The Dead Media Notebook (54 page)

Source: Color TV tape player employs lasers and holography IEEE Spectrum 6 (Dec 1969): page 28

From Marcus L. Rowland

The Telediagraph was one of several early fax-like devices sending pictures via telegraph lines. It was invented circa 1895 by Ernest A. Hummel, a watchmaker of St. Paul, Minnesota.

The first machines were installed in the office of the New York Herald in 1898. By 1899, Hummel had improved the machine and the newspaper had machines in the offices of the Chicago Times Herald, the St. Louis Republic, the Boston Herald, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The system used synchronised rotating 8-inch drums, with a platinum stylus used as an electrode in the transmitter.

The original image was drawn on 8x6” tin-foil using a non-conducting ink made from shellac mixed with alcohol.

The image was received on carbon paper wrapped between two sheets of blank paper. When the electrode touched the tin-foil in the transmitter the circuit was closed; when it touched the shellac the circuit was open. The signal controlled a moving stylus in the receiver, making it touch or move back from the paper. At the end of each rotation a synchronising signal was sent, and the styluses in both machines moved 1/56” to the left before scanning the next line.

The first picture sent was “an accurate picture of the first gun fired at Manila.” The machine took 20-30 minutes to send the picture.

Near-copies of this and similar mechanisms were in use until the 1970s, although transmission speeds were improved and photocells allowed plain paper originals and photographs to be transmitted. The basic principle was also applied to stencil-cutting machines for ink duplicators.

Source: Pictures by Telegraph by Charles Emerson Cook Pearson’s magazine, April 1900, page 405 in the bound volume (Jan-June 1900)

From Paul Di Filippo, Bill Burns

“A Marvelous Musical Instrument THAT PLAYS ANY TUNE.

“The Organette has gained such a world-wide reputation, that a lengthy description of it is not necessary. It will be sufficient to say that it is a PERFECT ORGAN that plays mechanically all the latest popular music, songs, dances, waltzes, jigs, etc. etc., as well as the best sacred airs. It consists of three strong bellows and a set of reeds with EXPRESSION box and SWELL. A strip of perforated paper represents the tune, and it is only necessary to place the paper tune in the instrument, as shown in the picture, and turn the handle, which both operates the bellows and propels the paper tune.

“The perforations in the paper allow the right reeds to sound and a perfect tune is the result, perfect in time, execution, and effect, without the least knowledge of music being required of the performer; even a little child can operate it as is shown in the picture, a little girl is playing a waltz, and her little friends are dancing; they are better pleased than if Strauss himself were playing for them, and older people enjoy it equally as well. It is also tuned in the key best suited for the human voice to sing by.

“The Organetta is perfectly represented by the picture. It is made of solid black walnut, decorated in gilt, and is both handsome and ornamental. The price of similar instruments has hitherto been $8, and the demand has been constantly increased until now there are over 75,000 in use. We are encouraged to place the Organetta on the market at this greatly reduced price, believing that the sales will warrant the reduction. The Organetta though similar in construction is an improvement upon our well-known Organette, which sells for $8 and $10. It contains the same number of reeds and plays the same tunes. Our offer is this: on receipt of $8 we will send the Organetta by express to any address, and include FREE $4.25 worth of music, or on receipt of $6 we will send with in $2 worth of music FREE, or for $4 we will send it with a small selection of music FREE. The price includes boxing and packing. These are agent’s prices, and we will appoint the first purchaser from any town our agent, if he so desires. Address, THE MASSACHUSETTS ORGAN CO., 57 Washington St., Boston, Mass.”

[Bruce Sterling remarks: The crude half-page woodcut of waltzing 1880s children has a pronounced Edward Gorey atmosphere. The Organetta itself stands on four sturdy mass-produced legs and appears to be about two feet long, a foot wide and a few inches high. It resembles a small wooden trouser press. A hand-turned crank at the rear of the device entrains a long foolscap sheet of perforated music, drawing it entirely through the body of the Organetta, while a locomotive-like connecting-rod off the crank’s driving wheel puffs a hinged bellows up and down at the instrument’s base. The bellows apparently blows air directly through the punched holes in the sheet music, and up through a tuned rack of harmonica reeds. The “expression box” and “swell” seem to be two bladderlike boxes on the top of the Organetta. Pressing on them may have affected the quality of the sound.]

“The bellows apparently blows air directly through the punched holes in the sheet music, and up through a tuned rack of harmonica reeds.” On almost all of the organette-type instruments the bellows sucks air through the punched holes and down through the reeds; a few did use pressure rather than vacuum, but these were the exception. The Massachusetts Organ Company was the leader of a thriving mail-order business in the 1880’s, Bowers’ Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments calls them “a master of ballyhoo.” All of the companies used the same sales techniques - if you became an “agent,” you qualified for the lower price. Of course, every customer was considered an “agent.” If you bought sufficient quantity, they’d even private-label them for you.

Cool thing: the cuts in the roll paper are large and the encoding obvious, so repairing old rolls and making new rolls is very easy. So with a little work with a ruler and a xacto knife, and you could have the organette playing “Louie, Louie” or “Tom’s Diner” or something.

Source: Peterson’s Magazine, May 1883, page 435. Advertisements. Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments by David Q. Bowers Vestal Press Ltd 1997 ISBN: 0911572082

From Bruce Sterling

[Bruce Sterling remarks: the advent of computer-game “emulators” on the Internet may be of historic significance. This would appear to be a spontaneous (if questionably legal) international revolt against planned obsolescence in the computer gaming industry. Game fans and programmers all over the world are digitally disemboweling the arcade and home games of their youth, and re-writing them to run on contemporary home computers. Then they distribute the emulator software, source code, game drivers, ROM images and such, for free download.]

M.A.M.E. Frequently Asked Questions V0.27 (6
^th
of September, 1997) “0.0 Introduction “Welcome to the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). I hope this will give you some help needed to get MAME to play your favourite games from the nostalgic past.

“1.0 What is MAME? “MAME is a program that emulates arcade gaming machines on your PC using the original ROM images from those same games, so that it looks, feels and plays like the original.

1.1
      
What does MAME mean? “MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

1.2
      
Who made MAME? “
The project was started months ago by Nicola Salmoria who made a lot of standalone emulators for various games. After doing those emulators, he started on the Multi-Pacman-Emulator, which emulated all the various Pacman clones. M.A.M.E. came after that, incorporating all the different emulators Nicola made into one single emulator itself and started adding support for a lot of other (new) games as well. Currently the project is being towed by Mirko Buffoni, and is being supported by various talented coders (including Nicola Salmoria himself as well) who submit game drivers for the project.

1.4
      
What is needed to run MAME? “MAME originated on the PC as a DOS emulator. However, since the MAME development team makes their sourcecode available to the public, it’s ported to nearly every suitable system around.

“I personally use a P90/16MB/WIN95 and the DOS version runs like a dream really on nearly all the games. Nicola developed MAME on a 486/DX100 so my guess is that it runs well enough on that as some sort of a minimum configuration.

1.6
      
Is the sourcecode available? “MAME always had its source code released right from the beginning, giving other people to take a look on how it’s made, contribute or how they could make their own emulator. Get the source code at the Official MAME page.

2.0 What are ROM images? “ROM images are the actual software packets stored on ROM (Read Only Memory) chips placed on a circuit board inside an arcade game cabinet. People having access to both the original PCBs and a (EP)ROM reader can read the images and transform them into chunks of code. MAME emulates various CPU’s and by using game specific drivers to address the ROM images, the software (ie. the ROMs) actually think they are working with the real thing. MAME emulates the real thing, and performs the tasks that were programmed into the ROMs.

3.1
      
What are the correct gamenames?

1942 3STOOGES AMIDAR AMIDARJP ANTEATER ARABIAN ASTDELUX ASTEROI2 ASTEROID ATLANTIS BAGMAN BLASTER BLUEPRNT BOBLBOBL BOMBJACK BOSCO BTIME BTIMEA BUBBLES BUBLBOBL BWIDOW BZONE BZONE2 CARNIVAL CAVENGER CCASTLES CCBOOT CCJAP CCLIMBER CENTIPED CKONG CKONGA CKONGJEU CKONGS COMMANDO CONGO CRUSH DEFENDER DESTERTH DIAMOND DIGDUG2 DIGDUGAT DIGDUGNM DKONG DKONG3 DKONGJP DKONGJR DOCASTLE DORUNRUN DOUNI DOWILD EARTHINV EGGS ELEVATOB ELEVATOR ELIM2 EXEDEXES FANTASY FANTAZIA FROGGER FROGGERS FROGSEGA FRONTLIN GALAGA GALAGABL GALAGANM GALAP1 GALAP4 GALAPX GALAXIAN GALLAG GALMIDW GALNAMCO GALTURBO GALXWARS GBERET GNG GNGCROSS GORF GRAVITAR GYRUSS HANGLY HUNCHY INVADERS INVDELUX INVRVNGE JAPIREM JBUGSEGA JHUNT JOUST JRPACMAN JUMPBUG JUNGLEK KANGAROO KICKRIDR KRULL KUNGFUB KUNGFUM LADYBUG LLANDER LOCOMOTN LOSTTOMB LRESCUE MAPPY MARIO MILLIPED MISSILE MOONCRSB MOONCRST MOONQSR MPATROL MPLANETS MRANGER MRDO MRDOT MRLO MSPACATK MSPACMAN MTRAP MYSTSTON NAMCOPAC NAUGHTYB NIBBLER PACMAN PACMANJP PACMOD PACNPAL PACPLUS PANIC PANICA PENGO PENGOA PENTA PEPPER2 PHOENIX PHOENIX3 PHOENIXA PHOENIXT PIRANHA PISCES PLEIADS POOYAN POPEYEBL PUCKMAN QBERT QBERTJP QBERTQUB QIX RALLYX REACTOR REDBARON RESCUE ROBBY ROBOTRON RUSHATCK SBAGMAN SCOBRA SCOBRAB SCOBRAK SCRAMBLE SEAWOLF2 SEICROSS SINISTAR SNAPJACK SONSON SPACDUEL SPACEATT SPACEFB SPACEPLT SPACEZAP SPACFURY SPLAT STARFORC STARGATE STARTREK STARWARS SUPERG SUPERPAC SXEVIOUS TACSCAN TEMPEST THEEND TIMEPLT TURPIN TURTLES TUTANKHM UNIWARS VANGUARD VENTURE VULGUS WARLORD WAROFBUG WARPWARP WOW WWESTERN XEVIOUS XEVIOUSN YARD YIEAR ZAXXON ZEKTOR

[2015 note: I thought this list was too good to leave out]

Source: Multi Arcade Machine Emulator FAQ

A Brief History of the Mattel Intellivision

From Bruce Sterling

“At the end of 1979, Mattel Electronics (a division of Mattel Toys) released a video game system known as Intellivision along with 12 video game cartridges. Poised as a competitor to the then king of the hill Atari 2600, Mattel Electronics called their new product ‘Intelligent Television,’ stemming largely from their marketing plans to release a compatible computer keyboard for their video games console. Mattel’s marketing was anything but intelligent and almost destroyed the company by 1984. In one sense the system was very successful, with over 3 million units sold and 125 games released before the system was discontinued by INTV Corp. in 1990.

“The original Master Component was test marketed in Fresno, California in late 1979. The response was excellent, and Mattel went national with their new game system in late 1980. The first year’s production run of 200,000 units was completely sold out! To help enhance its marketability, Mattel also marketed the system in Sears stores as the Super Video Arcade, and at Radio Shack as the Tandyvision One in the early 1980’s.

“1980 was a turbulent year for the Intellivision. Mattel announced that an ‘inexpensive’ keyboard expansion would be available in 1981 for the master component to be dropped into. This was to turn the system into a powerful 64K home computer that could do everything from play games to balance your checkbook. There was a great deal of marketing money and press coverage devoted to this unit; a third of the box for the GTE/Sylvania Intellivision describes the features of this proposed expansion. Many people bought an Intellivision with plans to turn it into a computer when the expansion module was released.

“Months, then years passed and the original expansion keyboard was released only in a few test areas in late 1981. With the price too high and the initial reaction poor, the product was scrapped in 1982 before being released nationwide.

“1982 saw many changes in both the videogame industry and the Intellivision product line. A voice-synthesis module called Intellivoice made sound and speech and integral part of gameplay, through the use of special voice-enhanced cartridges. The Intellivision II was also released this year, which one company spokesperson described as ‘smaller and lighter than the original, yet with the same powerful 16-bit microprocessor.’ The new console was more compact than the first, and its grayish body made it look more like a sophisticated electronic device than the original design.

“1983 brought more promises from the folks at Mattel, the most significant of which being the Intellivision III. This was shown off at the January 1983 CES show, and lauded in the videogame mags for many months afterwards. In June of 1983 at the Summer CES show, Mattel announced it was killing the Intellivision III and including most of its high-profile features into their long-awaited computer expansion, the Entertainment Computer System.

“Probably the most ambitious effort the Intellivision team had undertaken, the Entertainment Computer System was comprised of a computer keyboard add-on, a 49-key music synthesizer, RAM expansion for the keyboard add-on to expand it to a full 64K RAM and 24K ROM, a data recorder to store programs, a 40-column thermal printer, and an adapter which would allow you to play Atari 2600 games on your Intellivision.