The Dead Media Notebook (23 page)

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

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

[The article is about the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria Queens and its exhibition,”Behind the Screen”]

A large part of the third floor is taken up with thehardware of recording images and sound, including curios like the 1931 Jenkins Radiovisor, a mechanical televisionthat 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&Tpresident 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.

Source: New York Times, April 21, 1996, Page One, Section Two: ANYONE CAN BECOME A STAR IN ASTORIA by Ralph

From Bruce Sterling

“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 hammer, but also the instruments of the orchestra, the applause and laughter of the the audience ‘and, alas! the voice of the prompter too.’

“Efforts to reach 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 transmittted 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.”

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

From Bruce Sterling

“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.’

[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.”

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

From Bruce Sterling

“Church services were also an occasion for telephonetransmission. 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.”

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

From Eric Mankin

“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.

Source: The Bedbugs’ Night Dance and other Hopi Sexual Tales, Collected, translated and edited by Ekkehard Malotki.

From Bruce Sterling

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 ora 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, JohnBenjamin Dancer made and sold text “content” to be accessed through a home microscope.]