The Dead Media Notebook (37 page)

The cylinder makers took little notice at first of Berliner’s gramophone, but by the end of the century they were desperate enough to try challenging Berliner’s patents. The result of the 1900 lawsuit by the American Graphophone Company against Frank Seaman, Berliner’s chief pitchman and head of distribution, resulted in Seaman making and selling Gramophones for American Graphophone.

The maker of Berliner’s motors founded Victor Talking Machine. Berliner’s patent-holding United States Gramophone Company ended up wondering what had happened. Eventually Victor and the Berliner interests pooled their patents (Victor’s founder, Eldridge Johnson, had created the wax-disc mastering process) and dominated the record business for nearly twenty years.

Cylinder sales dropped off sharply after 1901. Columbia sold cylinders until 1912, but found its true fortune in supplying discs to Victrola owners.

By the end of WWI, the gramophone, Berliner’s lateral-groove disc record player, was triumphant. Edison refused to play ball; cylinders still sold in rural markets and he was convinced of the format’s superiority.

When criticism of the cylinder’s two-minute play length began to sting he introduced the “Blue Amberol” four minute plastic cylinder (1912). In 1913 he introduced his VERTICAL GROOVE (“hill and dale”) DISC PHONOGRAPH. It was technically superior to anything on the market, but as was his habit Edison did not follow up with quality records that appealed to the high end of the market.

A few European producers, Pathe, Okeh, and Vocalian, marketed vertical-cut disks for the American and Continental markets, but as soon as the Gramophone/Victor patents ran out in 1919 they switched to the lateral-groove format. Edison continued selling cylinders until leaving the phonograph business entirely in 1929.

Just before the end he released a series of poorly received long-playing twenty-minute “hill and dale” records, and announced (but presumably did not produce) a conventional lateral cut phonograph.

EUROPE Europe was definitely a follower when it came to phonograph technology. Edison’s tin-foil cylinder phonograph thrilled audiences, but failed to inspire imitators or empire builders.

The wax cylinder phonograph was introduced to Europe in 1888, via licensed subsidiaries. High prices kept the machine out of British homes for some time, but in France things were different.

Around 1890, Paris bistro owners Charles and Emile Pathe put a Edison machine in their bar to the delight of their patrons. So many people offered to buy the player that in 1894 they began manufacturing “Le Coq,” an inexpensive knock-off, and made cylinders as well.

(Aside: “So popular did the ‘Cock’ become that the swaggering bird was adopted as Pathe’s trademark. It can still be seen and heard still at the beginning of Pathe’s newsreels.” Gelatt, page 102. Note the present tense! Newsreels were not a dead medium in 1955.)

Having famous opera stars convenient to their studios made Pathe’s recordings an instant success. Their 1899 catalog featured 1,500 selections. Cylinders were the mode in France until 1908.

The rest of Europe favored the disk. Berliner’s brother Joseph helped get a German branch of the gramophone manufacturer under way, and a robust British branch of the firm set up subsidiaries all over the continent.

In London in 1904, William Michaelis introduce the NEOPHONE, a hill-and-dale disc. Gelatt, page 169: “Neophone records were made of a plastic material laminated to a cardboard base; they were exceptionally light, exceptionally cheap , and exceptionally scratchy.”

The Neophone Company offered the “Repro-Neo” adaptor to allow gramophones to play the vertical cut discs. This, and innovations such as a twenty-inch record with a ten minute playing time, didn’t keep Neophone from disappearing in 1908. The Pathe Brothers introduced a vertical cut disc in 1906, eventually favoring it over their popular cylinder line.

They sold their own disc players, plus an adaptor similar to the “Repro-Neo.” The inexpensive discs sold widely, even in the U.S.A., but did not seriously challenge the lateral-cut discs. Pathe abandoned the hill- and-dale method entirely in 1920.

Source: THE FABULOUS PHONOGRAPH by Roland Gelatt, J.B. Lippincott, NY, 1955

From Charlie Crouch

Widescreen Flops

When a TV station transmits a widescreen movie, it must choose between cropping the sides or putting ‘letterbox’ black borders at the top and bottom. A widescreen TV set can then expand the letterbox image to fill its 16:9 screen. The trouble is, the picture quality is reduced.

The MAC system was designed to solve this problem, with a signal that suited both ordinary and widescreen TVs. But it flopped. Digital TV will play the same tricks but was, until recently, seen as a next-century product. So in 1988, European electronics companies started five years’ work on PALplus, a scheme in which the black borders of the letterbox contain analogue “helper” signals. These let a PALplus TV set fill a wide screen without loss of quality.

But so many viewers with ordinary sets complained about letterboxed PALplus movies that Channel 4 [a commercial channel in the UK] scrapped plans for PALplus horseracing. Some of C4’s movies are still transmitted in PALplus. But when digital TV is launched next year, PALplus will drop into the dustbin of history.

Source: Daily Telegraph, London, Dec 10, 1996 “TechnoTurkey” column by Barry Fox

From Bradley O’Neill

HERON’S AUTOMATED THEATER, NAUPLIUS: 2
^nd
century AD.

Heron of Alexandria, great inventor and tinkerer of his day, wrote two major treatises on mechanics and automata.

The first work, Pneumatica, comprises an application of various theories of vacuum, steam, pulleys, siphons, and air, that intrigued both Epicurean and Stoic philosophers.

His next work, On Automata, fleshed out the applied details of his theories and experiments with early automata, and also contained the plans for his automated theatrical machine, Nauplius.

Physically, Nauplius was a tall pedestal, not unlike a large grandfather clock. Where we would expect to find the face of the clock, instead we find an expansive facade of a Greek temple with doors that open and close. The theater is completely self-contained and self-operating once it has been wound-up. All action takes place behind a silhouetted screen on parallel tracks.

Here is a very brief summary of the five-scene theatrical plot of the automated Nauplius:

Scene 1. Doors open, a ship is repaired by twelve figures [Danaids] arranged in three rows. Some saw, others hammer. Great noise. The “actual” sound of working. Doors close.
Scene 2. Doors open. The ship is launched to sea. Doors close.
Scene 3. Doors open. Empty sea. The ships sail across the stage. Dolphins jump. The winds pick up. The ships run with sail close-hauled. Doors close.
Scene 4. Doors open. No more ships. Nauplius stands by Athena with torch and real fire burns above the stage as if cast by torch. Doors close.
Scene 5. Doors open. Shipwreck of Ajax’s boat. Ajax swims. A machine raises Athena above the stage. Thunder crashes. Lightning bolt strikes. Ajax disappears. Doors close.
THE END

Heron’s text, On Automata, uses the automated theater as a pedagogical device to explain the physical principles of the machinery he employed. It goes into detail on the greatest effects of Nauplius, a kind of “Making Of” behind-the-scenes affair. We get to see how the dolphins swim, how the lightning snaps down and up so quickly, etc. Unfortunately, poor translations have ruined much. We know that the various technologies existed up to 4 centuries prior to Heron, and were variously implemented by Ctesibius in his lost proto-version of Nauplius, circa 2 BC.

Source: Ancient Greek Gadgets and Machines by Robert S. Brumbaugh, Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1966. T16.B87 1966

From David Morton

[Most people know IBM for two of its products: the personal computer and the Selectric typewriter. The Selectric is now out of production and, according to author Sam Kalow, IBM has dropped parts and service for these models. Surviving examples are many, and they are often highly prized by their owners. How do you deal with the task of filling out forms in the computer age? You dust off your old typewriter.. David Morton]

“The announcement of the IBM Selectric typewriter in July 1961 initiated what turned out to be the ET (later OP) Division’s most popular product. Except for the IBM Personal Computer, the Selectric was used by more people and sold more units than any other IBM machine. Almost everybody is familiar with this product as the ‘golf ball’ typewriter. The single element which holds the embossed characters for printing is about the size and the embossing reminiscent of the dimples of a golf ball.

“The inspiration for using a single printing element rather than traditional typebars came from H. S. “Bud” Beattie. Beattie was the manager of ET engineering in 1961. In 1946 he had invented a high-speed, single-element printer to be used in data-processing applications and was always motivated to utilize this technology in a typewriter.
Today, high-speed printers, such as laser or ink jet technology, use the Selectric as the minimum standard for
‘correspondence’ or ‘letter’ quality.

“The ribbon on the Selectric was specially designed to fit into a cartridge so that the user did not have to touch the ribbon itself. The ribbon moves back and forth as part of the print mechanism, and the user can easily change ribbons as well as print elements. Thus, with colored ribbons, and plate writing ribbons, the typist selects the quality and color of the impression. In addition, the print mechanism has a lever to control the force with which the element strikes the platen to accommodate carbon copies and prepare stencils.

“The excitement generated by the Selectric extended beyond the ETD sales force to all its customers. People would crowd around the machine being demonstrated, amazed by the rapidly rotating and tilting print mechanism. Unlike the well-known type-bar action, it was hard to understand how the Selectric worked. For example, if two keys are pressed simultaneously or almost simultaneously on a typebar machine, electric or manual, it is likely that the bars, in moving toward the paper, will strike each other, either jamming or producing uneven print.

“With the Selectric, however, only one key can be pressed at a time, and if there is only a momentary lag, the machine prints the characters in sequence; there cannot be an overstrike since there is only the single printing element. This feature was highlighted as a memory or stroke storage.

“The ability to have several fonts on the same page, or different-colored impressions, was recognized by many typists as a capability beyond that of any typewriter they had seen or used before.

“The customer excitement about the Selectric translated to high sales.
This machine was one of the first examples of manufacturing automation and helped keep the cost down and the quality high.

“The Selectric is a classic example of technology driving the market versus utilizing a technology to satisfy a known market requirement. Customers were not clamoring for a typewriter without type bars or one that had no moving carriage. Likewise, while ribbon changing was considered a nuisance, operators had become accustomed to soiled fingers, and sometimes clothing, when replacing a worn-out ribbon with a new one.

“And who ever heard of a typed letter containing two different type styles and even different colors of type?. So innovative and dramatic was the single element technology that once secretaries and their bosses had viewed the Selectric in operation, the machine became the definitive product of choice.

“The Selectric was a superb piece of mechanical engineering with thousands of finely machined parts working together. The major investment was tooling up for the unique parts, and no competitor was willing to challenge either IBM’s patents or its manufacturing capability. The Selectric remained a unique product for over a decade.

“The Selectric printing mechanism also appealed to the data processing side of IBM. Modified typebar electric typewriters were used as input/output writers on computer consoles. In most cases fan-fold or continuous-form paper was used. However, the moving carriage of the typebar machines could cause the paper to get out of alignment or tear. ETD made pin-feed platens to better hold the paper in place, but the stationary carriage of the Selectric eliminated the problem of the paper’s being dragged back and forth.

“The Selectric was also developed into a terminal for remote access to a data-processing system, the Models 2740 and 2741.

“The Selectric announcement, with its new single element technology, was an advertiser’s delight. While IBM typebar machines, models “A,” “B,” and “C,” had been highlighted in print ads featuring ease, speed, and quality, there really wasn’t that much to shout about. The Selectric changed all that, and ETD’s Advertising Department and its agency, Benton & Bowles, dramatized in words and pictures the unique and revolutionary characteristics of the Selectric.
ETD virtually built an entire business around a typewriter that put the image on the page with something resembling the shape of a golf ball
.

“The design of the entire Selectric product also lent itself to creative depiction and description in the print and TV ads that were developed. The lack of a moving carriage on the Selectric allowed famed industrial designer Elliot Noyes to create a cover design for the machine that was sculptured, flowing, functional, and totally integrated, one that had never before been seen on a typewriter. Part of the enormous appeal of the Selectric can be attributed to its advanced appearance.
The Selectric technology was the inspiration for further development of automatic and, ultimately, electronic typewriters.
”

Source: C. E. DeLoca and S. J. Kalow, The Romance Division: A Different Side of IBM (Wykoff, NJ: D&K Book Co., Inc., 1991)

From Darryl Rehr