The Dead Media Notebook (21 page)

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.

Source: STAFFS OF LIFE (ed. AF Roberts, Iowa City 1994)

From A. Padgett Peterson

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.

By the way, 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.”

Source: The Zenith Story, an inhouse Zenith publication from 1954.

From Jack Ruttan

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.

Source KINETIC ART: THEORY AND PRACTICE, Selections from the Journal Leonardo, Frank J. Malina ed, New York, Dover Publications Inc. 1974.

From Bruce Sterling

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.

“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 above, describing 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 himself 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.]

“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.

“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’]

“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.’”

Source: SPIES AND SPYMASTERS OF THE CIVIL WAR by Donald E. Markle, 1994. Barnes & Noble Books, ISBN 1-56619-976-X

From Paul Di Filippo

“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.”

Source: Scientific American February 1896

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

Zuse Z4 (mechanical relays) 1939

Atanasoff/ABC Oct 1939 ?

Colossus Mark I (declassified 1970) 1943

[2015 note: The mailing list included a huge list of dead mainframe computers, with dates, that is too long to include here]

Source: Bruce P. Watson, Dr Kenneth E. Knight, assorted scrounging on World Wide Web computer history sites

From 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!