their decrepit state is not so obvious. Like a dying oak, they still sprout new leaves every spring. But like the oak, you can only see the trend if you've been watching for a long time. The old-timer notes how, with each passing year, the new foliage is sparser and less exuberant. The youngster sees only the mighty trunk and the bright green colors, and does not understand the old- timer's sad shaking of his head. So it is with videogames. Yes, we continue to see new games each year, but they are ever-more pathetic echoes of past design greatness. Mario's children abound, but as heirs made feckless by easy wealth, they lack the drive and energy of their great ancestor. Videogames have been dead for years. And now computer games are dead. The dying has been a long time coming, but it's here now. Yes, I realize that you don't see the indicators as clearly as I think I do; a cursory examination shows an apparently healthy patient. But let me show you how to look more closely at the organism, how to smell the ketotic breath, the asymmetric iris that are sure signs of inevitable death. (((In Crawford's next episode: "FROM CREATOR-DRIVEN TO MARKET-DRIVEN"))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.4 Dead medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 2) From: ChrisCr@aol.com (Chris Crawford) Source: INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number 4, April 1996 Interactive Entertainment Design 5251 Sierra Road San Jose, CA 95132 published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US (((We continue Mr Crawford's essay on the decline of computer gaming, "Computer Games Are Dead.".))) FROM CREATOR-DRIVEN TO MARKET-DRIVEN The first indicator is the decisive shift from a creator-driven field to a market-driven field. In the early days of computer gaming, the creative talents made all the editorial decisions. There were two reasons for this: first, they had a lockhold on the supply of games. Competent designer/programmers were rare; if the executives didn't take it the way the designer created it, the designer could walk away and leave the executives stranded without product. Nowadays, the supply is more closely matched to demand, so the designers have less creative control over their work. Second, the marketplace was not well- understood in those days. It's difficult to overrule a designer with marketing data that doesn't exist. But over the years the industry has built up an impressive set of marketing truisms that have shifted the balance of power into the hands of the marketing folk. I'll not decry this power shift as an evil; it just happened. Marketing people aren't bad or stupid or crass, and designers don't hold the keys to goodness and light. But the shift from a creator-driven atmosphere to a market-driven atmosphere worked a profound change on the organism, transforming it from a future-looking creature to a past-looking creature. At its heart, the creator- driven approach concentrates on the future, on what might be. The creator's whole point and purpose is to move beyond the existing limits and explore new areas == to change. This emphasis on change is at the core of what we mean by "life." By contrast, the market-driven approach is past- looking, for it concentrates on what was successful yesterday. The marketer's whole point and purpose is to identify the locus of success and stick close to it. Stability is the byword of the market-driven approach. Every industry combines the creator-driven approach with the market-driven approach in its own proportion. The creators supply drive and the marketers provide sustenance. The proportion determines the liveliness or morbidity of the industry. For example, laundry detergent is a mature industry, needing nothing in the way of new worlds to conquer; it is therefore, and quite fittingly, a market-driven industry. By contrast, a field such as genetic engineering is still nascent; its triumphs all lie in the future. Marketing focus is inappropriate here; whoever finds a cure for cancer need not concern himself with marketing issues. This field is utterly creator-driven. There is nothing inherently disreputable or dishonorable about the laundry detergent industry, nor is genetic engineering morally superior to making laundry detergent. But ask yourself: which field has more life in it? Which field has the future with the greater promise of change? By shifting from a creator-driven organism to a market-driven organism, we have transformed computer games from a medium to a commodity. A medium is a channel of communication, something whose content is constantly in flux and ever-surprising. This flux, this change, is the heartbeat of life of the medium. There is always the hope of a brighter future with any medium, because the content can always change to address new conditions. But a commodity is a dead thing, a box that sits on a shelf. Who can confidently expect the commodities of today to meet the needs of tomorrow? In our shift from creator- driven to market-driven, our image of the computer game has shifted, too: we now see a box where once we saw a medium. By fixing it in place, we have killed it. BUYING MARKET SHARE 1990 brought a turning point in the history of computer games: Wing Commander. The game itself had some strong points; it was a modernized version of Star Raiders, the classic Atari game of 1979 that catapulted the Atari computers into near-success. But its greatest strength lay in its development budget. This may be hard to understand, but in 1990 the typical computer game cost perhaps $150K to create. Wing Commander's budget was much, much larger than this. Origin's strategy with Wing Commander was clear: to buy market share. In most cases, a willingness to raise the stakes by investing more money is of positive benefit to an industry. Everybody else must either call the bet or fold, and the overall quality of product rises. However, in a young industry such as computer games, it doesn't quite work the way it should work, or the way it does work in mature industries. In a mature industry, additional investment capital is carefully routed to those endeavors that will yield the greatest return on investment. To make this intelligent allocation of funds, we require an experienced team of executives who know what they're doing. Such has not been the case with computer games. Despite all we have learned in the last fifteen years, most computer game company executives are still groping about. The best evidence of this is the torrent of money that has been poured down the sinkhole over the last five years. Origin's action triggered an inverted gold rush; everybody stampeded to spend money on products. In the process, we succeeded in 1) glutting the shelves with overpriced junk; 2) convincing our customers that our output was overpriced junk; and 3) attracting a horde of shysters and opportunists into our industry. The most invidious result of the inverse gold rush has been the steep rise in entry costs. Back in the 1980s, two clowns in a garage could put together a hit computer game. This attracted a great many clowns, to be sure, but some of those clowns turned out to be quite creative. The low entry costs of making computer games kept up the creative ferment. But when the entry cost rose beyond the reach of individuals in the 1990s, computer game design became an activity requiring financial muscle == and a lot of talented people were shut out of the market. A CLOSED DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM A third factor contributing to the sclerosis of computer games is the self-assured closure of the distribution system for games. Everybody in the distribution chain, from retailers to distributors to publishers, knows what sells and what doesn't sell. They can all tell you with great precision what makes for a hit game and what doesn't. It has almost been reduced to a science. The entire process has become so tightly managed, so carefully balanced on the edge of profitability, that there is no longer any room for experimentation. There's nothing wrong with applying our knowledge. We need to consider the feedback of the marketplace and apply that feedback to our creations. But we also need to retain some intellectual humility, a recognition that our best marketing data represents only a fraction of the truth, to wit, the knowledge of what has worked in response to what has been attempted. The marketplace is a vast unknown creature, a blob of confusion that we can only know by poking it with a variety of experiments. If we try to sell one game and it fails, then we know that games similar to it will fail; if we try to sell another game and it succeeds, then we know that games similar to this game will sell. But we must be careful about generalizing too much from these lessons. A failure can be attributed to many factors, and we cannot know with certainty why any given game succeeded. For example, why was Balance of Power such a huge commercial success? I don't know. Was it because it was one of the first games to fully exploit the spirit of the Macintosh GUI? Was it because it appeared at a tense time when the public was particularly sensitive to international relations? Was it because its intelligence and maturity provided a welcome relief from the juvenile pap that dominated the industry at the time? We will never know. Anybody who claims to have put their finger on the answer is deceiving himself. Let's look at the other side of the coin: why did my game Trust & Betrayal fail so miserably? Was it because the graphics were below average? Perhaps; but the graphics were still superior to those of some games that were more successful, such as the Infocom adventure games, which continued to sell well at the same time that Trust & Betrayal was bombing. Was it because the game had no action or violence? Perhaps. Was it because the game emphasized interpersonal relationships? Perhaps. Was it that the game had no clear market identification? Was the price too high? Who knows? The danger here is that we can use Trust & Betrayal or Balance of Power to support any pet theory we favor. It is entirely plausible that someday, interpersonal games may be a hugely successful genre. In this case, people will point to Trust & Betrayal as the precursor game of the genre, attributing its failure to other factors. It was on the right track, we will say, but was crippled by the fatal flaw of (fill in the blank). The important thing for us to recognize today is that it is impossible for us to know what that fatal flaw is, at least not until we try other experiments. To dismiss interpersonal games as a dead end because Trust & Betrayal failed would be idiocy == and yet the games industry has jumped to exactly that conclusion by placing all of its money on other factors. This problem has been addressed successfully by other industries. For example, by the mid-1970's, Hollywood had established a solid marketing rule of thumb that science- fiction movies just didn't attract large audiences. Thus, George Lucas was taking an almost contrarian stance when he made Star Wars. Had Hollywood's distribution system been as closed as the computer games distribution system, Star Wars would never have seen the light of day. But Hollywood has learned that a certain amount of experimentation is essential to its survival. Entertainment is first and foremost a field in flux, and an industry that cannot support experimentation in an organized fashion is a dead industry. Such is the case with computer games. (((Part Three continues soon with "The Death of Creativity."))) Dead Media Working Note 08.5 Dead medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 3) From: ChrisCr@aol.com (Chris Crawford) Source: INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number 4, April 1996 Interactive Entertainment Design 5251 Sierra Road San Jose, CA 95132 published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US (((We now offer the third installment of Mr Crawford's essay, "Computer Games Are Dead.))) THE DEATH OF CREATIVITY A related factor in this == perhaps a symptom of the previous factors == is the death of creativity. I have been participating in this industry for 16 years now, and I have noted a sharp decline in the overall level of creativity in the industry since about 1990. The last truly original game we have seen is SimCity. This failure manifests itself most clearly in the slavish imitation of other designs. Everybody scrambles to make a Doom-clone or a Myst-clone. Why must we spend so much time copying each other? Isn't there anybody out there thinking an original thought? Another way of saying this is that we just don't try fundamentally new ideas. Is the universe of entertainment confined to adventure games, shoot-em-ups, vehicle simulations, and strategy wargames? Is that really all there is to design? Some people have suggested that our standards of creativity have fallen because we have already discovered everything there is to create. Having already staked out the territory, we are now in a more mature phase where we merely examine the nooks and crannies that were overlooked in the initial creative reconnaissance of the 1980s. This argument leaves me aghast. I can't decide whether to condemn it for its cynicism, its stupidity, or its intellectual vainglory. Consider, for example, the scale of human ingenuity unleashed by the invention of the printing press. The basic technology has remained stable for over 500 years, and yet during that time we have seem an ongoing cavalcade of new ideas. First the printing press was used for devotional works, then polemic works. It was the driving technology behind the Reformation, and then became a medium for scientific collaboration. It also became a source of entertainment, expanding to bring literacy to the masses in the nineteenth century. It is now the basis for a bewildering array of elements fundamental to our civilization. And this is just a way of putting ink onto paper == contrast that with the vastly greater power of the computer! Consider the fact that the personal computer has increased in power by at least a thousandfold since its inception. To suggest that, in fifteen short years, we have fully explored the creative potential of a medium more powerful and changing more rapidly than any other medium in human history is ridiculous. Creative life and energy should be the hallmark of our industry; the creative failings of the last five years are sure signs of its morbidity. If all this creative potential cannot inspire us to mighty leaps of creative derring-do, then surely our souls are dead, dead, dead. A DEAD COMMUNITY Another indicator of industry mobidity is the loss of the spirit of community. This is best evidenced by the steady shift in spirit at the Computer Game Developers' Conference. Here's something I wrote in the June 1988 issue of this same periodical in reference to the first CGDC: "But easily the most powerful feeling of the day was the dawning sense of awareness of community. For the first few hours, you could see people looking around the circle of faces with a sense of awe. 'My God!' their faces said, 'Lookit all these other people who are game designers just like me!' People who have spent years working in isolation suddenly realized that there are others who ask the same questions, fight the same battles, and make the same mistakes they have." Contrast this with the spirit of the 1995 CGDC. It was huge and impressive, to be sure, but the sense of anomie was overpowering. The banquet was swanky but had none of the warm communal spirit of times past; instead it had shouting, food thrown, and people ejected. What was once a communal gathering has become a carnival, a meat market, and a promenade; it felt more like a cotillion than a family picnic. Some of this change is the unavoidable result of growth, but we can't pin all the problems on growth. Some cities have developed slums, crime, and inner city decay as the consequence of their growth; other cities have grown just as rapidly without encountering these problems. Somewhere on the path from my living room to the Santa Clara Convention Center, the CGDC lost its soul. And I think that this loss is reflective of deeper trends within the community as a whole. Let's talk about morality. It seems to me that most people take an entirely too religious approach to morality, treating it as something mystical and sacred, full of absolute truths and moral imperatives. I view morality in more pragmatic terms, as a collection of rules for social cohesion. Moral systems allow people to live together in cooperating communities. Every community and subcommunity has its own local mores, its special variant moral system. Our industry is a community with a moral system, and that moral system is democratically established in much the same way that a language is established: people embrace what they like and reject what they don't like, and the collective average of everybody's choices constitutes the language and moral code for the community. Thus, moral code and language are the primary glue that holds the community together. A community with a vibrant language and a strong moral code will prosper; a community with a divided language or a weak moral code will be destroyed by its fissiparousness. I was once discussing a complex financial transaction with my financial advisor when I suggested what I thought was a simple solution to a knotty problem. He dismissed my suggestion with the slightest edge of distaste in his voice: "We don't do that kind of thing." He went on to explain that my suggestion, however innocent in intent, was similar to a ploy used by unethical persons and was therefore shunned by honorable traders. While perfectly legal, it was a violation of the unwritten moral code of his community, and as I studied the workings of the financial instrument in question, I came to understand the practical value of my advisor's prohibition. I remember another case in which I was discussing a business deal with my agent, who was a member of the New York book publishing community. As part of the deal, he wanted me to jump through some hoops, and I was rather impatient with the rigamarole. When I protested the impracticality of his request, he explained, "That's the way we do things." My protest ran afoul of an unwritten rule of his profession. Again, that rule made perfect sense in the context of the kinds of business transactions he worked with every day. It seems to me that the games community has failed to establish a solid moral code. Perhaps the gold rush mentality that we have lived with for so long has seeped into our souls and poisoned our values. In the last five years I have observed with growing dismay the steady erosion of altruism, the decline of artistic aspiration, the stealthy march of greed. But worst of all has been the moral apathy of the community as a whole, a cynical shrugging of the shoulders at the process of moral decline. Some years ago a powerful publisher brought under- the-table pressure to bear to prevent an individual from giving a technical lecture at CGDC, even though the primary subject matter of that person's lecture was his own proprietary technology that he had used in conjunction with a project involving the powerful publisher. The powerful publisher's attitude was that every aspect of their operation was a proprietary secret, even those aspects that they had not themselves created. I publicly raised the moral issue created by this case; did we as an industry want to live with this kind of moral precept? My question should have spurred a soul- searching debate about the complexities of intellectual property and how ownership of that intellectual property can spread to others through business relationships; instead it was met with utter apathy. Nobody seemed to be interested in the question. More telling is the sad story of the sale of the CGDC to Miller-Freeman. Here was the premier community event of our industry, explicitly founded and historically operated as a public service, not a vehicle for personal gain. Incoming directors were required to promise not to harbor expectations of deriving personal gain from the power that they were being given. Their stock was contractually specified to have a value of exactly $25. In the early years, there was no question as to our altruistic intent; it was woven into the fabric of our corporate culture and provided the basis of many of our decisions. It was a profoundly healthy moral rule, something that conferred great power on CGDC and a major factor in its spectacular success. In the early days, everybody pitched in to make CGDC a success. But then the moral miasma of the community infected the CGDC. Greed whispered ever more insistently in our ears. I must confess before God and the universe that I was sorely tempted; I flirted with greed and explored the possibilities of being "just a little greedy". I wondered aloud whether there was not some middle road between altruism and greed. I never had the opportunity to transform my illicit fantasies into actions noble or evil, for the others kicked me out and confiscated my stock. They then decided the issue themselves by selling CGDC to Miller-Freeman for an undisclosed sum. I do not know how much they got; I am told that it was a great deal of money. In so doing, they violated their promises to others and indirectly transferred huge amounts of money out of the pockets of their colleagues in the community and into their own pockets. Even more striking was their treatment of their former partners, the previous directors of the CGDC: they gave each such person $3,000 in return for a legal waiver. This amount represents an infinitesimal fraction of what they kept for themselves. The most astounding aspect of this entire affair is the reaction of the community. When I laid these facts before members of the computer game community, the most common reaction was a cynical shrug of the shoulders. "What did you expect, Chris?" There was no sense of moral outrage, no concern that such behavior poisoned the atmosphere for everybody. Instead, some people applauded the sellers for having gotten rich. Others abdicated all moral responsibility, arguing that moral policing is the duty of the law, not of individuals. Some placed personal loyalty ahead of moral sensibility, deciding the case on a strictly ad hominem basis. Some chose to bury the matter under an obfuscatory pile of uncertainties, demanding written proof of criminal intent before they would pass judgement. Some just preferred to avoid conflict. The end result was a community-wide acquiescence to behavior that many other communities would refuse to tolerate. Some of the same people who sold the CGDC are now running the CGDA. One would think that CGDA members would demand their replacement at the earliest possible date, if only to assert the highest moral standards for their nascent organization, but in fact no such demand has materialized. Indeed, one of the sellers, Ernest Adams, is now a candidate for a full-time salaried position as Executive Director of the CGDA. When I point out the irony of this situation to members of the community, the most common response is, "If he does a good job for us, why should we care about his past?" The problem here isn't Ernest Adams or any of the other people who sold CGDC. They are only the touchstone against which the moral strength of the community is tested. The problem is with the community. A group that responds to allegations of unethical behavior with a cynical shrug of the shoulders is a moral corpse, a collection of individuals elbowing against each other rather than a cohesive community. Without a strong moral infrastructure, this community is only marking time before it fractures into defensive enclaves. (((The last and fourth part of Mr Crawford's essay follows.))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.6 Dead medium: Computer Games Are Dead (Part 4) From: ChrisCr@aol.com (Chris Crawford) Source: INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT DESIGN Volume 9, Number 4, April 1996 Interactive Entertainment Design 5251 Sierra Road San Jose, CA 95132 published six times/year, $36 year, $50 outside US (((We now conclude Mr Crawford's essay on the decline of computer gaming, "Computer Games Are Dead.".))) Howcum we're still kicking? It would be easy to dismiss my apocalyptic preaching with the simple observation that the industry is financially healthy. The hairshirts who point with quavering fingers at our iniquity, threatening hellfire and brimstone, may be at least partially right about the iniquity, but so far we seem to have been doing enough things right that the hellfire and brimstone are on hold. So perhaps we should ignore crazy hairshirts like Chris Crawford. It's certainly true that the computer games industry has successfully escaped damnation for quite some time now. In many ways, the situation is similar to the stock market, which just keeps rising and rising in blithe disregard for the predictions of financial experts who insist that it must come down sooner or later. The financial papers talk about the Dow defying gravity, and nobody seems to understand what's happening. The big difference, of course, is that canny investors are balancing their portfolios with greater diversification, but the computer games industry just keeps believing in itself. There are three reasons for the apparent levitation of the computer games industry. First is easy money. Because so much money was made by the pioneers, there are plenty of investors willing to pour money into the business. Because everybody sees this as a growth industry, investors are willing to lose money today in order to get a solid market position for the future. So the money pours into our industry, we build million-dollar products that return ten cents on the dollar for their development costs, and we just keep reminding our investors of Myst and Doom. We think that because we're gaining money, we're doing just fine, but in fact much of that income is investment, not earnings. Someday the easy money will dry up, and when it does, we won't look so superhuman. Another factor in our continuing success is the supply of cheap labor. Any other industry would have to pay its creative and technical people huge amounts of money for their services, but in this business there are always eager young talents willing to work for next to nothing to get their big break. There are thousands of people who are working on speculation, and their net contribution to this industry can be valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This labor acts just like investment, so again the impression is created of a wealthy and successful industry, but in fact it's more like those financial empires assembled by con men who borrow in long chains, making themselves look rich on borrowed money. At some point, a payment comes due that can't be met, and the whole financial "empire" collapses. So it is with our industry. At some point the expectation of easy money will erode, causing some of the opportunists investing their time to write off their investment, depriving companies of valuable cheap labor, further accelerating their decline, which in turn only hastens the first process. A third factor in our faux-success is the false basis of most of our sales. Several years ago I pointed out that we were riding on the backs of the hardware manufacturers, who have performed economic miracles in lowering the price of the personal computer while raising its performance. The ever-improving price/performance ratio of personal computers has enticed an ever-larger segment of the public to take the plunge. Of course, whenever you buy hardware, you might as well get a few games. I believe that the ignorant games purchases of initial computer buyers have been a major component of our industry's financial success in the last five years. The best evidence in support of this belief is the dramatic concentration of sales in a few hit titles. Surely the phenomenal success of Myst cannot be due to any overwhelming superiority of the title == we've all played the game and we all know how good it is. Existing computer owners did not rush out to buy Myst because it's the greatest computer game to come along in years. Instead, it established a solid reputation as a great pretty pictures game, the one for first-time buyers to get in order to show off the wonderful capabilities of their new machines. If my hypothesis be correct, then as the deceleration in sales of home computers expands, we should see a strong decline in the sales of computer games. This issue will make itself clear in a matter of a year or two. If in fact we do see this strong decline, then we will know that we've been living in a fool's paradise, and that the financial success we have enjoyed has little to do with the economic merits of our output. You can't defy gravity forever. We've pulled off a great levitation act for the last five years, but reality will catch up with us and when it does, we'll hit the ground all the harder for our failure to appreciate what's been happening. If there were no other forces at work, we'd be facing the same future that coin-op games and videogames are facing. OTHER FORCES But there are other forces at work, forces that might save computer gaming: multimedia and the Internet. I will not prognosticate on their separate futures; you've seen more than enough hype on those two subjects already. Instead, I want to focus on the how these two forces will affect computer games. Let's start with multimedia. What is most striking to me about multimedia is the fact that it isn't gaming. That is, multimedia is just another term for interactive entertainment, but there's a clear connotation of differentiation from gaming. We may not know what multimedia really is, but we do know that it isn't gaming. Yes, computer games use CD-ROMs and sound boards and full motion video, just like multimedia products, but we still know that computer games are distinct from multimedia. This distinction implies divergence, and divergence means that multimedia won't save computer gaming. I think that multimedia represents a society-wide rejection of computer games. After all, if everybody thought that computer games represent the path to the future, then what need would there be for an alternative path utilizing the same means? The rapid growth of multimedia represents a broad desire for something other than computer games, something different. Therefore, the progress of multimedia represents not the salvation of computer games, but its bane. The Internet is a different story. This is not an alternative using the same technology, but something quite new. What is exciting about the Internet is that its culture is as yet undefined. Initially a research culture, later a more broadly academic culture, now it is moving out into larger circles of society, and along the way its culture is changing. Because it is so ill- defined, the starry-eyed optimists among us see whatever they wish to see in the Internet. At some point, though, the Internet will crawl into focus; it will not be all things to all people. I don't know what this focal point will be, but let's explore two simplistic alternatives based on a single polarity: let's assume that either the Internet culture will embrace the techie-nerd culture that dominates computer gaming, or it will reject it. Again, this is a simple polarity, but it clarifies our reasoning. Because if the Internet settles down to an on-line manifestation of the techie-nerd universe, then its entertainment will be a clone of the existing techie-nerd world of computer games == in which case computer gaming will not be changed by the Internet. On the other hand, if the Internet becomes populist, mainstream rather than techie-nerd, then conventional computer games will fail on the Internet just as surely as they have failed to penetrate society at large, and the computer gamers will retreat into their own little hobbyist enclave the same way they've done with standalone systems. Either way, we come to the same conclusion: the Internet is not going to change the nature of computer gaming. A dying man can change hospitals, but it won't change the outcome. Some will point to the multi-player aspect of the Internet and argue that this is the revolutionary socializing factor that will change the face of gaming. Until now games have been solitary experiences, attracting asocial nerds and repelling the more socially adept. The Internet will change all that, they say, attracting a new type of player, thereby enabling a whole galaxy of new creative opportunities. There is merit in this argument, but I think it must take a back seat to the larger cultural issues surrounding the use of the Internet. I really don't think that large numbers of people will make their decision to participate in the Internet solely on the basis of the games available there. Ultimately, the Internet will develop a culture, and this overarching culture will dictate the style of games that will be commercially viable. In other words, the availability of fine multi-player games will not attract large numbers of "normal" people to join an otherwise "techie-nerd" culture. If, by my previous argument, the Internet instead becomes a medium for "normal" people, then the multi-player interactive entertainment available will be differentiated from computer gaming, and again we will see the divergence between computer gaming and Internet interactive entertainment in exactly the same manner that multimedia has differentiated itself from computer gaming. What I am saying here is that technology doesn't change people; people change technology. It took nearly a decade for computer games to establish their target market, but that marketplace is now clearly defined, and it's the people == the customers == who dictate the shape of computer gaming. New technologies will not change the customer base. Computer gaming has failed to establish itself as a mass market medium. Instead, the field has become a hobby, and hobbies tend to be insular and resistant to change. I am not suggesting that computer games will drop off the face of the earth. Indeed, they will surely persist with the same durability demonstrated by, say, model railroading, amateur photography, and woodworking. But this generation has dropped the torch in its scramble for quick gain, and has lost its shot at creating a living medium with a bright future. Instead, we have created a hobby, a good and fine thing, to be sure, but nothing approaching the potential that we optimistically contemplated back in the early 80s. As for me, well, I don't give up so easily. I have picked up the torch, brushed it off, and resumed trudging up the now-lonely path, even as the rest of the parade gaily marches down to hell. There are plenty of other people standing around hopefully, potential torchbearers all, each bringing some special talent to the picture. I don't know whether it will emerge from the multimedia people, or the Internet people, or from some other direction, but I do know that we need to start all over and build a new creative community, one dedicated to the construction of a mass medium rather than the exploitation of a technology. I approach this task with optimism and excitement. Over the last year or two, as I have opened my eyes to people outside the traditional computer gaming community, I have discovered a wide array of talented people, bursting with energy and enthusiasm. They're out there, ready to make a revolution. Chris Crawford (ChrisCr@aol.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.7 Dead medium: the Panorama From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Panorama Phenomenon: Mesdag Panorama 1881- 1981 Published by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Centenarian Mesdag Panorama (September 1981) Den Haag, Holland editor Evelyn J. Fruitema written by Paul A. Zoetmulder Mesdag Panorama, Zeestraat 65b, 2518AA The Hague (Netherlands) (((The justly famed Mesdag Panorama in Den Haag is one of the best-preserved examples of this dead form of nineteenth-century virtuality. THE PANORAMA PHENOMENON is an illustrated English-language historiography associated with the exhibit, with extensive notes on Hendrik Willem Mesdag's own panorama of Old Scheveningen, and on the panorama in general.))) page 13 "An anecdote has it that in the year 1785 a young Irish painter in Edinburgh landed in prison because he could give no satisfaction to his creditors. He was the painter and draughtsman Robert Barker who, confined in his prison cell, perhaps through sheer boredom, accidentally invented the panorama. His extremely uncomfortable quarters were situated in a basement, and the sparse daylight entered through a narrow opening in the ceiling, very near the wall, and so lighted up the vertical wall just underneath. "Barker will not have had much contact with the world outside, but once he did receive a letter which gave him inspiration. He could only decipher the letter by holding it up against the dimly lit wall. The incidence of light from above on the letter, observed by Barker in the dark gaol, apparently presented such a peculiar effect, that it occurred to the civil debtor to illuminate paintings in a similar way.(...) "The patent obtained by him in 1787 defined this conclusively. The fact that he applied for a patent is typical. It may well be the first manifestation of the systematic mixture of art and technology. (...) "In 1787 he brought an unusual picture to London, unusual both for its size and form; a large oblong semi- circular canvas depicting a *View of Edinburgh.* Compared to his later work, it was only an initial effort to create what he described a little later in his patent application as a 'View of Nature' (La Nature a Coup d'Oeil). In the artistic community his first effort had no success whatsoever. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the President of the Royal Society, advised Barker courteously but explicitly to stop his useless experimenting, an advice completely disregared by the modernist. His invention was patented on the 3rd of July 1787. "He defined his invention: 'An entire new contrivance or apparatus, which I call La Nature a Coup d'Oeil, for the purpose of displaying views of Nature at large by Oil Painting, Fresco, Water Colours, Crayons, or any other mode of painting or drawing." "The word *panorama* does not figure in the patent. (...) It is reported that the term would have been introduced by a classical scholar among his friends. At any rate, Barker himself mentions the word *panorama* in 1792 in an advertisement in *The Times.* Henceforth it quickly became the definite style for a circular picture." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.8 Dead medium: the Panorama From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Panorama Phenomenon: Mesdag Panorama 1881- 1981 Published by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Centenarian Mesdag Panorama (September 1981) Den Haag, Holland editor Evelyn J. Fruitema written by Paul A. Zoetmulder Mesdag Panorama, Zeestraat 65b, 2518AA The Hague (Netherlands) pages 18-19 "Quite simply, the secret of the panorama lies in the elimination of the possibility to compare the work of art with the reality outside, by taking away *all* boundaries which remind the spectator that he is observing a separate object within his total visual field. Not without reason the panorama used to be called the 'all-view' or 'the picture without boundaries.' Barker's patent achieved this effect by incapsulating the spectator inside a *total view.* "The circular canvas envelops him like a cylinder. When he glances upward, the light source and the top edge of the picture remain hidden from view by an umbrella- like roof over the platform (the so-called *velum*), and at the bottom of the picture his view is blocked by a cloth or another kind of foreground, placed between the balustrade and the lower edge of the painting. "By means of these provisions the spectator is deprived of the possibility of comparison. He can no longer correctly judge size and distance. He only sees the objects on the painting surrounding him in their relative proportions (...) and all this lead the spectator to experience his fictitious surroundings as a reality. This technique, invented by Barker, was a complete novelty at the time, and its amazing effect was the cause of the enormous success scored by the panorama during more than a hundred years. "It goes without saying that in the course of time the optical effects have been further doctored. (...) The corridor leading from below to the platform was therefore darkened, so that the visitor, whose eye had been adapted to this darkness, gets caught unprepared by the fully lit panorama picture (...) A winding staircase was mostly chosen for entering the higher situated platform with the preconceived intention of making the visitor lose his bearings. "Numerous experiments were necessary to establish how the spectator should be fitted into the whole, and the distance to be allowed between the platform and the canvas. The lighting of the canvas via the roof dome = an essential element of panorama technique = was no simple matter. (...) Experiments were made with smoked glass, with 'skirts' of cloth encircling the light dome, with transversely screened sheets, all this with the aim of making the light from above shine *from* the picture by reflection. (...) "It was a certain Colonel Langlois who broke new ground by using the horizontal space between the platform and canvas to perfect still further the optical illusion. He 'filled' this space with a setting of tri-dimensional objects which constituted integrating parts of the display. Without this '*faux-terrain*,' the foreground- setting, including the objects, the so-called '*attrapes*' (hoaxes), a panorama later on was no longer a real panorama. Gradually this technique was further refined to the extent that the tri-dimensional attrapes faded perfectly into the bi-dimensional canvas, thus creating a very realistic effect." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 08.9 Dead medium: the Panorama From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Panorama Phenomenon: Mesdag Panorama 1881- 1981 Published by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Centenarian Mesdag Panorama (September 1981) Den Haag, Holland editor Evelyn J. Fruitema written by Paul A. Zoetmulder Mesdag Panorama, Zeestraat 65b, 2518AA The Hague (Netherlands) page 20 "Painting a panorama required a highly specialized technique. One has but to image the enormous size of the canvas to be painted to understand this. Surfaces of 1500 to 2000 square meters were not unusual. The canvas was of circular form, made the transfer of sketches executed on a plane surface very complicated indeed." page 22 "The panorama painter took the requirement of meticulous rendering exceedingly seriously. When he wished to represent towns, landscapes or other spectacles from foreign countries, he travelled to the location with a group of assistants in order to prepare the sketchwork in detail on the spot. Such expeditions sometimes lasted many months. Topographical studies were undertaken, and for historical scenes, available archaeological research constituted the basis. Every detail was delineated exactly as it was, or must have been. In representing contemporary events, such as battles or sea fights, a well-nigh pathological precision manifested itself." pages 23-25 "Scaffolding of greater height than the canvas (14 to 16 m.), and mobile in a circle, was needed (...) These were enormous structures on wheels, mostly consisting of many stories, on which several men were simultaneously engaged in their work, as arduous as it was singular. There they stood with their giant paintbrushes, at a distance of five feet from the canvas, practically helpless without central guidance. (...) "After all preliminaries, it was on that scaffolding that the actual production of the panorama-painting began. (...) Usually it was done in teamwork, each member assuming responsibility for either a number of sections, or for the subject for which he had been recruited as a specialist (scenery, architecture, sea, animals, etc.). These artists were in turn assisted by various helpers, so that inside the rotunda was full of hustle and bustle. (...) Standing in the rotunda centre, the 'producer' continuously gave orders to his disciples on the scaffolding, who in fact scarcely saw what they were actually painting. "Finally the 'faux-terrain' with its three dimensional '*attrapes*' was constructed by specially recruited experts (frequently theatre designers) who competed to make the foreground as deceptive as possible. Then the panorama was ready, after an enervating production that generally took approximately a whole year." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.0 Dead medium: Daguerre's Diorama From: plichty@eznets.canton.oh.us (Pat Lichty) Sources: Picture Perfect: The Art and Artifice of Public Image Making. by Kiku Adatto, Basic Books, 1993 Beaumont Newhall, The Daguerreotype in America (New York, Dover, 1976 (an excellent source for information on Daguerre). "...March 8, 1839. Louis Daguerre, a French painter and inventor, for some seventeen years had been the proprietor of one of the most popular spectacles in Paris. It was a theatre of illusions called the Diorama. "No actors performed in Daguerre's Diorama theatre. It consisted of a revolving floor that presented views of three stages. On each stage was an enormous canvas (72'x 48') with scenes painted on both sides. Through the clever play of light, Daguerre could make one scene dissolve into another. Parisians were treated to the sight of an Alpine village before and after an avalanche, or Midnight Mass from inside and outside the cathedral, accompanied by candles and the smell of incense." (((This strikes me as a very early precursor to Heilig's Sensorama machine, due to the sensory augmentation of candles and incense. As a side note, as Daguerre went to meet with his colleague Samuel Morse to discuss his new device called the telegraph (another dead medium), the Diorama burnt to the ground. Pat Lichty))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.1 Dead medium: the Panorama From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Panorama Phenomenon: Mesdag Panorama 1881- 1981 Published by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Centenarian Mesdag Panorama (September 1981) Den Haag, Holland editor Evelyn J. Fruitema written by Paul A. Zoetmulder Mesdag Panorama, Zeestraat 65b, 2518AA The Hague (Netherlands) page 25 "In the initial period, panorama painters looked for existing large premises in which their work of art could be hung, but soon afterwards they began to construct special small round wooden buildings, primitive sheds, constructed = or so it appears = around the circular canvases. These kinds of contraptions could be found in many towns around 1800. The simple sheds in Hamburg, Leipzig and Amsterdam which housed the first panoramas were examples (...)" page 26 "Barker's first rotunda was 11 m. high and had a diameter of 26 m. In the big capitals of the time, London, Paris and Vienna, where one could count on a steady number of visitors, there arose, in due course, more professional wooden or stone structures. The exteriors of these rotundas were simple, undecorated, cylindrical or polygonal in shape, like the twin panorama buildings at Montmartre (Paris) or Barker's ingenious two- storied rotunda on Leicester Square. "Later again, a specific rotunda architecture developed, narrowly linked to the construction of circuses (...) By employing new materials (iron combined with glass) the rotundas became even more spectacular towards the middle of the 19th century. With the building on the Champs Elysees designed by Hittorf (the creator of the Place de la Concorde), Paris became the model for numerous later buildings (...) "Most rotundas bult later in the 19th century were monumental, pompous buildings, often abundantly decorated, on which the then fashionable neo-styles were appled with great zest. (...) In the earlier days London had its enormous Colosseum (1829), Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Salzburg, Vienna, Brussels, Milan and Madrid all had their own baroque panorama homes. They were also to be found in the Netherlands. At one time Paris boasted at least 13 of this kind of round art temples. "When later on panorama companies were founded, a certain uniformity in construction developed so as to facilitate the exchange of the paintings. The dimensions were also considerably larger than before. Standard building norms were a diameter of 40 m. and a height of 15 m." page 28 "Early in the 20th century, the age of the panorama definitely came to an end. It was impossible to fight the competition of the oncoming cinema. (...) Also the new photoprinting technique, by means of which photographs could appear in illustrated periodicals, was a nail in the coffin of the panorama, which was not any longer susceptible to innovation. The panorama buildings were mostly pulled down. but sometimes adapted to other uses. They were transformed into theatres, cinemas, riding- schools, artificial ice-rinks, mosques and suchlike. Untold numbers of rotundas burnt down, sometimes well insured, for inexplicable reasons. With the buildings the numerous Societes Anonymes disappeared as well. But the panorama has not been entirely relegated to history. The Mesdag Panorama and a number of other circular displays have survived in spite of adversity." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.2 Dead Medium: A Panorama Bibliography From: aeksp@hum.aau.dk (Soeren Pold) Dear Bruce, I've seen your postings on the list about the panorama with great interest. Here is a bibliography with some books about the panorama and the like. It is not a complete list, but a list of works I have used and found interesting recently in my writing of an article about the panorama. GERMAN: Of course Walter Benjamin is essential. Some of this (the Baudelaire book) can be found in English too. Benjamin, Walter: Das Passagen-Werk, Frankfurt/M 1982 Benjamin, Walter: Charles Baudelaire, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M 1974 Norbert Bolz has written a highly interesting book dealing with among other things the panoramic perception: Bolz, Norbert: Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis: Die Neuen Kommunikationsverhtnisse, Munchen 1993 History of the panorama media with some of the documents printed: Buddemeier, Heinz: Panorama, Diorama, Photographie: Entstehung und Wirkung neuer Medien im 19. Jahrhundert, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1970 Two very essential works on the panorama. The latter a catalogue to an exhibition in Bonn with beautiful illustrations. The first is simply *the* book about the panorama. With history, development, techniques, signification etc.: Oettermann, Stephan: Das Panorama, Frankfurt/M, Syndikat, 1980 Plessen, Marie Louise von & Giersch, Ulrich: Sehsucht: das Panorama als Massenunterhaltung des 19. Jahrhunderts, Basel, Frankfurt/M, 1993 Very well written with comparison of the panorama with the railway. Can be found in English I think: Schivelbusch, Wolfgang: Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise, Frankfurt/M 1989 (((This would by Wolfgang Schivelbusch's "The Railway Journey," a fine book on the social impact of railroads = bruces))) ENGLISH: About Benjamin and also the panorama: Buck-Morrs, Susan: The dialectics of seeing, MIT-Press 1993 Jonathan Crary has written a brilliant book about how the visual machines (stereoscope, phenakisticope etc) changes the observer's perception: Crary, Jonathan: Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, MIT Press Cambridge Mass, London England 1990 Also in the Benjamin department, dealing with the origin of the cinematic look and finding it in the panorama and elsewhere: Friedberg, Anne: Window Shopping: Cinema and the postmodern, University of California Press, 1993 FRENCH: Dealing with development in visual media and its importance. Is available in translated editions too: Paul Virilio: La Machine de Vision, Galilee 1988 DANISH: Hansen, Gilbert: "Det panoramiske blik" in "Arkitekturtidsskrift B" nr. 51, Aarhus 1994 My own work on the panorama and Balzac: Pold, Soeren: Parisisk Panorama, Aarhus 1994 Pold, Soeren: "Panoramisk urbanisering, Paris som medie hos Balzac og i 1800-tallets realistiske medie- virkelighed" in "Passage, 22, Aarhus 1996 (in print). From Denmark but in English: Zerlang, Martin: "The City Spectacular of the Nineteenth Century" in Arbejdspapir, 9, Center for Urbanitet og Estetik, Cph. REVITALIZING DEAD MEDIA ON THE WWW: Using QuickTimeVR panoramas to show Potsdamer Platz in Berlin every day: City.scope: http://cityscope.icf.de/ Macintosh QuickTimeVR: http://qtvr.quicktime.apple.com/Home.htm Best, Soeren Pold Dept. of Comparative Literature phone: +45 8942 1835 University of Aarhus fax: +45 8942 1850 Willemoesgade 15 http://www.uib.no/ped/tutors/spaarhus.gif DK-8200 Aarhus N Denmark Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.3 Dead medium: the Panorama From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: The Panorama Phenomenon: Mesdag Panorama 1881- 1981 Published by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Centenarian Mesdag Panorama (September 1981) Den Haag, Holland editor Evelyn J. Fruitema written by Paul A. Zoetmulder Mesdag Panorama, Zeestraat 65b, 2518AA The Hague (Netherlands) KNOWN SURVIVING PANORAMAS (circa 1981) AUSTRALIA "Panorama Guth" Painted 1975 by Guth and Pieters 65 Hartley Street, Alice Springs AUSTRIA: "View of Salzburg from the Fortress Hohensalzburg" painted circa 1824 by Sattler,Loos and Schindler Cafe Winkler, Monchsberg, Salzburg "The Battle Near Mount Isel in 1809" painted in 1895 by Diemer, Burger, Flaucher, Neidermaier and Pezzey Rennweg 39, Innsbruck BELGIUM "The Battle of Waterloo" painted in 1812 by Dumoulin, Desvareaux, Malespina, Robiquet, Meyer and Vinck 340 Route du Lion, Eigenbrakel, Waterloo "The Battle of the Yzer" painted 1920 by Bastien Royal Museum of the Army and of War History Cinquantenaire Park, Brussels BULGARIA "The Third Scaling of the Pleven in 1877" painted 1977 by Owetchkin et al Pleven CANADA "Jerusalem on the Day of the Crucifixion" painted 1882 by Philippoteaux, Mege, Gros, Corwin, Grover and Austen Ste-Anne de Beaupre, Quebec CZECH REPUBLIC "The Battle of Lipau" painted in 1897 by Ludek et al Prague GERMANY "The Crucifixion of Christ" painted circa 1903 by Fugel, Krieger, Ellenberger and Nadler Kapellplatz 2a, Altotting (near Munchen) NETHERLANDS "The Panorama of Scheveningen in 1880" Painted in 1881 by Mesdag, Mesdag-van Houten, de Bock, Breitner, Blommers and Nijberck Zeestraat 65b, The Hague POLAND "The Battle of Raclawice" Painted 1883/1884 by Styka, Kossak et al Wroclaw, Breslau RUSSIA "The Battle of Borodino in 1812" Painted in 1912 by Roubeau Kutuzov Prospekt D 38, Moscow "The Siege of Sebastopol in 1855" painted in 1905 by Roubeau Historical Boulevard, Sebastopol "The Battle of Stalingrad in 1943" Painted by Grekov (date unknown) Volgograd SWITZERLAND "Bourbaki Panorama" Painted in 1881 by Le Castre, Hodler, Dufaux, Sylvestre, Hebert, de Beaumont and van Muiden Lowenplatz, Lucerne "Jerusalem and the Crucifixion of Christ" Painted in 1892 by Frosch, Krieger, and Leigh destroyed by fire in 1960 and completely repainted by Hugler, Wulz and Fastl Benzigerstrasse, Einsiedeln "View of the Town of Thun" Painted circa 1814 by Wocher and Beidermann Schadau Park, Thun UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "The Battle of Gettysburg in 1863" Painted circa 1883 by Philippoteaux Gettysburg National Military Park Gettysburg, Pennsylvania "The Battle of Atlanta in 1864" Painted circa 1886 by Lohr, Lorenz and Heine Grant Park, Atlanta, Georgia (((I'd be interested in publishing eye-witness reports on the state of the these panoramas should a Necronaut come across one of them circa 1996 -- bruces))) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.4 Dead medium: Dead Videotape Formats From ianc@islandnet.com (Ian Campbell) Source: Video Review, April 1991, pp. 32, 34-35 "In 1963, the very first home videotape recorder appeared in the Nieman-Marcus Christmas catalog. It was from Ampex; it was called the Signature V; it cost $30,000 (...) It was the size of a coffin; it weighed more. (...) "Sony, active in the industrial video arena for years, introduced its CV series half-inch, black/white open-reel format in 1965. (...) 'CV' ostensibly stood for 'consumer video,' and machines actually were sold to home users in such big-ticket emporiums as Neiman-Marcus. The first CV machine (which weighed in at a mere 70 pounds) even had a built in nine-inch monitor that popped up for viewing. The format initially produced jittery, flickering images, but incorporated some features that later became well loved, such as timer recording. Although it didn't make much of a splash in the stores, CV made it into some school systems. One (((Video Review))) editor remembers making his television debut on his grammar school's closed circuit TV channel, which employed CV equipment. By the end of the 60's, Sony went back to the drawing board. "AKAI showed two different quarter-inch open reel systems around 1969: one B/W, the other colour. Having led the open-reel audio business, AKAI mistakenly figured success in one area guaranteed success in another. A couple years later, AKAI introduced the half-inch B&W VT cassette system for shooting on the go. This faded quite quickly. "1972 saw the advent of Cartivision, which housed half-inch tape in a clunky cassette roughly the size of a hardcover book. The cassette employed a coaxial system wherein the two tape reels were stacked on top of each other. Like Sony's CV system, this format only recorded every other video field, resulting in a soft flickering picture == but at least it was in colour. The system made it to Sears, and some stores even rented special cassettes that could be watched only once because they were designed not to rewind in home machines. "The format failed almost as soon as it appeared, owing to a lack of software, mechanical unreliability and massive consumer indifference. "Just before Cartivision's last rites, Sony bounced back with its U-Matic cassette system, which used three- quarter-inch tape and recorded colour signals with good quality. It even had stereo sound. The format's high price and relative complexity made it a dud in the marketplace, but a redesigned U-Matic was pitched to the pro market and the format has had success there ever since. "Famed long-playing microgroove record inventor Peter Goldmark of CBS labs came up with EVR (Electron Video Recording), a film based colour-video cartridge system that played back on TV sets. Limitations in playing time, lack of recording ability and a big yawn from Hollywood caused CBS to kill the fledgling format just before it was due to hit dealers' shelves in 1971. "Meanwhile, RCA had not one but two different versions of Selectavision in the early 70's. The first and most advanced was Selectavision Holotape, an experimental system that embossed 3-D images onto rolls of film. The second was Selectavision Magtape, which used three- quarter-inch tapes similar to Sony's U-Matic format. It also featured an in-cartridge scanning scheme that actually shoved the video head drum partially into the cassette. "Neither ever made it to market, but RCA's too-hip 'Selectavision' trade name later cropped up in the company's VHS tape and CED discplayer lines. "The cartridge of Panasonic's mid-70's Omnivision I system housed only a single reel of tape. This system sucked the tape out of the cartridge and wound it on a take up reel inside the transport. This meant you could never remove a cassette in the middle of a program. "As VHS was catching fire, Dutch electronics giant Philips unveiled its VCR format (they could only register the trademark in Europe). It was created for the European PAL standard, so when the US market adopted it, it could record only 50 minutes in standard mode. Thinner 60-minute tapes and a half-speed mode were added, but it was a case of too little, too late. "Philips and Germany's Grundig teamed up on a perfected version of VCR called Video 2000. It used an extraordinarily sophisticated two-sided half-inch cassette that could be flipped over for eight hours of recording time. "Sanyo's V-Cord (B&W) and V-Cord II (Colour) used cartridges vaguely reminiscent of 8-track tapes. The first format was limited to 20 minutes of recording time, while V-Cord II had bigger aspirations. This was the first video format to offer two speeds ((('quality' and 'economy'))) as well as freeze-frame and slow-motion. The V-Cords (((failed))) because of mechanical unreliability and lack of interest from other manufacturers. "Matsushita's VX format was marketed here by Quasar as 'The Great Time Machine.' The half-inch system featured a coaxial cartridge (like Cartivision) and in- cartridge scanning (like RCA's Magtape). In 1976, it one-upped Betamax by offering a two hour recording time. "Clunky cassettes and a deck that was a mechanical nightmare, compared to relatively streamlined models in the beta format, made this one easy for Sony to beat. "Japan's Funai joined forces with Technicolor (...) to create the Compact Video Cassette (CVC) system. This was the lightest and most portable recording system of its time. Widely known as the 'Technicolor Format,' it used quarter-inch cassettes that were generally only available in a 30-minute length == a factor that contributed to the format's downfall. "In the late 80's, a few desperate retailers stuck with large inventories of unsold CVC units tried to unload them as 8mm VCR's." DEAD VIDEO TAPE FORMATS Ampex Signature I (1963) Sony CV B/W (1965) Akai 1/4 inch B/W & Colour (1969) Cartivision/Sears (1972) Sony UOMatic (197?) Sony-Matic 1/2" B/W (197?) EIAJ-1 1/2" (197?) RCA Selectavision Magtape (1973) Akai VT-100 1/4 inch portable (1974) Panasonic Omnivision I (1975) Philips "VCR" (197?) Sanyo V-Cord, V-Cord II (197?) Akai VT-120 (1976) Matsushita/Quasar VX (1976) Philips & Grundig Video 2000 (1979) Funai/Technicolor CVC (1984) Sony Betamax (???) (((The dates given here are rough "death" dates, which often correspond fairly closely to their "birth" dates...))) (((Thanks to... kaboom@usit.net, pkstveng@aol.com)) Ian Campbell ianc@islandnet.com Dead Media Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.5 Dead media: The Museum of the Moving Image: Jenkins Radiovisor, Bell Picture Telephone, RGA/Oxberry CompuQuad, Philco Predicta From: ggg@well.com (Gary Gach) Source: New York Times, April 21, 1996, Page One, Section Two: "ANYONE CAN BECOME A STAR IN ASTORIA" by Ralph Blumenthal. (((The article is about the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria Queens and its new long-term exhibition, "Behind the Screen," opening April 22.))) A large part of the third floor is taken up with the hardware of recording images and sound, including curios like the 1931 Jenkins Radiovisor, a mechanical television that used a slotted, spinning wheel to transmit images. ... One behemoth, an RGA/Oxberry Compuquad Special Effects Step Optical Printer == a name worthy of its size == used four projector heads and five computers controlling 19 separate motions to project image upon image for complex effects. The machine itself won a special Academy Award in 1986. But today, it's largely obsolete, a victim of digital technology. Another curious device is a 1927 Bell Laboratories Picture Telephone, a prototype closed-circuit television link over which Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, spoke (and appeared) from Washington to the AT&T president in New Jersey. There are showroom quantities of vintage television consoles, some predating World War II. Early sets had picture tubes so long and unwieldy that the screen had to be mounted face up, toward the ceiling, and needed a mirror to reflect the image sidways to the viewers. A thing of beauty was the 1959 Philco Predicta with its oval screen. But the streamlined design came at the price of unreliable technology, and the model flopped. gary gach |_|_|_|_| pocket guide to the internet Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.6 Dead medium: the theatrophone; the electrophone From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: WHEN OLD TECHNOLOGIES WERE NEW: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by Carolyn Marvin Oxford University Press 1988 ISBN 0-19-504468-1 pages 209-210 "The most popular feature of the Paris Exposition Internationale d'Electricite of 1881 was such an arrangement, variously described as the theatrophone and the electrophone. From August to November crowds queued up three evenings a week before two rooms, each containing ten pairs of headsets, in the Palais d'Industrie. In one, listeners heard live performances of the Opera transmitted through microphones arranged on either side of the prompter's box. In the other, they heard plays from the Theatre Francais through ten microphones placed at the front of the stage near the footlights. Not only were the voices of the actors, actresses, and singers heard in this manner, but also the instruments of the orchestra, the applause and laughter of the audience == 'and, alas! the voice of the prompter too.' "Efforts to reeach extended audiences by telephone required elaborate logistical preparations. Its application to entertainment, therefore, remained experimental and occasional. In Europe entertainment uses of the telephone were often an aristocratic prerogative. The president of the French Republic was so pleased with the theatrophone exhibit at the Paris Exposition that he inaugurated a series of telephonic soirees with theatrophonic connections from the Elysee Palace to the Opera, the Theatre Francais, and the Odeon Theatre. "The King and Queen of Portugal, in mourning for the Princess of Saxony in 1884 and unable to attend the premiere of a new Lisbon opera, were provided with a special transmission to the palace through six microphones mounted at the front of the opera stage. The same year the manager of a theatre in Munich installed a telephone line to his villa at Tutzingen on the Starnberger Sea in order to monitor every performance and to hear for himself how enthusiastically the audience applauded. The office of the Berlin Philharmonic Society was similarly connected to its own distant opera house. In Brussels, the Minister of Railways, Posts and Telegraphs and other high public officials listened to live opera thirty miles away at Antwerp. "Beginning in 1890, individual subscribers to the Theatrophone Company of Paris were offered special hookups to five Paris theatres for live performances. The annual subscription fee was a steep 180 francs, and 15 francs more was charged to subscribers on each occasion of use. "In London in 1891, the Universal Telephone Company placed fifty telephones in the Royal Italian Opera House in Covent Garden, and another fifty in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. All transmitted exclusively to the estate of Sir Augustus Harris at St. John's Wood, with an extension to his stables. By 1896 the affluent could secure private connections to a variety of London entertainments for an inclusive annual rent of ten pounds sterling in addition to an installation fee of five pounds. The queen was one of these clients. In addition to having special lines from her sitting room to the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Board of Green Cloth, and Marlborough House, Her Majesty enjoyed direct connections to her favorite entertainments." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.7 Dead media: the theatrophone; the electrophone From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: WHEN OLD TECHNOLOGIES WERE NEW: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by Carolyn Marvin Oxford University Press 1988 ISBN 0-19-504468-1 pages 210-211 "Commercial interest in a larger, less exclusive audience (((for the theatrophone))) was not far behind. 'Nickel-in-the-slot' versions of the hookups provided by the Theatrophone Company of Paris to its individual subscribers were offered as a public novelty at some resorts. A franc bought five minutes of listening time; fifty centimes brought half as much. Between acts and whenever all curtains were down, the company piped out piano solos from its offices. "In England in 1889 a novel experiment permitted 'numbers of people' at Hastings to hear *The Yeoman of the Guard* nightly. Two years later theatrophones were installed at the elegant Savoy Hotel in London, on the Paris coin-in-the-slot principle. For the International Electrical Exhibition of 1892, musical performances were transmitted from London to the Crystal Palace, and long- distance to Liverpool and Manchester. In the hotels and public places of London, it was said, anyone might listen to five minutes of theatre or music for the equivalent of five or ten cents. One of these places was the Earl's Court Exhibition, where for a few pence 'scraps of play, music-hall ditty, or opera could be heard fairly well by the curious.' page 212 (((Meanwhile, in the United States:))) "Informal entertainments were sometimes spontaneously organized by telephone operators during the wee hours of the night, when customer calls were few and far between. On a circuit of several stations, operators might sit and exchange amusing stories. One night in 1981 operators at Worcester, Fall River, Boston, Springfield, Providence and New York organized their own concert. The *Boston Evening Record* reported: 'The operator in Providence plays the banjo, the Worcester operator the harmonica, and gently the others sing. Some tune will be started by the players and the other will sing. To appreciate the effect, one must have a transmitter close to his ear. The music will sound as clear as though it were in the same room.' "A thousand people were said to have listened to a formal recital presented through the facilities of the Home Telephone Company in Painesville, Ohio, in 1905. And, portent of the future, in 1912 the New York Magnaphone and Music Company installed motor-driven phonographs that sent recorded music to local subscribers over a hundred transmitters." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.8 Dead medium: Theatrophonic televangelism From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: WHEN OLD TECHNOLOGIES WERE NEW: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century by Carolyn Marvin Oxford University Press 1988 ISBN 0-19-504468-1 page 215 "Church services were also an occasion for telephone transmission. From about 1894, telephone wires connected subscribers with local pulpits in towns as large as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and as small as Paris, Texas. Inclement weather prompted the Reverend D. L. Coale to connect a large megaphone to a telephone receiver in the Anson, Texas, church auditorium where he was conducting a revival in 1912, so that those absent from services might receive the benefit of sermons and singing. More than five hundred were said to have listened to revival services, and a number of conversions were made by wire. "Telephone pulpits seemed to have come earlier to British churches. An account of the inauguration in 1890 of a service in Christ Church in Birmingham with connection to subscribers in London, Manchester, Derby, Coventry, Kidderminster, and Hanley went as follows: "'When the morning service commenced there was what appeared to be an unseemly clamor to hear the services. The opening prayer was interrupted by cries of 'Hello, there!' 'Are you there?' 'Put me onto Christ Church.' 'No, I don't want the church,' etc. But presently quiet obtained and by the time the Psalms were reached we got almost unbroken connection and could follow the course of the services. We could hear little of the prayers == probably from the fact that the officiating minister was not within voice-reach of the transmitter. The organ had a faint, far-away sound, but the singing and the sermon were a distinct success.' "Subscribers in Glasgow listened to their first telephonic church service in 1892. By 1895 connections for subscribers and hospital patients had been made to the leading churches of London, including St. Margaret's, Westminster; St. Anne's, Soho; and St. Martin's-in-the- Fields and St. Michael's, Chester Square, by Electrophone Limited." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 09.9 Dead medium: Hopi town criers From: carapace@well.com (Eric Mankin) Source: "The Bedbugs' Night Dance and other Hopi Sexual Tales," Collected, translated and edited by Ekkehard Malotki. Published for the University of Northern Arizona by the University of Nebraska Press, 1995 page 367. "In the past when a Hopi wished to inform his fellow villagers of certain things, he would petition someone to make a public announcement on his behalf. At other times, a formal announcement could be made by the tsa'akmongwi, or official 'village crier.' "To broadcast his message,the crier always climbed on a rooftop. The opening formula of his announcement usually sounded as follows: 'Those of you people out there heed my words.' The conclusion was equally formalized: 'This is the announcement I was instructed to make known to you. That's about it.' Whenever the crier shouted out his announcement, he typically drew out the last word of each sentence. Eric Mankin (carapace@well.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.0 Dead media: Dancer's novelty microphotographs; Dagron's balloon post From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention edited by Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, Faber and Faber 1996 ISBN 0-571-17242-3 from an essay titled "Sliding Scales: Microphotography and the Victorian Obsession with the Minuscule," by Marina Benjamin (pages 99-122) "John Benjamin Dancer is not a name to be reckoned with in the annals of science. Reading the various biographical notices written since his death in 1887, one is struck with a certain sense of pathos; not even the liberal sprinkling of well-meaning hyperbole endemic to biographical memoirs of scientific societies can disguise the salvage exercise. Here was a man who almost discovered ozone, failed to patent a number of ingenious optical and mechanical devices that might have made him a fortune, improved other people's discoveries rather than made his own, an optician who lost his sight and died courting penury. In short, a man whose career was a catalogue of near misses, bad management and consequential blunders. (...) "Dancer dabbled in the possibility of combining microscopy with photography from the start. During a lecture at the Mechanics Institute in Liverpool, before an audience of 1,500 people, he made a Daguerreotype image of a flea magnified to six inches in length. (....) It was only with Scott Archer's development of the wet collodion process in 1851 that he (((Dancer))) was able to produce successful microphotographs, which by virtue of being reproducible became commercially viable. "Mounted on standard 3 X 1 glass slides, microphotographs look deceptively like histological preparations, that is, ultra-thin slivers of living tissue, but when magnified 100 times, the inscrutable tiny black dot glued in place is revealed to be an exquisite, fine-grained reproduction of Raphael's Madonna or the ruins of Tintern Abbey, not a delicate tranche of liver or a cluster of blood platelets. (...) "Their subjects ranged from portraits of the great and good == eminent scientists, European royals, political and military dignitaries, literati and thespians; celebrated paintings; religious texts, like the Lord's Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount; extracts from Tennyson, Dickens, Milton, Byron and Pope; to views from around the world (forerunners of the tourist snapshot). (((Yes, you read this correctly == John Benjamin Dancer made and sold text "content" to be accessed through a home microscope.))) "Dancer produced his first commercial slide in 1853 == a rather austere picture of electrician William Sturgeon's memorial tablet. By 1873 he was advertising nearly 300 microphotographs and by the end of his career the grand total had risen to over 500. Precisely how he manufactured his microscopic marvels remains a trade secret, since he never ventured into print on the subject. It is known that in experimental trials he used the eyes of recently killed oxen as photographic lenses and that he began the process with 4 X 5 inch collodion glass-plate negatives, but beyond that it can only be assumed that his method of reduction bore some similarity to that publicized by George Shadbolt in 1857. At the time Shadbolt was President of the Microscopical Society and editor of the *Photographic Journal,* in whose pages a priority dispute over the invention of microphotography took place, Dancer winning the day. "Almost as soon as Dancer perfected the mechanics of reproduction, he began selling microphotographs as novelty items. At a shilling a slide, and with decent parlour microscopes to be had for a few pounds, microphotographic entertainment was an economic method of rational recreation. (...) In fact the market for microphotographs was sufficiently sizeable to make it profitable for Dancer to sell his slides to a number of retailers of scientific instruments. (...) "Sir David Brewster, who in the 1850s was Professor of Physics at St Andrews, saw streams of possibilities emanating from Dancer's invention. In an article on the micrometer for the eighth edition of the *Encyclopaedia Britannica,* he waxed futuristic on Dancer's technique: 'Microscopic copies of dispatches and valuable papers and plans might be transmitted by post, and secrets might be placed in spaces not larger than a full stop or a small blot of ink.' While his latter reverie was to remain confined to the pages of spy novels, the former was genuinely prophetic: Brewster took examples of Dancer's work on his Continental tour in 1857 where they were seen by French photographer Prudent Dagron, who in 1870 used the method to relay messages by carrier pigeon between besieged Paris and Tours." (((Microphotography -- from experimental 19th century optical science, to parlour toy medium, to mass communication media for France under siege. Dancer the half-baked entrepreneur, to Brewster the teacher and pop science writer, to Dagron the entrepreneur and spy. It's a very satisfying story, but a large lacuna remains -- how did the Confederate spies in Canada learn to create and conceal microformed documents in the clothing of hired British agents? == bruces))) Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 10.1-12.0 10.1 Telephonic Jukeboxes: The Shyvers Multiphone, the Phonette Melody Lane, the AMI Automatic Hostess, the Rock-Ola Mystic Music System 10.2 Nazi U-boat automated weather forecasting espionage network 10.3 the Inuit Inuksuit 10.4 The General Electric Show 'N Tell 10.5 The Bletchley Park Colossus 10.6 The Bletchley Park Colossus 10.7 The Aluminum Transcription Disk 10.8 The Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer 10.9 The Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer 11.0 CHIPS: Dead Software, Dead Platforms 11.1 Indecks Information Retrieval System 11.2 Pneumatic Typewriters 11.3 Dead Personal Computers and Typewriters: Some Recommended Books 11.4 Early/Mechanical Television Systems 11.5 Mechanical TV: the Pioneers 11.6 Mechanical TV: Baird Television 11.7 Mechanical TV: The General Electric Octagon; the Daven Tri-Standard Scanning Disc; the Jenkins W1IM Radiovisor Kit, the Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, Jenkins Radio Movies; the Baird Televisor Plessey Model, the Baird Televisor Kit; the Western Television Corporation Visionette 11.8 Baird Mechanical Television, Part One: Technical Introduction 11.9 Baird Mechanical Television Part Two: John Logie Baird 12.0 Baird Mechanical Television Part 3: Other Countries, Other Systems Dead Media Necronauts: Eleanor J. Barnes, Trevor Blake, Ian Campbell, David Isay, Stefan Jones, Richard Kadrey, Bradley O'Neill, Darryl Rehr, Bruce Sterling, Candi Strecker, Charles Stross, Paul Tough Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.1 Dead medium: Telephonic Jukeboxes: The Shyvers Multiphone, the Phonette Melody Lane, the AMI Automatic Hostess, the Rock-Ola Mystic Music System From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) Source: Telephone Collecting, Seven Decades of Design (With Price Guide) by Kate E. Dooner 1993 Schiffer Publishing Company, 77 Lower Valley Road, Atgen, Pennsylvania 19810 ISBN 0-88740-489-8 (((A handsomely produced outsized paperback with dozens of chop-licking glossy photographs of extinct telephone models and associated collectible ephemera.))) page 95 "MULTIPHONES "The 'multiphone' was created in 1939 by Kenneth C. Shyvers and his wife, Lois. They were operators of 'juke' boxes who found that 'multiphones' allowed a greater number of songs to be played. Whereas juke boxes played only 20 selections, the 'multiphone' could play up to 170 songs. "'Multiphones' came to be installed in cafes and taverns in each booth or along the bar. The system required two leased telephone lines, one for the 'multiphones' and the other for the loudspeakers on the wall where the music played. The wired music system worked by inserting money, a nickel originally and later a dime. A feminine voice asked for your song number, and you responded. Soon you were listening to the music from the loudspeakers on the wall, which was connected to a central, record playing station. "Eventually, juke boxes were remodelled to play 180 tunes on 45 rpm records. The 'multiphone' system could not compete with them economically, and the system went out of business in 1959." (Page 103 features two handsome illustrations of multiphone technology. The first is a Shyvers Multiphone, a hefty, towering gadget in stylish Art Deco cast aluminum. It has a speaker-grille in the bottom, a coin- slot for dimes, and what appears to be a rotating printed menu of "new releases." The second device is a "Phonette Melody Lane" from the Personal Music Corporation of Newark, New Jersey. A modest device with a squat rectangular grille, it declares in embossed lettering: "INSERT 1 TO 6 NICKELS. EACH NICKEL PLAYS THE EQUIVALENT OF TWO RECORDS. THIS MACHINE CAN BE HEARD IN YOUR IMMEDIATE AREA ONLY.") Source: American Jukebox, the Classic Years by Vincent Lynch, photography by Kaz Tsuruta, Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1990 ISBN 0-87701-722-0, ISBN 0-87701-678-X paperback (((A lavishly illustrated work of eerie beauty which showcases an audacious twentieth-century mix of industrial design, American popular culture and pure swaggering kitsch. Surely "Bakelite Psychedelia" could find no higher expression that the 1941 Rock-Ola Spectravox.))) "Manufacturers continued to experiment with new ways to deliver music to patrons. In 1939, AMI introduced the Automatic Hostess telephone system and in 1941 Rock-Ola invented the Mystic Music System. Both were jukeboxes in every way except that there was no phonograph mechanism. After depositing a coin, the patron spoke into a microphone to an operator who would play the selection; the music returned over the phone lines to the speaker. The systems proved unsuccessful for AMI and Rock-Ola, but the idea worked for the Shyver Multiphone Co., which operated in Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia Washington, from 1939 to 1959." A cousin medium to the telephone jukebox is very much alive today, though it is vastly more expensive, much smaller in variety, is limited to one person, and offers mere samples of songs. Source: WIRED magazine June 1996 issue page 167 "MUSIC ACCESS. If you'd like to hear excerpts from these discs, call 900-454-3277 (95 cents per minute). Touch tone required. US only. Under 18? Get parent's permission. When prompted: Enter access code (under the name of the artist). Music controls: 3 = Fast forward, 4 = Louder, 5 = Softer, * = Exit music/bypass most prompts. A charge of 95 cents per minute will appear on your phone bill. An average call is about 2.5 minutes." Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.2 Dead medium: Nazi U-boat automated weather forecasting espionage network From: boneill@voyager.net (Bradley O'Neill) Sources: comp.arch, comp.misc, _U-Boats Against Canada_, German Submarines in Canadian Waters, by Michael L. Hadley; McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston and Montreal, 1985. Automated Nazi weather station in Canada posted by: dmanzer@wimsey.com (Canadian War Library) Newsgroups: comp.arch "The following [previously posted in comp.misc] is condensed from *U-Boats Against Canada*, German Submarines in Canadian Waters, by Michael L. Hadley; McGill-Queen's University Press, Kingston and Montreal, 1985." "Weather reporting formed a vital part of German military operations. Given that weather systems generally move from west to east across the Atlantic, it was imperative that U-boats at sea enhance the reporting net of surface ships and shore stations by radioing data to BdU as frequently as possible. [BdU - Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (Commander U-boats); Admiral Karl Doenitz] "Some missions consisted almost entirely of weather- station patrols, either at the beginning or at the end of tactical missions. In support of these wide-ranging and highly mobile patrols, Germany built 21 land-based automatic weather stations that would provide specific data at predetermined transmission times. Fourteen of these unmanned stations were established in Arctic or subarctic regions (Spitzbergen, Bear Island, Franz-Joseph- Land and Greenland); 5 were located around the Barents Sea above Norway, and 2 were destined for North America. Only the first of those bound for North America, and planned for delivery by U-537 in the summer of 1943, was ever in operation. The 2nd mission failed when U-867 was sunk NNW of Bergen on 19 Sep/44. ""BdU charged U-537, on its maiden operation voyage in the summer of 1943, with the installation of automatic station WFL-26 [Wetterfunkgeraet-Land] on northern Labrador. Code-named station "Kurt", it consisted of a set of meteorological instruments, a 150W short-wave transmitter and antenna mast, and an array of nickel- cadmium and dry-cell batteries. "The station was packaged in ten cylinders approximately 1 x 1.5 m diameter, each weighing approximately 220 pounds. The cylinder with the instrument unit contained a 10-m-tall antenna mast with anemometer and wind vane. In order to avoid suspicion if discovered, the Germans had marked the cylinders with the rubric "Canadian Weather Service". As it happened, the fact that no such organization existed by that name did not compromise the plan, for WFL-26 was not discovered and identified as German until July, 1981. "Once installed as designed, the station would broadcast a coded weathergram at three-hour intervals. To accomplish this, a sophisticated contact drum or Graw's diaphragm (named after a certain Dr. Graw, then of Berlin) would transcribe the observed values for temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed and wind direction into Morse symbols. These were then keyed on 3940 kHz to receiving stations in northern Europe. Transmission time for the whole weathergram, including one minute for warming up, did not exceed 120 seconds. "The choice of site for WFL-26 seems to have been left largely to [Kapitan] Schrewe's discretion in consultation with the technical advisers. In order to avoid all possible contact with people ashore, especially with 'Eskimoes trekking south at this time of year,' Schrewe wanted to set up the station as far north in Labrador as possible. At 18:45 on 22 October, 1943, he anchored in Martin Bay, some 300 m from shore in position 60 degrees 4.5 minutes N by 64 degrees 23.6 minutes W. "Within an hour, a reconnoitering party set ashore by inflatable craft to locate a transmitter site. They would leave empty American cigarette packages and match folders on the site in order to decoy any subsequent Allied intruders... By 18:00 on 23 October, less than 24 hours after having anchored, the work was done. The first transmission of WFL-26 occurred 3 minutes late, but was otherwise technically perfect. "Throughout his Canadian patrol, Schrewe continued to monitor WFL-26 and on a number of occasions reported intense jamming by a station that turned out to be German. For reasons we can only surmise, Canadian stations heard nothing from "Kurt" in Labrador." References: KTB [Kriegstagebuch ("War Diary")]/ U-537. Douglas, Alec [W.A.B.] "The Nazi Weather Station in Labrador," *Canadian Geographic* 101, no.6 (December 1981/January 1982): 42-7 Douglas, W.A.B., and Selinger, Franz. "Oktober 1943-Juli 1981: Eine Marine-Wetterstation auf Labrador." *Marine- Rundschau*, Nr.5 (Mai 1982): 256-62 Note: Franz Selinger was the first to trace the location of WFL-26, and ultimately joined Douglas to lead an expedition to the site with the Canadian Coast Guard. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.3 Dead medium: The Inuit Inuksuit From: ianc@islandnet.com (Ian Campbell) (((I've been wanting to find something on the Inuksuit, I got this from my favourite science show. I digitized some small pics from the program and put them up at http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/100/102.html I wish I had more info (like an illustrated vocabulary), but this is a start. == Ian Campbell))) Source: @Discovery.ca, (a weekly science show on Discovery Channel Canada), May 28, 1996. (((Judy Halliday interviews Norman Hallendy, Founder, Tukilik Foundation.))) Intro: "Deciphering the Inuksuit, how stone relics signify everything from good hunting to sacred ground. (...) Some of them are more than 5000 years old, but the Inuit are still building them today." (((bruces remarks: apparently the Inuksuit, though ancient and pre-literate, is still a living medium, then.))) "Similar stone structures can be found all over the world. Norman Hallendy has spent years learning about Arctic life, including the Inuksuit, from Inuit elders." Judy Halliday: (...) Every time you see pictures of the Arctic you see these magnificent stone structures that (((sometimes))) look like men. What exactly are these structures? Norman Hallendy: They fall into various groups. There are a group of them which are used as hunting instruments. (...) They were put up in lines and occasionally a woman or kid along with them (((because there were not that many male hunters))), and they'd frighten the caribou (...) and they'd be driven into a lane to be picked off by hunters. That was (((the most))) important function of the Inuksuit. (...) And then there were others that were terribly important in terms of travel. You could actually learn a series of Inuksuit, the shape of them, where they were situated and what time of the year they should be observed, you could learn a whole sequence and travel great distances without ever having been to that place. I knew of an old guy who travelled something like 900 miles without ever having been there, based on a song his father had taught him about the Inuksuit and the landmarks along the way. JH: So it's like having mileposts or street signs except that the Inuksuit are telling you the story. NH: Yes, you could look at Inuksuit in general as messages. You see this is the beauty of them, what they are is messages regardless of function, they convey some kind of information to you if you know how to read them. JH: (...) Are there ever any kind of religious or spiritual messages? NH: (...) I'll generalize here, they could be in two ways, if the Inuksuit was quite a beautiful looking structure, and built a very long time ago, like a thousand years ago, believed to have been built by the Tunik (...) what the Inuit call the "other people," these were considered objects of veneration, so it's interesting where a functional object over time can become almost a religious object (...) JH: Would anyone ever build one to honour somebody? NH: Oh yes, that did happen, that happened in individual cases where an Inuksuit could be built to commemorate a major event, or a major happening by a powerful person, a camp boss or a shaman for example. I was travelling with one old chap, that (...) before his uncle died, he asked his son to build an Inuksuit to represent the spirit that he had as a spirit helper, as a shaman. And therefore there were these strange little objects that were built on the landscape that were actually spiritual representations. There's another case, this occurred early in this century, where there were a group of women out hunting (...) The ice broke, they were carried out to sea, and they were crying out to their husbands who could not help them, and finally they died out at sea. The men were so heartbroken by this tragedy that they built an Inuksuit for every woman (...) so that her soul would have a place to come back to. I asked the question of one of the elders, should these really be called Inuksuit, the answer I got is that you should really refer to them as 'Sakabluni' (((sp?)))) ["stones which have spiritual significance"]. JH: How did you find out that they (...) carried so many messages? NH: Well, I went up to the Arctic (..) and kept asking questions about everything that came into my mind. Rather than study the people or the culture, I was trying to understand things from the point of view of how do I respond to the Arctic environment. (...) Over time what I really gathered up were the old words, for objects, for places, or events and happenings. Because I was a very strong believer in semantics, not yours, but theirs. (...) If a person really explained to you in their terms what you were looking at, you might see it from a different perspective. Ian Campbell http://www.islandnet.com/~ianc/dm/dm.html Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.4 Dead medium: The General Electric Show 'N Tell From: barbix@tiac.net (Eleanor J. Barnes) Source: I own one. GENERAL ELECTRIC SHOW 'N TELL (R) Phono-Viewer and Phonograph A hybrid medium aimed at children was the GE Show 'N Tell, a device for simultaneously playing a phonograph record and displaying a synchronized filmstrip. The record was the size of a 45, but played at 33 1/3 rpm. The filmstrip, with about 12 frames on what appeared to be 16mm film, was housed in a rigid cardboard or plastic strip, with a tab at the top for easy removal from the player. The display resembled a television screen, but was actually nothing more than a magnifier for a given frame of the filmstrip. The phonograph was on the top of the "TV" set. It could also be used to play 45-sized records (at either 33 1/3 or 45rpm) without viewing a filmstrip. Each topic consisted of a folder containing a filmstrip and accompanying record. The "A" side of the record was to be played synchronized with the filmstrip. The "B" side was related audio (such as a song) on the same topic, but was not intended to be played with the filmstrip. A "light-saver" switch allowed the video display (i.e. the lightbulb) to be turned off while playing the "B" side, or any record not designed for filmstrip synchronization. To play a record with filmstrip, one started by turning on the set, setting the turntable speed switch to "N", and rotating the turntable by hand until an indicator line appeared in a small window next to the turntable. Otherwise synchronization could be off. One then set the record "A" side up on the turntable, and set the tone arm by hand at the beginning of the record. The slot for the filmstrip was in the top of the set, to the right of the turntable. One had to move the tone arm to gain access to the slot, one reason why you had to set the tone arm on the record before inserting the filmstrip. One slid the filmstrip into the slot as far as it would go, limited by the large tab at the top of the filmstrip; then adjusted so that the first frame of the film was properly centered on the screen. A lever in the side of the set adjusted the focus. Moving the turntable speed switch to "33" started the record. Synchronization of the film to the audio was then automatic. Well over 100 filmstrip/record sets were available for the GE Show 'N Tell. Categories included Disney characters, Fairy Tales, Children's Classics (Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, etc.), Christmas, Fun with Facts (Dinosaurs, Indians, Wright Bros., etc.), and Captain Kangaroo. Some titles that surprised me were "Hans Brinker and [sic] the Silver Skates" (properly "Hans Brinker, or, the Silver Skates"), "Huckleberry Finn," and, most surprising of all, "Jane Eyre." Needless to say, longer and more complex stories such as "Jane Eyre" suffered even greater oversimplification than "Children's Classics" such as "Treasure Island." Eleanor J. Barnes (barbix@tiac.net) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 1.05 Dead medium: The Bletchley Park Colossus From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) (((This article by Tony Sale came my way through the Fringeware list. Mr. Sales' narrative illustrates just a few of the steep technical, financial and social difficulties involved in resurrecting dead Big Iron. Presumably the reborn Colossus is now up and running. I'd be interested in an eyewitness account of the appearance and function of this living media fossil.))) The Colossus Rebuild Project Helping to save Bletchley Park by Tony Sale, FBCS. The switching on of the rebuilt Colossus on Thursday 6th June 1996 by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent KG. Briefing notes. Colossus was the first large electronic valve computer in the world and it was fully operational in the Spring of 1944, helping to break the German Army High Command messages enciphered using the Lorenz cipher machine. By the end of WW II, ten Colossi were operating in Bletchley Park, the home of Allied code breaking operations. Each one of them used 2,500 electronic valves and they represented a major technological triumph for British invention. Designed by Dr Tommy Flowers and his team of engineers at the Post Office research labs at Dollis Hill, and manufactured at great speed, they contributed significantly to the war effort by the intelligence that they revealed before and after D Day, 6th June 1944. The Colossi were special purpose, high speed logic calculators of great reliability. They were kept switched on and running 24 hours a day and operated by girls from the Women's Royal Naval Service, the WRENS. The very existence of the Colossi was kept a closely guarded secret and unfortunately all but two of them were totally destroyed at the end of 1945. The reasons for this are still not clear. A blanket of silence descended on everything to do with Bletchley Park and this has, until now, prevented Colossus taking its rightful place as one of the greatest achievements of British technology. It has also allowed the Americans, for far too long, to claim that their ENIAC computer, which first ran in 1946, was the first large electronic valve computer in the world. The first revelations about Colossus appeared in 1970 when Jack Good, one of the wartime code breakers, gave a brief description in a journal article. This was followed in 1972 by further revelations by Donald Michie, another of the code breakers, and then by the researches of Prof Brian Randell. But even then Colossus was classified as secret and only a few photographs and general details were allowed out. In 1993 Tony Sale had just finished working at the Science Museum in London restoring some early computers back to working order. Having studied all the available meagre details about Colossus, he decided that given his early career in valve electronics, his involvement with Ml5 and subsequent long career in computing, it would be possible to rebuild a working Colossus. An approach to GCHQ resulted in all the hardware details about Colossus being declassified, and a further set of wartime photographs emerged from GCHQ archives. Some of the original engineers were still alive, including Dr Tommy Flowers, and they were all enthusiastic about such a project. Work began in November 1993 to reproduce machine drawings from the photographs. (All the original drawings had been destroyed in 1960). All attempts at getting sponsorship for the project failed, and Tony Sale and his wife Margaret decided to put their own money into it in order to make a start since, in view of the age of the original engineers, time was of the essence. By July 1994 all the gathering of information had been done and the construction phase of the project was inaugurated by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent KG in Bletchley Park on the 18th July. The Bletchley Park Trust, of which Tony Sale is Museums Director, has kindly made space available and the construction has taken place in the actual room in H Block where Colossus number 9 stood in WW II. Two years of hard work helped by an ever growing band of volunteers, including some members of the Computer Conservation Society, and some gratefully received financial donations has resulted in 90% authentic rebuild of Colossus which will now be able to demonstrate its code breaking feats of WW II. His Royal Highness has kindly agreed to switch on Colossus at 10.00 am on Thursday 6th June 1996, an auspicious occasion since it is the anniversary of D Day for which Colossus helped to provide vital intelligence information. For further Information contact Tony Sale on 01908 645001 or 01234 822788, or by fax on 01908 247381, or by email tsale@qufaro.demon.co.uk Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.6 Dead medium: the Bletchley Park Colossus From: bruces@well.com (Bruce Sterling) (((Through happy accident I have found an eyewitness account of the newly resurrected Bletchley Park Colossus, as mentioned in Working Note 10.5. This report is by Brian Randell (Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk) and was distributed on Dave Farber's "Interesting People" list. == bruces))) The Colossus Rebuild Project by Brian Randell Yesterday I attended the ceremony at Bletchley Park for the formal switching on of the recreated Colossus computer. It was a glorious day, attended by about two hundred people, many of whom had worked on code-breaking at Bletchley Park during the war. The project is essentially due to one person, Tony Sale, who is I'm sure uniquely qualified for such a project. He was for many years with M.I.5 (including a period as technical assistant to Peter Wright, of "Spycatcher" fame/notoriety) and so has a very high security clearance. He is expert on ancient electronics, he was for several years a Senior Curator at the Science Museum, London, (where he led the project which got a Ferranti Pegasus and an early Elliott computer operational again) and he has an unbelievable ability to get things done. The document attached below is the press briefing for yesterday's ceremony. The recreated Colossus is remarkably authentic, though not yet finished. (It was in fact complete enough to read encrypted messages from the 5000 character per second paper tape, do some basic processing using an electronic version of the Lorenz (Tunny) rotors, and output counts onto an electromechanical typewriter == all very impressive. There are also a whole series of rooms in which the various aspects of the wartime work, from radio interception, through to processing and indexing the results of the codebreaking, are portrayed and explained. When I succeeded in getting the Colossus partly declassified, and some photographs of it released, I never dreamt that, over twenty years later, I would actually see a real = albeit recreated = one! Cheers Brian PS You will find a home page for the Colossus Rebuild Project at: http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/CCC/BPark/colossus Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.7 Dead medium: The Aluminum Transcription Disk From paul@harpers.org (Paul Tough), disay@well.com (David Isay) Hey there, Bruce. I received this press release (with a cassette tape) in the mail yesterday, and thought immediately of the list. The dead medium is the 16" aluminum Transcription Disk, but as you'll see, the story is a much about a dead cultural medium as a dead technological one. Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 07:48:44 -0700 From: disay@well.com To: paul@harpers.org Subject: Re: hey ON THE AIR: YIDDISH RADIO 1925-1955 A decade ago, ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik (credited with sparking the Klezmer music revival in the United States) tripped over a pile of 16" aluminum disks in a musty storage room in New York City. On the worn-away labels he could make out some writing: WEVD... WBNX... "Yiddish Melodies in Swing".. "Stuhmer's Pumpernickel Program"... "Bei Tate Memes Tish" ("Round the Family Table")..."Life is Funny with Harry Hirschfield, Sponsored by Edelstein's Tuxedo Brand Cheese"... In all, more than 100 discs. He paid $30 for the collection. The seller was thrilled. Sapoznik tracked down an old Transcription Disc turntable and sat down to listen to his find. He put on the first disc. A clear, strong voice announced: "From atop the Loews State Theater Building, the B. Manischewitz Company, world's largest matzo bakers, happily present Yiddish Melodies in Swing..." Fanfare. Drum rolls. Clarinets begin to swing. Two announcers continued: "They do it to Eli Melekh!" "They do it to Reb Dovidl!" "They even do it to Yidl Mitn Fidl!" "Who does what to which?" "Yiddish Swing takes old Yiddish folk songs and finds the groove for them in merry modern rhythms.... The B. Manischewitz Company proudly presents Sam Medoff with the Yiddish Swing Orchestra... Hit it, maestro..." And the band launched into a raucous, swinging rendition of Dayenu. "It was simply unbelievable. Unlike anything I'd ever heard," remembers Sapoznik. "I felt like I was being transported back in time to this real living moment in history == it was unreal. I was transfixed." He was also hooked. Sapoznik has spent the past eight years searching for transcription discs of Yiddish radio shows [a transcription disc is the single 'air check' of a program used for archival purposes before the era of tape]. He's combed attics, flea markets == even dumpsters == in an attempt to rescue and preserve these remnants of Yiddish radio. "You have to remember, these are one-of-a-kind recordings," explains Sapoznik. "So much was so close to being lost forever. What choice did I have?" Over the years, Sapoznik has amassed the largest (and only) collection of Yiddish radio in the world == more than 500 hours of material. Rich, wonderful and irreplaceable material from this critical and tumultuous era in American Jewish history. In its heyday in the 1930s, Yiddish radio flourished across America. Thirty stations in New York alone aired Jewish programming: advice shows, variety shows, man-on- the-street-interviews, news programs, music and game shows in both Yiddish and English. The programs in this collection afford us a snap-shot of American Jewish life in the 1930s and 40s == the collision of Yiddish and American cultures, the dawning reality of the genocide occurring across the ocean, the day-to-day lives of immigrants struggling to make it in a new land. The radio rescued in the Sapoznik collection exists by pure chance == aluminum disks that survived WWII scrap metal drives and the grinding gauntlet of time. What's been rescued is random. There are more than five hours of DER YIDISHER FILOSOF ("THE JEWISH PHILOSOPHER") from the tiny Brooklyn station WFAB, and only 2 minutes of WEVD's THE FORWARD HOUR, the most important and popular Yiddish radio program ever. But what serendipity has preserved is magical == one-of-a-kind documentary evidence of the explosive and fertile collision of Yiddish and American culture in the 1930s == the sparks of which, in books movies and music, continue to rain down upon us to this day. Listen to ON THE AIR and eavesdrop on this singular moment in American Jewish history. Funding is requested for the production of ON THE AIR == 2 half-hour specials for broadcast on National Public Radio in 1997 [this undertaking will include a major oral history project involving veterans of Yiddish radio] produced by Peabody Award-winner David Isay and Henry Sapoznik. Funding is also requested for the preservation, storage and cataloging of the Sapoznik collection. David Isay disay@well.com Sound Portraits Productions, Inc. 230 East 12th St., Suite 9-H New York, NY 10003 (212) 353-2548 Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.8 Dead medium: the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: Peter Esmonde and Howard Mandel on the Discovery website. (((Sadly, an attempt to verify this text now receives the all-too-common "URL Not Found On This Server," a serious structural drawback to web-based research. Still, the material is of value and seems rather better than the standard superficial coverage found in most popular books on early electronic music. == bruces))) RCA engineers Harry Olsen and Herbert Belar began research on a "sound synthesizer" in the 1940s. Their goal: to create a machine that could churn out pop hits! The RCA engineers spent the first years of research analyzing the songs of Stephen Foster in a futile attempt to get the machine to compose new tunes. If nothing else, their early research shows just how wrongheaded scientific attempts to reproduce the creative process can be. Older and wiser, Olsen and Belar finally demonstrated their first synthesizer in 1956; like a player piano, it used punch-coded paper tape to generate a series of familiar sounds. A much-improved second machine == the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer == could produce virtually any waveform. Its components (which filled an entire room) were completely modular, so users could reconfigure the bulky system as they pleased. The engineers enjoyed playing renditions of everything from "The Old Folks at Home" to Bach fugues on the oversized unit, but Milton Babbitt's extraordinary synthesizer compositions showed that the Mark II could do more than crank out old favorites. The bulky RCA contraption remained the only synthesizer in existence until the mid-1960s, when engineer Robert Moog designed and constructed a modular system of voltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers, filters, and sequencers. The Moog synthesizer sparked a slew of arcane, psychedelic works == and changed how commercial and art music, soundtracks, and scores would sound forevermore. By the late 1960s, the new electronic vocabulary grew tired. What first seemed like an "infinitude of possibilities" began to look like a high-tech dead end. The novelty was wearing off. 1996 Discovery Communications, Inc Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.9 Dead medium: the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) Source: Peter Forrest http://www.musicians-net.co.uk/Mix/Analogue.html Electronic Music Synthesizer Mark I:1952 - 1957 Mark II:1957 - early 70s. Users included: Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Charles Wuorinen (1970 winner of the Pulitzer Prize with a piece called "Time's Encomium"). * As much a digital sequencer as an analogue synthesiser, it was designed by Harry Olson and Herbert Belar at the RCA lab in Princeton. * Mark I had 12 fixed tuning-fork-based oscillators in equal temperament, whose frequency could be divided down to produce different octaves. Originally, tracks were recorded onto disc (up to six at once, replayed by six styli). The whole thing took up seven tall 19" racks. * Mark II had an additional twenty-four variable oscillators, and took up ten 19" racks. It used a multi- track tape machine to record completed tracks. * Both machines used punched paper rolls to program the synthesiser/sequencer in binary code, with four columns of dots for each parameter giving sixteen possibilities == the first column being worth 1, the next 2, the next 4, and the last 8. There were control sections for Frequency, Octave, Envelope, Timbre and Volume. The paper roll, 38 cm wide, moved at about 10 cm/sec, and could cope with sixteen holes in 10 cm == making a maximum bpm of 240. Longer notes were composed of individual holes, but with a mechanism which made the note sustain through till the last hole. * Attack times were variable from 1 ms to 2 sec, and decay times from 4 ms to 19 sec. * High and low pass filtering was available, along with noise, glissando, tremolo, and patchable resonance and attenuation sections, both giving millions of possible settings. * In 1959, the Mark II was moved to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.0 Dead medium: CHIPS: Dead Software, Dead Platforms From: SeJ@aol.com (Stefan Jones) Source: http://www.clark.net/pub/kinesixd/chipsintro.html Steven Cabrinety, Margaret Cabrinety Computer History Institute for the Preservation of Software (CHIPS) Computer History Institute, Inc. P.O. Box 1627 Columbia, MD 21044 (410) 730-4609 Beginning of excerpt: ===================== "The collection contains a complete chronicle of the microcomputer industry with full software representation in the areas of entertainment, education, utilities and business applications. "This undertaking was started in order to track the growth of the microcomputer industry since the advent of the silicon chip in the late 1960's. The decisions made during these formative years would serve as the foundation for all future applications of computing technology and thus set the example for all of the hardware and software that was to follow. "The broad scope of the collection allows for historical analysis and the identification of why certain trends evolved and why specific decisions were made in a variety of areas and how this will influence the future of microcomputing. The collection serves as a reference archive that provides an accurate accounting of microcomputer history. The foremost goal of the collection has been to ensure that the accurate and complete history of the microcomputer revolution is assembled and preserved so that it will be available to future generations. "The collection now contains approximately 50,000 pieces of software supported by roughly 300 complete and operational microcomputing systems. All major companies are fully represented. However, one unique aspect of this collection is its representation of products from over 1,000 smaller companies. As a complement to the software, a complete assembly of books, periodicals, and other items relevant to the computer field provide additional background information. "Below is a sample of some of the microcomputing systems contained within the collection. This sample includes a spread of systems from microcomputer precursors to the IBM PC. Please keep in mind that this collection has not been inventoried as of the current date. The list below is taken from a 1985 prospectus which listed highlights only. He collected pieces steadily through October of 1995. Atari 400/800 XL, XE, ST Series Commodore Vic 20, 16+4, 64, 128, Amiga Apple II, II+, IIe, IIc, II GS IBM PC Jr., PC, and compatibles MacIntosh 512, Plus, SE II TRS 80 Model I, II, III, IV and Model 100 Tandy Color Computer II, III Timex Sinclair 1000 Tomy Tutor TI 99/4A NEC 8201A Portable, 8401A Seiko Wrist Terminal Heath-Zenith Hero Jr. Robot Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 Game System Odyssey Intellivision I, II, III Aquarius Computer System Colecovision Adam Computer Systems Nintendo Game System Sega Game System GCE Vectrex Aracade System Actionmax Video System" Stephen Cabrinety Aug 4,1966 - Oct 4,1995 (((excerpts from a web eulogy by Margaret Cabrinety, Stephen's sister))) "Stephen's first love was computers. He spent many long hours working in front of a computer (he claimed that he did his best work at 3 a.m.), he liked surfing the Net, was fascinated with new technology, and of course could always beat me at computer games! As it turns out, not only was he a great brother, he was 'ahead of his time'. "You see, he began collecting computer stuff (software, hardware, manuals) in 1975 when he was in high school. What started as a hobby soon became a single- minded pursuit. By 1989, he had 20,000+ pieces of commercial software, 60+ complete computer systems, hundreds of peripherals, 5000+ books and manuals that represented 3000+ corporations. At a time when many companies were not even saving one original copy of their software and museums told him software had no historical significance, he persisted. His reasoning was: 'Where would computers be without software'? "Stephen founded the non-profit organization, the Computer History Institute for the Preservation of Software (C.H.I.P.S.) in 1989. His dream was to permanently locate his collection where it could serve as a museum, an educational tool and an archive for scholarly research. Fundraising was not his forte (too shy, I think), however he maintained his passion for the idea and the collection grew. As far I as know, he was the world's first software historian." =============== End of excerpt ((((CHIPS is apparently in a rather sad state. The founder died and his sister is trying to raise money to keep it going and find a home for the collection.))) Stefan Jones Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.1 Dead medium: Indecks Information Retrieval System From: strecker@sirius.com (Candi Strecker) Source: The Last Whole Earth Catalog, 1971 (p. 320, with charming illustration) Database programs on personal computers have proven extremely efficient at organizing and manipulating certain kinds of everyday information. How did people store and sort this kind of data back in the dark ages before desktop computers, say, 25 years ago? One method was to use the special sortable paper cards marketed as the "Indecks Information Retrieval System." Each Indecks card was approximately the size and shape of the old computer "punch card." Like punch cards, Indecks cards had a diagonally-cut corner, so they could quickly be aligned before sorting. Each card face had two parts: a rectangular central area (where one would note down information), surrounded by an outer margin with about 80 numbered, punched holes. Each number could be assigned a subject appropriate to one's project. A "notcher" tool was used to chop a notch in a card from any subject hole to the card's edge. When a stack of cards was aligned and the Sorting Rod (sort of a knitting needle) was run through a particular subject hole, the appropriate cards == those notched at that subject's hole == would drop down out of the deck into one's lap. At least one competing product existed in this category, referred to below as "McBee cards." From the Last Whole Earth Catalog's review of Indecks, by Stewart Brand: "What do you have a lot of? Students, subscribers, notes, books, records, clients, projects? Once you're past 50 or 100 of whatever, it's tough to keep track, time to externalize your store and retrieve system. One handy method this side of a high-rent computer is Indecks. It's funky and functional: cards with a lot of holes in the edges, a long blunt needle, and a notcher. Run the needle through a hole in a bunch of cards, lift, and the cards notched in that hole don't rise; they fall out. So you don't have to keep the cards in order. You can sort them by feature, number, alphabetically or whatever; just poke, fan, lift and catch. [...] "We've used the McBee cards to manipulate (edit) and keep track of the 3000 or so items in this CATALOG. They've meant the difference between partial and complete insanity." The subsequent (1980) issue of the Whole Earth Catalog is full-to-bursting with information about personal computers, but contains no mention of the Indecks system. Sometime between 1971 and 1980, this medium seems to have died... Candi Strecker (strecker@sirius@com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.2 Dead medium: Pneumatic Typewriters From: charles@fma.com (Charles Stross) Source: Century of the Typewriter by Wilfred A Beeching, ISBN 0 9516790 0 7 While bumming around my local remainders shop I came across a fascinating book: "Century of the Typewriter", by Wilfred A. Beeching (Director, British Typewriter Museum). It's an edited re-release of an earlier edition (1972) which was considered one of the definitive texts on typewriters. Is the typewriter a dead medium? Arguably, yes. They're still around, but they no longer occupy a central role in the office, or even in society at large, and the humble manual portable has all but been killed by cheap dot-matrix print heads. And some varieties of typewriter are *definitely* dead: PNEUMATIC TYPEWRITERS "Various attempts were made from 1891 onwards when Marshall A. Wier in London, produced a typewriter with a pneumatic action. The object of such a machine was to eliminate the hard work involved in typing and to reduce the noise and increase the speed. It was also thought to be a substitute for such power as electricity. "One of the disadvantages of pneumatic machines has always been typebars that did not return fast enough, and although this problem could most likely have been overcome the fact is, it just seemed to present insurmountable difficulties. "It would appear that the last real attempt to manufacture a pneumatic machine was made in 1914, by a man called Juan Gualberto Holguin in Mexico. This machine was known as the 'Burbra', and used compressed air cylinders as a source of pwoer. In spite of much time and money spent on the production of compressed air typewriters, very little result of any importance has ever been achieved. "There are reports of various designs of pneumatic typewriters having been produced by large organizations, both in American and in Germany in recent years. Most of these consisted of an electrically propelled plunger which compressed oil in a tube, fired the typebar forward in a sharp thrust, had the advantage of being very quiet and also eliminating most of the moving parts of the conventional machine. The idea seems to have been abandoned due to the high cost and probably to lack of interest." Charlie Stross http://www.fma.com/ Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.3 Dead medium: Dead Personal Computers and Typewriters: Some Recommended Books From SeJ@aol.com (Stefan Jones) and Darryl_Rehr@lamg.com (Darryl Rehr) Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer: From Altair to IBM, A History of the PC Revolution by Stan Veit Published by WorldComm, 65 Macedonia Road, Alexander, NC 28701 ISBN 1-56664-023-7 $19.95 Reviewed by Stefan Jones For many years, Stan Veit edited the original incarnation of *The Computer Shopper*, a newsprint computer hobbyist want-ad monthly that was the last place die-hard Atari, Commodore, Osborne and Apple II users could find sources of hardware and software. The classified ad section of this tome was worth the cover price alone, but it also had articles for the major dying computer standards, and Veit's own history column. While *The Computer Shopper* is now a professionally managed, hernia-inducing monthly dedicated to the PC market, Veit's columns are now available in book form. The chapters of *Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer* show their origin as magazine columns. The same incidents (e.g., the first months of Stan's Computer Mart store in midtown Manhattan) are described again and again, albeit from slightly different perspectives. This isn't a problem if you read the chapters one at a time and don't expect a consistent narrative. Each chapter covers Veit's dealings with a particular company: Altair (the folks who arguably started it all), Sphere, IMSAI, and so on. Most of the systems and companies that Veit surveys are long dead; victims of the Apple II with its reliable disk drives and built-in video, or of IBM and its CP/M-squishing Personal Computer. Some of the firms passed on gracefully; others were frauds and cheats. The most entertaining chapter is the tale of the early days of Apple. Veit rubbed elbows with the two Steves when they were still ragged, long haired hackers; he relates how his mother-in-law made Steve Jobs take off his jeans at a crucial early trade show so she could sew up the rents and tears. Veit also mentions the time that Jobs offered him a chance to buy a significant chunk of the nascent computer giant for $10,000. Had he not had the money tied up in his store, Veit probably would have taken him up on the deal and today would be worth billions . . . Another highlight: The time that a computer graphics display == the Cromemco "Dazzler" == placed in the store window caused a late-night traffic jam on 5th Avenue. Drivers were so amazed that they stopped and stared . . . and stared... until police rousted Veit's landlord from bed to turn off the monitor. Veit doesn't neglect the experiences of his customers. The feats of soldering and switch-flipping the early computer hobbyists had to perform to get a working computer are explained in exquisite detail, making one damn appreciative for BIOS chips and floppy drives. The tales of vaporware BASIC, dirty tricks, memory boards that periodically blanked and some systems that just plain didn't work are almost enough to make one grateful for IBM and Microsoft. The computerists of the mid seventies were a different breed, and true pioneers. Stefan Jones From: Darryl_Rehr@lamg.com (Darryl Rehr) Re: Dead Media Working Note 11.2: Pneumatic Typewriters >While bumming around my local remainders shop I came >across a fascinating book: "Century of the Typewriter", >by Wilfred A. Beeching (Director, British Typewriter >Museum). It's an edited re-release of an earlier edition >(1972) which was considered one of the definitive texts >on typewriters. While Wilf Beeching is an admirable old gent, his book is not considered "definitive" by typewriter collectors. It has a lot of good stuff such as serial number lists, and a multitude of photos (many from the massive collection at the Milwaukee Public Museum), but it is frought with inaccuracies. Much more "definitive" is "The Writing Machine," by Michael Adler, written in 1973. Adler is about to release a revised edition. My own book on typewriters ("Antique Typewriters and Office Collectibles") should be on the street next spring. It will feature 100% color photos (many from the Milwaukee Public Museum collection). Is the typewriter dead? Hmmm, I suppose so. But as you compose your next computer message, be aware that the QWERTY keyboard under your fingertips was there at the birth of the typewriter industry. QWERTY has been with us since 1872 (next year is the 125th anniversary!). Darryl Rehr Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.4 Dead medium: Early/Mechanical Television Systems From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) These are excerpts from the catalog from the exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, "Watching TV". The exhibition runs through September 15, 1996. The catalogue is available from Royal Ontario Museum shops, CityStore 299 Queen Street, West, Ontario, Canada or from MZTV Museum. Cost - $11.50 Cdn., $10.00 US, plus shipping. Send email orders to mztv@bravo.ca. Credits: An excerpt from "Watching TV: Opening the Doors of Reception" by Liss Jeffrey, Acting Director, MZTV Museum. Technical research by Gary Borton, Consulting Curator, and Iain Baird, Researcher, MZTV Museum. "Mechanical TV: Pioneering Experiments" According to Business Week in 1931, television broadcasters admitted "that interest in their efforts is confined almost entirely to the experimenter = the young man of mechanical bent whose principal interest is in how television works rather than in the quality ofimages received." William Boddy, 1991 Fred Hammond, VE3HC, is a veteran Radio Ham who has been on the air since 1929. During the early 1930's, he was one of a handful of radio experimenters in Canada to become interested in mechanical television, building his own mechanical kit vision receiver. As an active Radio Ham, he was able to audibly monitor the various mechanical television signals. Always a sensation, television was hardly an overnight success. In 1926, New York Times radio editor Orrin Dunlap called the new medium "an inventor's will-o'- the-wisp." A year earlier, a Scot, John Logie Baird, and an American, Charles Francis Jenkins, generated the first live pictures by pairing (or synchronizing) primitive mechanical scanning discs at transmitter and receiver ends. These demonstrations, soon conducted at department stores, trade fairs, and before invited audiences of scientists and government officials, attracted the curiosity of press and public. Especially interested were some of the quarter- million amateur "wireless" operators, whose numbers grew during the early 1920s, when "radio mania" swept North America. These hobbyists were among the original producers and consumers of both radio and television. In 1928, Jenkins began irregular broadcasts of the crude silhouettes he called radiomovies. He described the thrill for his amateur audience as they "fished" for his signals on homebuilt contraptions: "thousands of amateurs fascinatingly watch the pantomime picture in their receiver sets as dainty little Jans Marie performs tricks with her bouncing ball, Miss Constance hangs up her doll wash in a drying wind, and diminutive Jacqueline does athletic dances with her clever partner, Master Fremont." At its inception, radio "listening-in" was an active, mainly male pastime, requiring technical know-how, and constant adjustments to the set. "Lookers-in" to early mechanical television patiently fished for signals. Sometimes they caught tiny, indistinct images. A separate radio set could be used to tune in sound with the picture. Radio entered most households only after it was domesticated. This meant that it came to resemble furniture instead of a gadget, became easier to operate, and could be enjoyed by more than one person at a time. Television followed a similar route into the home, but its complex and expensive assemblage dictated a lengthier experimental period before costs came down, and before the invention of larger screens and clearer pictures could domesticate "seeing at a distance." Despite these early limitations, the pioneers of crude mechanical television demonstrated basic principles of picture scanning and synchronization of transmission and reception. They also glimpsed the medium's potential for storytelling. In 1928, the first live drama broadcast, a three-camera production called "The Queen's Messenger," was received on a General Electric Octagon set in Schenectady, New York. In 1931, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) broadcast experimental signals from the Empire State Building, featuring a familiar cartoon character, Felix the Cat. The first TV star was born. By 1935, mechanical television had reached a dead end in North America. Image resolution remained low, at best reaching 120 lines of picture definition. Transmission and reception standards were nonexistent. Available programming was unpredictably scheduled. Lacking an audience, advertisers were reluctant to purchase commercial time. Richard Kadrey (kadrey@well.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.5 Dead medium: Mechanical TV: The Pioneers From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) These are excerpts from the catalog from the exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, "Watching TV". The exhibition runs through September 15, 1996. The catalogue is available from Royal Ontario Museum shops, CityStore 299 Queen Street, West, Ontario, Canada or from MZTV Museum. Cost - $11.50 Cdn., $10.00 US, plus shipping. Send email orders to mztv@bravo.ca. Credits: An excerpt from "Watching TV: Opening the Doors of Reception" by Liss Jeffrey, Acting Director, MZTV Museum. Technical research by Gary Borton, Consulting Curator, and Iain Baird, Researcher, MZTV Museum. Mechanical TV: The Pioneers Nipkow One of the earliest proposals for a mechanical television system was put forward by German researcher Paul Nipkow in 1883. When he developed patent No. 30,105, he was an unknown twenty-three-year-old student living in Berlin. It proved to be the basis for most early television schemes in the world, although he never built the apparatus. In Nipkow's patent, which he called an 'electric telescope,' a disc was punched with holes in a spiral near the outer edge. When the disc revolved, each hole vertically scanned a line of the image, allowing variations in light to reach a selenium cell. As one hole swept over a segment of the picture, the next in sequence tackled the portion next to it, until the complete subject had been scanned. The selenium cell transferred the light variations to an electronic signal. Pictures were reconstituted at the receiver by a similar disc which was synchronized with the transmitter. Jenkins One of the better known experimenters with mechanical television was Charles Francis Jenkins, a prolific American inventor. In May 1920, at the Toronto meeting of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, Jenkins introduced his "prismatic rings" as a device to replace the shutter on a film projector. This invention laid the foundation for his first radiovision broadcast. He claimed to have transmitted the earliest moving silhouette images on June 14, 1923, but his first public demonstration of these did not take place until June of 1925. Jenkins Laboratories constructed a radiovision transmitter, W3XK, in Washington D.C. The short-wave station began transmitting radiomovies across the Eastern U.S. on a regular basis by July 2, 1928. Jenkins wrote in 1929: "This gave the amateur action-pictures to 'fish' for; and during August following a hundred or more had finished their receivers and were dependably getting our broadcast pictures, and reporting thereon, to our great help." It was in this way that Jenkins actively promoted enthusiasm and experimentation in the short-wave radio community, and the U.S. experienced its first television boom, with an estimated 20,000 lookers-in. Baird John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer and entrepreneur, achieved his first transmissions of simple face shapes in 1924 using mechanical television. On March 25, 1925, Baird held his first public demonstration of "television" at the London department store Selfridges on Oxford Street in London. In this demonstration, he had not yet obtained adequate half-tones in the moving pictures, and only silhouettes were visible. In the first week of October, 1925, Baird obtained the first actual television picture in his laboratory. At this time, his test subject was a ventriloquist's dummy, "Stooky Bill," which was placed in front of the camera apparatus. Baird later recollected, "The image of the dummy's head formed itself on the screen with what appeared to me an almost unbelievable clarity. I had got it! I could scarcely believe my eyes and felt myself shaking with excitement." After much discussion with his business associates, and further improvements, Baird decided to publicly demonstrate television on Tuesday 26 January, 1926, again at Selfridge's department store. This was the first opportunity for the general public to see television. The Baird company continued to publicize this historic demonstration, and J. L. Baird's other scientific breakthroughs as they feverishly worked to obtain financial backing and construct a line of home receivers. With Baird's transmitting equipment, the British Broadcasting Corporation began regular experimental television broadcasts on September 30, 1929. By the following year, most of Britain's major radio dealers were selling Baird kits and ready-made receivers through retail and by mail order. Richard Kadrey (kadrey@well.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.6 Dead medium: Mechanical TV: Baird Television From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) These are excerpts from the catalog from the exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, "Watching TV". The exhibition runs through September 15, 1996. The catalogue is available from Royal Ontario Museum shops, CityStore 299 Queen Street, West, Ontario, Canada or from MZTV Museum. Cost - $11.50 Cdn., $10.00 US, plus shipping. Send email orders to mztv@bravo.ca. Credits: An excerpt from "Watching TV: Opening the Doors of Reception" by Liss Jeffrey, Acting Director, MZTV Museum. Technical research by Gary Borton, Consulting Curator, and Iain Baird, Researcher, MZTV Museum. Mechanical TV: Baird Television The ROM's Institute of Contemporary Culture in association with the MZTV Museum invites you to join us for an historic demonstration of BAIRD TELEVISION, live at the Royal Ontario Museum, Sunday April 14th, 1996, 1:00pm. John Logie Baird is the Scottish inventor who obtained the world's first real television picture in his laboratory in October, 1925, and demonstrated it to the British public on January 26, 1926. The image obtained was a small 30-line vertically-scanned red and black image, but it was television. Mechanical television based on Baird's systems dominated international television for the next few years into the early 30's. The first live public demonstration of a Baird Television system in North America since 1932 will take place in Toronto on Sunday, April 14th. John Logie Baird's son, Professor Malcolm Baird, will give a short speech to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first public demonstration of television; grandson Iain Baird, who presently works at MZTV, will be in attendance to operate the Televisor. Mechanical systems of this period are not compatible with today's TV signals. When the MZTV Museum decided to restore this televisor to full operation, the first obstacle was to feed a signal to it that it could receive. We requested the assistance of Peter Yanczer, a modern-day mechanical television enthusiast, author, and technician. He built a mechanical camera that would work on a 30-line system, and connected this camera to the television with cables. The televisor itself needed only minor repairs and lubrication, and has remained workable. By 1930, a British or West European television enthusiast could buy this televisor for home reception for about 18 pounds. The Baird company was licensed to provide intermittent broadcasts from the BBC transmitters, and at least 3,000 enthusiasts "looked in" to see as well as hear some of Britain's most popular singers and comedians. Mechanical TV: How it works The scanning and reproducing discs are similar. Both are mounted on driving motors, and each is punched with a spiral of small holes along the outer edge. The number of holes matches the number of lines of picture definition. At the transmitter in this mechanical system, the studio is in total darkness. A light emanates from a lamp behind the disc and, projected through the holes set in the spiral on the outer edge, scans the features of the subject's face. The photocell converts these variations in the reflected light into the electric impulses, which, once amplified, can be transmitted by radio waves. At the receiver, the signal is converted into a sequence of bright flashes by the neon tube. The reproducing disc rotates rapidly in front of this tube, and converts each flash of the lamp into a small element of the image. The rapid speed of the disc makes "persistence of vision" possible for the looker-in. "Persistence of vision" means that the brain retains an image for one tenth of a second after it is perceived by the eye. The rapid repetition of moving images (in film or television) tricks the brain into perceiving continuous images. Richard Kadrey (kadrey@well.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.7 Dead medium: Mechanical TV: The General Electric Octagon; the Daven Tri-Standard Scanning Disc; the Jenkins W1IM Radiovisor Kit, the Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, Jenkins Radio Movies; the Baird Televisor Plessey Model, the Baird Televisor Kit; the Western Television Corporation Visionette From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey) These are excerpts from the catalog from the exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, "Watching TV". The exhibition runs through September 15, 1996. The catalogue is available from Royal Ontario Museum shops, CityStore 299 Queen Street, West, Ontario, Canada or from MZTV Museum. Cost - $11.50 Cdn., $10.00 US, plus shipping. Send email orders to mztv@bravo.ca. Credits: An excerpt from "Watching TV: Opening the Doors of Reception" by Liss Jeffrey, Acting Director, MZTV Museum. Technical research by Gary Borton, Consulting Curator, and Iain Baird, Researcher, MZTV Museum. The General Electric Octagon, 1928 (U.S.A.) with RCA radio 1928 (U.S.A.) This mechanical television receiver was built for a 48- line television system developed during 1927 by Ernst W. Alexanderson, who was the Chief Consulting Engineer at the GE laboratories in Schenectady, New York. An elaborate experimental transmission on this type of receiver was internationally recognized as the first television drama. Entitled "The Queen's Messenger", the play had two characters, with only the heads or the hands of the four actors visible at any one time. Two actors spoke the lines, while the other two acted as "hand models". The transmitted signal was received on a console radio and monitored through the 3" lens on the Octagon by the director, and the actors were only a few feet away. GE considered mass-production of the Octagons, but this never materialized. Daven Tri-Standard Scanning Disc, 1928 (U.S.A.) The lack of a common standard of picture definition contributed to the demise of the mechanical television boom of the late 1920's and early 1930's. One solution was to make a television set that could receive a number of different standards. This Daven unit was based on a large 24" disc capable of scanning three different standards of picture definition, 24-line, 36-line and 48-line, enabling the viewer to receive more stations. The television signal was received by a short-wave radio. The operator then had to adjust the height of the neon lamp to match the correct spiral of holes, and synchronize the rotation of the scanning disc to the corresponding rotations per minute. The tiny picture would be visible in one of the three frames (marked within the black outline). Homebrew W1IM Scanning Disc, 1928 (U.S.A.) This home-made scanning disc television unit was built by the Connecticut radio experimenter, Clifford Fraser, using hand-written instructions sent to him by the mechanical television pioneer and broadcaster, Charles Jenkins. Jenkins was aware that "Radiovision" was in its infancy and actively encouraged involvement, experimentation and the exchange of information within the amateur radio community. In the late 1920's, he even went so far as to offer Radiovisor Kits similar to this one at $7.50 U.S. postage paid - a price so low that it meant a loss for his company. Jenkins Model 202 Radiovisor, 1929 (U.S.A.) This mechanical scanning-drum unit was engineered, designed and manufactured by the Jenkins Television Corporation, a company founded in 1928 by the American television pioneer, Charles Francis Jenkins. As early as 1894, he presented an article in the periodical, Electrical Engineer, on a method of electrically transmitting pictures. He was one of the earliest to succeed at television transmission, and claimed to have executed the first reported transmission of television by radio in 1923. Hugo Gernsback of Radio News and Watson Davis of Popular Radio witnessed a demonstration in the same year. In 1928 Jenkins announced the birth of a new entertainment industry, "Radio Movies". Shortly thereafter, Jenkins Laboratories Incorporated initiated 48-line silhouette broadcasting through regularly scheduled telecasts over station W3XK and a few other stations that showed "Radio Movies". Jenkins preferred the term "Radiovision" to "Television", which explains this unit's name. Baird Televisor, 1930 (U.S.A.) The Plessey model was the most popular version of the mechanical "Televisor" to be available to the British and West European retail buying public. It was engineered and designed by John Logie Baird and manufactured by the Plessey company in England. It was purchased by television enthusiasts to watch the periodic Baird Studios/BBC broadcasts available from 1929 to 1932. The 30 line images did not take up the entire "screen," but were in fact 6cm high and 2cm wide. Instead of black and white, they were black and red due to the colour of the neon gas in the lamp. About 1,000 of these sets were originally produced and priced at just over 18 British pounds each. There were kit receivers without the tin cabinet, available from Baird's for only 7 pounds. Baird was one of the true pioneers of television. He successfully demonstrated the possibilities of the Nipkow system of mechanical television by achieving the first television picture in October, 1925. Western Television Corporation Visionette, 1932 (U.S.A.) Western Television Corporation played a significant role in the evolution of television in North America. Canada's first experimental television station, which was operated by the Montreal newspaper La Presse and radio station CKAC, was supplied with Western Television equipment. The Canadian public witnessed Western Television's technology through a special mechanical projection apparatus, which was demonstrated at Eaton's and department stores in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg during 1933. In the U.S., Western's travelling demonstrations included a 9-day run at Macy's in New York that was witnessed by over 200,000 people. The Western Television Corporation drew on the talents of television pioneer Ulysses A. Sanabria, who is known for his use of interlaced scanning. Interlacing improved picture quality by reducing flicker. This television utilizes an interlaced aluminum scanning wheel and 3" magnifying lens. It was among the last and most advanced mechanical home televisions to be in use before the electronic sets began to show greater promise. Richard Kadrey (kadrey@well.com) Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.8 Dead medium: Baird Mechanical Television, Part One: Technical Introduction From: house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) Sources: BOOKS Manly, Harold: DRAKE'S RADIO ENCYCLOPEDIA (Drank & Co. 1927) Ghirardi, Alfred: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE (Radio & Technical Pub. 1933) Zworkin, Y. K. and Morton, G. A.: TELEVISION (John Wiley 1940) Goldstein, Norm: THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION (Portland House 1991) Kisseloff, Jeff: THE BOX (Viking 1995) Ritchie, Michael: PLEASE STAND BY (Overlook Press 1994) Winship, Michael: TELEVISION (Random House 1988) Yanczer, Peter: THE MECHANICS OF TELEVISION (Peter Yanczer 1987) (Peter Yanczer, 835 Bricken Pl., St. Louis MO 63122 USA) MAGAZINES Popular Science, March 1932 Mechanics and Handicraft, Vol. 1 #1, Winter 1933 Television: Journal of the Royal Television Society, April 1995 VIDEO The Race for Television, BBC INTERNET The efficiency of on-line search engines and the shifting nature of the Internet make long and comprehensive lists of URLs both unnecessary and inaccurate. A search for 'John Logie Baird' or 'mechanical television' should turn up several interesting sources. Only two are listed here. http://www.teleport.com/~house127/lobby/mechtele.html This article, including illustrations. ftp://ftp.teleport.com/pub/users/house127/avdept/mechtele. zip A lengthy thread from alt.technology.obsolete on mechanical television, as well as one or two pieces of e- mail on the subject. Compressed using pkzip. VISIONEER: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD AND MECHANICAL TELEVISION by Trevor Blake Part 01: TECHNICAL INTRODUCTION Part 02: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD Part 03: OTHER COUNTRIES, OTHER SYSTEMS PART ONE: TECHNICAL INTRODUCTION The discovery leading to the possibility of mechanical television was an accident. While laying the first trans- Atlantic cable, a worker noticed that some of his tools were glowing. An analysis of the metal revealed a concentration of selenium, the metal used soon after in the earliest photoelectric cells. Selford Bidwell used a photoelectric cell to transmit an image electronically in 1881: over the course of several minutes, a two-inch square image could be sent via telegraph lines. Three years later, Paul Nipkow was granted a German patent for the Nipkow disk == a complete and functional television system in 1884. The development of the neon tube in 1910 furthered mechanical television. Film achieves the illusion of motion by taking advantage of the persistence of vision: still images in a fixed location which are refreshed at a rate of sixteen times per second (or more) are interpreted by the human mind as moving images. Television achieves the illusion of motion in a similar but unique fashion. Rather than refresh the entire image at once, as film does with each cell that passes in front of the projector's light, television refreshes an image one line at a time in a scanning process. Within the cathode ray tube, an electron gun scans a single line of an image from one side to the other, then scans the line underneath it, until it has scanned an entire image. The Nipkow disk is an earlier, mechanical means of achieving the same side-to-side, top-to-bottom scan process. It consists of a disk that rotates on its axis. A series of evenly spaced, uniformly sized holes are cut into the disk, spiraling in toward the center. The disk is housed in a box with a small viewing window: the outermost hole of the disk will form the outermost scan line visible in the viewing window, and each additional hole will form additional scan lines. The rotation of the disk as seen through the viewing window provides scanning from side to side, and the spiral placement of the holes provides scanning from outermost to innermost scan line. A light source which can be varied in intensity is placed on the opposite side of the disk behind the viewing window. As the light flickers and the disk rotates, television is achieved. Mechanical television cameras and receivers alike use the Nipkow disk, but where the receiver uses a flickering light to produce an image, the camera uses a photosensitive cell to generate an image. The rotation of the disks is synchronized by part of the transmission signal (which has included radio, short wave and telephone) or direct wiring. The disks rotate at around 900 rpm and initially produced television two inches square. The earliest mechanical televisions offered between 16 and 24 lines of resolution. By the late 1920s, they offered between 48 and 60 lines. Double and triple spirals of scanning holes were used, as well as scanning drums and belts. Lenses were fixed in the scan holes to project the image onto a larger screen (up to 8 inches in some cases). Mechanical television cameras were synchronized with film projectors, allowing the transmission of film. Studio B of the BBC used a hybrid of this system: the subject was filmed, the film was instantly processed and then scanned for transmission. There was a delay of around one minute between event and transmission as the film developed. The light required for mechanical television is intense, so much so it was nearly impossible to perform while being televised. The flying spot camera was one solution to this problem: an additional scanning disk, synchronized to the camera, cast a brilliant light on the subject in the same spot they were being scanned. The rest of the studio, including the control room, was kept in complete darkness. Another solution to this problem was the use of multiple arrays of concave lenses to focus light into the camera more efficiently. Trevor Blake 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology P.O. Box 2321 Portland OR 97208-2321 USA - (503) 635-1796 house127@teleport.com - http://www.teleport.com/~house127 Subject: Dead Media Working Note 11.9 Dead medium: Baird Mechanical Television Part Two: John Logie Baird From: house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) Sources: (((See Note 11.8))) VISIONEER: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD AND MECHANICAL TELEVISION by Trevor Blake PART TWO: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD Scotsman John Logie Baird had long been an entrepreneur and inventor. When he was twelve he built his own telephone. He had invested in chutney in the West Indies, artificial diamonds in Glasgow and soap in London. In 1918 he held the patent for the Baird Undersock, a sock worn beneath regular socks. In 1920, at the age of 31, he began his life's work == the undercredited discovery and development of television. Beginning with a personal ad in the London Times ("SEEING BY WIRELESS: Inventor of apparatus wishes to hear from someone who will assist [not financially] in making working model"), Baird set out to build a working television system using borrowed money and the material he had at hand, which included darning needles, hat boxes, a Rich Mix biscuit tin, sealing wax and a bicycle lantern. His Nipkow disk was cut from an old tea chest. In February 1923 he entered the shop of Hasting radio dealer Victor Mill and asked for assistance, saying "I've fitted up an apparatus for transmitting pictures and I can't get it to go." Mills accompanied Baird back to his laboratory/apartment and waved his hand in front of the neon: when Baird shouted "it's here, it's here!", the first real-time electronic moving picture in world history occurred. Not long after Baird demonstrated his system to the local press, but was evicted from his apartment. Baird relocated to London and set up a second and lab in Soho. Using ventriloquist dummies (better able to withstand the intense heat and light of his equipment), he succeeded in transmitting a televised image one yard across his room. In March 1925 he gave the first public demonstration of television, sponsored by Selfridge's Department store. A demonstration of television in January 1926 in Baird's small, drafty attic apartment failed to impress the Royal Institute, particularly when the long white beard of one of the men became entangled in the mechanism. In Autumn of the next year he transmitted eight miles, and formed a company: Television Ltd. The first recorded television images were made on 10" wax disks called Phonovisors, no later than September 1927 in Baird's labs: he had been awarded a patent for this technology the year before. Phonovisor disks captured 12.5 frames of 30-line resolution television per second. Baird also patented Noctovision, the use of infrared light in television, and demonstrated color television (using a rotating filter system) in 1927. By 1928, Baird Televisors sold for between 20 and 150 pounds (kits sold for 16 guineas). Baird's assistant Benjamin Clapp travelled to New York City to receive the first transoceanic television signal. The box of equipment he used was labeled 'experimental radio equipment' to prevent customs from seizing it as a dangerous or profitable new technology. It took two months before a break in the weather allowed Clapp to see the image of Stukey Bill (((a.k.a. "Stooky Bill"))), the ventriloquist dummy head used in the Baird studio, but once the press was called in the event received one inch headlines across the nation. On the way home aboard the *Berengeria,* Clapp allowed the ship's wireless operator to see his fiance in England via television while 1,000 miles out at sea. Eighteen licensed transmitters were in operation in the United States by the late 1920s, transmitting faces and silhouettes. General Electric's House of Magic recorded synchronized sound and pictures in New York. In 1928 Bell Telephone transmitted a television image from New York to Washington D. C. The threat of losing television to the USA gave Baird leverage in convincing the BBC to begin television transmission. In 1928 Baird convinced a London surgeon to lend him an eyeball removed from a young man's head. In his own words... "As soon as I was given the eye, I hurried in a taxicab to the laboratory. Within a few minutes I had the eye in the machine. Then I turned on the current and the waves carrying television were broadcast from the aerial. The essential image for television passed through the eye within half and hour after the operation. On the following day the sensitiveness of the eye's visual nerve was gone. The optic was dead. I had been dissatisfied with the old-fashioned selenium cell and lens. I felt that television demanded something more refined. The most sensitive optical substance known is the nerve of the human eye... I had to wait a long time to get the eye because unimpaired ones are not often removed by surgeons... Nothing was gained from the experiment. It was gruesome and a waste of time." The BBC began mechanical television transmission in 1929. In July 1930, the BBC transmitted Pirandello's play "The Man with a Flower in His Mouth" in 240 lines of resolution. The heads and shoulders of the actors were shown as they spoke their lines and sat on a stool: when another actor was to be shown, a screen was held before the camera as the actors exchanged seats. The Derby was televised in June 1931: a camera waited at the finish line until the moment when the horses and jockeys passed by. The BBC was transmitting four days a week by August 1932. By this time, Baird's financial backers began to insist he look into the electronic television of Philo Farnsworth. When Farnsworth travelled to England while raising money in his legal battles with RCA/EMI, he met with Baird and demonstrated his system. Baird explained the superiority of his system to Farnsworth, but after watching several minutes of cathode ray tube television he left the room without a word. Baird's sponsors gave Farnsworth $50,000 to supply Baird with electronic television equipment. A fire that nearly destroyed the Alexander Palace studios soon after closed down the BBC, and when they reopened they were fully committed to the electronic television of EMI. After 1,500 successful mechanical transmissions, the BBC was ready to switch to the EMI system. Beginning September 1935, they held a final six-month trial, during which the two systems were transmitted on alternate weeks from Alexander Palace, 12 miles north of London. Studio A used the EMI system, while Studio B used the Baird film pickup system. Baird's system lost, and on 2 November 1936 the BBC transmitted the first high-definition television signal using the EMI system. Many executives and technicians were invited to the studio on opening day, but when Baird showed up he was left wandering the halls, shut out from celebrating the technology he had developed. The final mechanical television transmission in England occurred in February 1937. Baird continued to develop television technology. In 1940, he introduced the Telechrome, an electronic color television system in which two electron guns scanned 600 - 650 lines on a white mica sheet coated with orange phosphor on one side and blue-green phosphor on the other. War time restrictions prevented full scale production of the Telechrome. At the time of his death in 1946, John Logie Baird was working on stereoscopic television. Trevor Blake 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology P.O. Box 2321 Portland OR 97208-2321 USA - (503) 635-1796 house127@teleport.com - http://www.teleport.com/~house127 Subject: Dead Media Working Note 12.0 Dead Medium: Baird Mechanical Television Part 3: Other Countries, Other Systems From: house127@teleport.com (Trevor Blake) VISIONEER: JOHN LOGIE BAIRD AND MECHANICAL TELEVISION by Trevor Blake PART THREE: OTHER COUNTRIES, OTHER SYSTEMS England and the United States were not the only countries that utilized mechanical television. The race to be the first country to develop television was truly international and included Canada, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Japan. The base for mechanical television research in the Soviet Union was Leningrad. The first Russian television image was transmitted in 1928, and the first public broadcast occurred in 1934. The first broadcast began "Attention, attention, attention radio viewers: watch, listen to the first television concert." The station was soon flooded with letters from radio listeners asking where they were supposed to look to see the concert. In March 1935, Germany offered the world's first low- definition (electronic) television service. It used 180 lines of resolution (compared to the 405 offered by the BBC over a year later) and was seen mainly in public viewing rooms. The Berlin Olympics were transmitted by television, and in March 1936 a video telephone system was established. No public official was recorded as using television: the medium was used entirely for entertainment during this period. While England, the USSR and the USA ceased transmissions during World War Two, Germany paused only during the invasion of Poland. If the BBC had not adopted the EMI system, it is unlikely England would have had the facilities to manufacture cathode ray tubes on an industrial level. And had this not been possible, the manufacturing of radar screens == and therefore the outcome of the war == might also have been in question. Mechanical imaging systems remain a vital technology. Computer mice use two slotted disks that are rotated by the track ball. These disks are positioned next to tiny lights: as the disks spin the lights are registered as on or off by photosensors, and software translates the blinking lights as x-y cursor position. Software or sound activated moving mirrors are the key component to laser light shows as well as some virtual reality headgear. While not commercially successful, video disks (as opposed to laser disks) were an entirely functional medium: a magnetic-tipped needle read encoded pulses in a large plastic disk. All of these technologies, as well as television, are directly indebted to John Logie Baird. CHRONOLOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS Manly, Harold: DRAKE'S RADIO ENCYCLOPEDIA (Drank & Co. 1927) Ghirardi, Alfred: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE (Radio & Technical Pub. 1933) Zworkin, Y. K. and Morton, G. A.: TELEVISION (John Wiley 1940) Goldstein, Norm: THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION (Portland House 1991) Kisseloff, Jeff: THE BOX (Viking 1995) Ritchie, Michael: PLEASE STAND BY (Overlook Press 1994) Winship, Michael: TELEVISION (Random House 1988) Yanczer, Peter: THE MECHANICS OF TELEVISION (Peter Yanczer 1987) (Peter Yanczer, 835 Bricken Pl., St. Louis MO 63122 USA) MAGAZINES Popular Science, March 1932 Mechanics and Handicraft, Vol. 1 #1, Winter 1933 Television: Journal of the Royal Television Society, April 1995 VIDEO The Race for Television, BBC INTERNET The efficiency of on-line search engines and the shifting nature of the Internet make long and comprehensive lists of URLs both unnecessary and inaccurate. A search for 'John Logie Baird' or 'mechanical television' should turn up several interesting sources. Only two are listed here. http://www.teleport.com/~house127/lobby/mechtele.html This article, including illustrations. ftp://ftp.teleport.com/pub/users/house127/avdept/mechtele. zip A lengthy thread from alt.technology.obsolete on mechanical television, as well as one or two pieces of e- mail on the subject. Compressed using pkzip. 127 House - An Independent Archive of Systematic Ideology P.O. Box 2321 Portland OR 97208-2321 USA - (503) 635-1796 house127@teleport.com - http://www.teleport.com/~house127