The Dead Media Notebook (49 page)

[ The “shuttered glasses” 3-D technique also uses alternating frames; the shutters alternately black out the right and left lenses, limiting vision in a particular eye to the appropriate frames. VISIDEP seems to rely on the human eye’s ability to fuse rapidly presented images. although how this produces a 3-D effect is not explained.]

“Variations on the technique allow the South Carolina team to create 3-D images from slides, motion pictures, and computers. [The article at this point includes a photographic stereo pair depicting the three researchers. The caption implies (“You can simulate the new 3-D effect.”) that it is produced by the VISIDEP effect, but it seems to simply be a high-quality stereo pair.]

[ Description of the “red - green” 3-D technique, and its drawbacks, deleted.] “VISIDEP has none of these restrictions. Once encoded, the image may be reproduced by any single conventional video camera [sic], movie, or slide projector. [ I believe the author meant to write ‘video monitor.’ ] The depth moves into the screen rather than out toward the audience, making the image more lifelike.

“Since VISIDEP can be applied to images generated by virtually any means, including X-rays, sonar, infrared or visible light, as well as from fiber optics, potential applications range from undersea and satellite transmission [ ?!!? -- SEJ ] to medical and computer sciences.

“Once particularly exciting application involves VISIDEP’s ability to produce three-dimensional computer- aided design and manufacturing [sic]. With VISIDEP it’s possible to display these images in three dimensions.

“For nontechnical applications, the most immediate use of VISIDEP probably will be for televising commercials and sports events.

“VISIDEP may also have an effect on some long- standing theories of perception.

“As Jones stresses, ‘Our development will force people to take another look at standard theories of how people perceive depth, and, thus, how all of us learn.’” [ Whither VISIDEP? Like the dinosaurs, or the strange critters of the Cambrian epoch, the system may have failed to catch on through no fault of its own. Lost research grants, patent problems, a lack of investors, or inept marketing could have scuttled the system at any of the stages necessary to make a clever idea into a product. Of course, the system may have simply failed to impress, or even worse, caused headaches and eye strain, like so many other 3-D systems.]

Source POPULAR MECHANICS Technology Update, March 1983, Page 129

From Joel Altman

“Coins have been a major force in helping to advance civilization.. In ancient times, they spread the news of major construction projects, changes in political leadership, and other important events. They have served as mini-newspapers, objects of art, and even sources of propaganda.” Commemorative coins informed the world of significant events, accessions, or conquests. Ancient rulers, like today’s, wanted to be in the news much as possible, so they put their names and images on their coinage. The person who first decided to put news on coinage was a genius of the first water, for he solved the problems of news creation, distribution, and archiving in one fell swoop.

Source Coins as Living History by Ted Schwarz ARCO Publishing Co., New York, 1976.

From Stefan Jones

“While major cable TV interests are entering what experts believe is a shakeout period, small-scale experiments in ‘interactive’ cable are demonstrating what the future may bring.

“In Peabody, Mass., a collaboration between the local cable distributor and J. Walter Thompson, the large advertising agency, has produced something called Cableshop. From a ‘menu channel,’ subscribers select from a number of short subjects of special interest. Almost all of them are supplied or underwritten by companies with related products. For instance, food companies might support recipe shows or Kodak might sponsor a picture- taking clinic.

“The subscriber dials an access number, identifies himself to the Cableshop computer with his individual code, and dials the number of the presentation he wants to see. Then, a message guide channel indicates the time his message is scheduled and the channel on which it can be seen. If a program is already scheduled to do another request, that information is relayed as well.

“According to Peabody lore, a man waiting for his wife to finish dressing for dinner dialed up a Ford Escort film recently and was so impressed that he went out and bought one.” [ I pity this man’s wife come the advent of the Home Shopping Channel.] “Meanwhile, in the high-income community of Ridgewood, N.J., an interactive test will supply 500 families with free computer keyboards.”

Source: POPULAR MECHANICS January 1983 Technology Update column

From Rick Gregory

I knew Porter McLaurin very well while the troika were developing VisiDep. He was chairman of the Media Arts Department at USC (University of South Carolina) and my graduate advisor when I was a grad student there. I crewed on several VisiDep shoots. I was kind of surprised when Popular Mechanics picked up the news release in 1983 and repeated it almost verbatim. McLaurin, Cathey and Jones always saw more in VisiDep than anyone else. What I saw was an unstable, switched video image that was more disorienting than anything else. The video rig used to shoot it looked like a deformed moose with two cameras on a jerry rigged quadra pod. I thought then, and still believe, that the PM reporter had to make a deadline and never came close to actually seeing the VisiDep reality. He jazzed up a university Public Information Department news release and never looked at the technology. Kinda makes me wonder how much we can trust some other reports of technology from the popular/scientific media.

Source: Personal Experience

From Stephen Herbert

The full role of Ottomar Anschutz in the story of the first moving pictures is not well known. In 1892, two years before Edison’s peepshow Kinetoscope was first shown in public, Ottomar Anschutz’ acclaimed moving photographs were being exhibited in arcade machines, the ‘Electrical Wonder’, in Europe and America.

By 1894 his ‘Projecting Electrotachyscope’ was projecting moving sequences of animals and human figures, very brief but of fine quality, onto large screens in Germany; the world’s first publicly projected photographic (unposed) motion pictures.

Anschutz was a well-known photographer who specialized in fast exposures, taken with a shutter of his own design. By 1883 his ability to capture natural movement was being compared favourably with the work of Muybridge and Marey, but at that time he was taking individual photographs.

By late 1884 he was shooting chronophotographs of the finest quality with a battery of twelve cameras; taking twelve photos in half a second.

By 1886 his equipment consisted of a battery of 24 cameras with electrically linked shutters operated by an electrical metronome. Subjects included horses trotting, galloping, and jumping.

His viewing machines, all of the seven or eight models bearing the name Schnellseher, were developed from 1886. The first had a wooden disc with 20 or 24 glass positives fixed onto it; a Geissler tube fashioned into a spiral form (and powered by a Ruhmhorff induction coil fed from batteries) was the light source. This flashed briefly as each picture passed the viewing aperture. A later model was a coin-operated automatic machine made in Germany by Siemens & Halske, and exhibited publicly in 1892/3 in London, and at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall and the Eden Musee in New York City. Celluloid transparencies were set into metal discs. The number of images varied, depending on the nature of the subject.

In November 1894, a Projecting Electrotachyscope (‘Life-Sized Moving Pictures’) was exhibited in Berlin, and later in Hamburg. This consisted of two large picture discs, each holding twelve images, and moved intermittently by a twelve-arm maltese cross. Anschutz also developed a number of interesting zoetropes (Tachyscopes) that made use of his sequence pictures.

Source: ‘Ottomar Anschutz and his Electrical Wonder’, by Deac Rossell (The Projection Box, 1997)

From Bill Burns

“After 130 years, the Royal Navy is turning out the lights on visual Morse code. Masthead signalling lanterns, used by warships to communicate with each other through some of the most famous naval battles in history, have been declared redundant by Admiralty chiefs in an era of secure communications. Recruits will no longer be trained to operate the Morse buttons by which messages could be flashed to other ships, and the lights themselves will be gradually decommissioned.

“The idea of flashing dots and dashes from a lantern was first put in to practice by Captain, later Vice Admiral, Philip Colomb in 1867. His original code, which the Navy used for seven years, was not identical with Morse, but Morse was eventually adopted with the addition of several special signals. Flashing lights were the second generation of signalling in the Royal Navy, after the flag signals most famously used to spread Nelson’s rallying-cry before the Battle of Trafalgar. Ships will still retain Aldis lamps either side of the bridge, however, but signalling with these is complicated, involving transmitting signals in relays.

Paul Elmer, of Naval Support Command, said: ‘Morse is just not used operationally any more. We have got much better, cleverer and more sexy stuff.’ “The move, announced in a Defence Council Instruction, recognises that the lights have not been widely used at sea ‘for some considerable time.’

But a combination of inertia and respect for tradition means that nearly all large Naval ships are still equipped with them. Mr Elmer said: ‘Their heyday was the two world wars when they were used a lot for close convoy work. They were quite small and you could flash to other ships in the group without the enemy seeing.’

“The lamps, which were omni-directional, were used to give commands to every ship in the group at once. The lamps’ advantage, and one of the reasons why they have survived so long, was that, unlike radio communications, they could not be intercepted by enemy vessels. ‘They were at their best during radio silence. You had to be quite close to see them,’ said Mr Elmer.

“Now, however, the Navy has several secure communications systems that can send vast quantities of information between ships without risk of interception, and at infinitely higher speed than a man flicking a light on and off in dots and dashes. New-generation warships are increasingly equipped with computers that continuously share information with others nearby, and with shore bases, along invisible data highways.”

Source: Daily Telegraph

From Trevor Blake

The Schulmerich Magnabell is just a BIG tape player. But its purpose was to serve as an electric carillon and play bells in church. Use of tower bells as medium of communication has been relegated to a largely ceremonial role, and here, the ceremony is moved one step further from its source by no actual bells being present, only tape recordings of bells. While tape players are living media, I believe the Magnabell qualifies as dead media because of its function and history.

The mechanical bells brought to Europe from China in the 12
^th
Century inspired miniature versions of the same, including music boxes and musical clocks. These clockwork devices, often programmed by card or disc, led to mechanical looms, leading to the first gear and card calculation devices, leading to a need for calculation that gave rise to the modern computer.

The Schulmerich Magnabell Instrument was produced by Schulmerich Carillons, Inc. of Carillon Hills, Selleresville PA, some time in the 1960s. The model I saw was bought at government auction and the following is based on observation, not documentation.

The Magnabell is a large brown metal box approx. 5’ 7” with three locking windows. Behind the windows are the controls for the Magnabell. The upper window houses the programming instruments; on the left, a day/time/program dial. On the right are master on/off and routing switches. The center window houses the tapes and play/pause/stop controls. The lower window houses a phonograph with the speeds 16, 33 and 45.

The Magnabell has internal speakers as well as line outs. The model I saw has two cartridges, one of Christmas music and one of general bell music. The upper left dial controls which of six programs are played and when. Switches on the upper right control the volume for the internal speakers and line outs, as well as an on/off switch for “TOWER.” The cart player has four automatic and one manual setting, a pause switch and curious play / release lever.

The phonograph has an on button and an off button, each acting independent of the other, and a “PHONO” light. I was given the chance to turn it on and play a cartridge by the current owner, Habromania in Portland, OR. It took about 5 seconds to get up to speed, but once playing, it sounded just fine. This object was built to last and was well cared for.

Source: personal experience

From George Dyson

[George Dyson remarks: Some media are dead, as in dead- end, while others represent extinct ancestors of species thriving as vigorously as ever today. Exchequer tallies fall into the latter category; the recent proliferation of digital currency and public-key cryptography having brought the principle of the tally-stick back to life. The disappearance of the Exchequer tally is also of interest, rarely has the decision to put an end to an archaic medium back-fired as spectacularly as when the bonfire intended to extinguish the remaining Exchequer tallies engulfed the British Parliament buildings instead.

In 1682, in the brief but precise Quantulumcunque Concerning Money, Sir William Petty posed the question: “What remedy is there if we have too little Money?”

His answer, amplified by the founding of the Bank of England in 1694, would resonate throughout the world: “We must erect a Bank, which well computed; doth almost double the Effect of our coined Money: And we have in England Materials for a Bank which shall furnish Stock enough to drive the Trade of the whole Commercial World.”