The Dead Media Notebook (66 page)

[Bruce Sterling remarks: We’ve had a gratifying response to the recent flurry on pigeons. Paratroop vests, clockwork canisters, specialty carbon paper, pigeon lingerie: the historical footprints of the pigeon-as-medium appear all over the world. Perhaps the following squibs will encourage some Necronaut to supply us with some accurate, thoroughly cited data on the material support system for military pigeons. It would be especially good to know something about the badges, mottos and battle dress of the various pigeon services of World Wars One and Two. I would also remind researchers that India’s “Orissa Police Pigeon Service” apparently still exists.]

I can’t remember where I saw it, but I have seen a photo of a British paratrooper unpacking an airdroppable cannister filled with pigeons. The exterior was a metal tube (suspended from the parachute) and inside of this were stacked small wicker baskets with the pigeons. I’m not sure if this was used operationally, or just in maneuvers.

The “pigeon in bondage” sounds like another way to resupply carrier pigeons via airdrop (paratrooper’s vest would most likely be to supply pigeons for the platoon to send messages home, while a “human-less” system would be for use by agents behind enemy lines, where it would be undesirable to drop a paratrooper). This bears a resemblance to something I’ve heard about in passing: pigeons air-dropped in a harness to keep them from flying home immediately after leaving the dropping aircraft, with a parachute to ensure a safe landing for the (temporarily flightless) pigeons.

As is obvious now, birds were in use in WWII; I have some surplus Army message pads that have pigeon sheets in the back; thin tough tissue, carbon paper, and a chart of codes for compact communications. Pad was dated 1940’s. This is to be used when pigeons become dead media.

Source: Champion Recipes of the 1986 Hong Kong Food Festival. Hong Kong Tourist Association, 1986.

From Greg Langille

A few years ago I purchased a Fisher-Price PXL 2000, a relatively cheap video camera that recorded on standard audio cassettes. I’ve found it very difficult to find information about it. Fisher-Price just says that “We can tell you that this product was introduced in 1988 and discontinued in 1989. There is no repair service or parts and we do not have any informational pamphlets available to send.” So, it definitely is dead. However, on the web site of “Film and Video Umbrella”, a curatorial agency funded by the Arts Council of London, there is a good description of the technology, which is still in use by (primarily experimental) artists today:

“In 1987, U.S toy manufacturer Fisher-Price introduced the latest addition to their range of childrens’ products: a lightweight plastic video camera, called the PXL 2000, which retailed at a cost of just under $100 and recorded its endearingly rudimentary black-and-white images, at ultra-high speeds, on to a standard audio cassette. Loudly trumpeted as a kind of My First Movie Camera for the younger members of the video generation, it was confidently assumed that the PXL 2000 would go down a storm with legions of junior Spielberg wannabes, but instead, like many an apparently surefire success, it sank like the proverbial stone.

“Raised on the production values of MTV and Hollywood, America’s vid-kids were less-than- captivated by what they could muster from the unmistakably low-tech (and none-too-durable) PXL. After only one year in production, Fisher-Price withdrew the camera from the shops and consigned it to the company bin.

“Since then, though, the PXL 2000 has enjoyed a remarkable, and quite unexpected, afterlife on the fringes of the U.S independent scene; adopted by an increasing number of film-makers and video-artists for its unique visual properties. As the last few years have shown, in the right hands and with surprisingly minimal fuss, this crude and clunky children’s toy is capable of yielding some truly astonishing results.

“No matter how poor the light, the camera lends a distinctively hazy, dream-like quality to almost everything it shoots, accentuated by a ghostly optical shimmer when anything passes too quickly across the screen. Contrastingly, the simple fixed-focus lens lets one get uncannily close to people or objects, miraculously registering both detail and depth. Even more strikingly, the images produced reveal an extraordinary sense of intimacy and spontaneity, as well as with a desire to experiment that is no doubt encouraged by the ridiculously small-scale costs.

“This Film and Video Umbrella touring package highlights a number of recent works by most of the leading figures in the still-expanding Pixelvision field (among them Michael Almereyda, Michael O’Reilly, Sadie Benning and Eric Saks) and gives British viewers their first real glimpse of the unabashedly low-definition but increasingly high-profile Pixelvision craze.

“Until now, PXL-generated work has been an almost exclusively American phenomenon, as none of the PXL 2000 cameras ever made it over to the U.K. British enthusiasts may be interested to hear, though, that while the Fisher- Price model has been long discontinued, its original inventor is set to retrieve the patent, opening the release for a new, improved version later this year.”

So now it appears that Pixelvision may not be completely dead. I should mention that the camera I bought came with a small black and white monitor (about 3.5” screen) which the camera could be plugged into. This could be battery powered (a modification done by the previous owner) and carried around, a precursor to the video screen on modern digital videocameras.

Unfortunately it died soon after I bought it. The camera itself is very light and uses six AA batteries and records both sound and audio. The tape is run at a very high speed (I think about six times normal cassette speed), so most of the audio includes a loud “whirr” from the camera itself. Also, mine needs a LOT of light basically direct sunlight only.

But it works. I should mention that I paid $200 Canadian in 1994 to buy it from a guy who said he used it for skate board videos. It came with instructions from a hacker magazine for modifying the lens to use infrared light! For about $20 you could actually get it to work as a night vision camera! There must be a whole subtopic of dead media concerning unintended uses.

Source Film and Video Umbrella ; personal experience

From Lars-Erik Astrom

I saw a strange WWII German military optical telephone apparatus in an electronic surplus store in Sweden in the sixties. I cannot recall many details, but I think the transmitting unit was an infrared sound modulated lamp. and the receiving unit was a binocular with some photoelectrical detector. I also think that the user interface or I/O unit was a telephone handset.[Bruce Sterling remarks: It’s a fact that the Germans had video telephones in the 1930s, but if the Nazis had light- transmitting telephones, that would indeed be a rare and remarkable dead medium.]

From Bruce Sterling

“Pigeon News “The French army pigeon unit has survived recent cost- cutting drives, Ralf Krueger reports for Deutsche Press Agentur of Hamburg. Unlike Switzerland, which has retired its army pigeons, France is holding on to its cooing soldiers. They remain on standby, ready to fly messages undetected through enemy lines. Carrying on a French military tradition that is said to date to the 8
^th
century, about 160 courier pigeons serve in the French army, occupying lofts at Mount Valerian base near Paris.

“In South Africa, homing pigeons have been linked to the theft of diamonds, Chris Erasmus writes in the ‘East African’ of Nairobi. Officials of the Alexcor diamond- mining corporation in Alexander Bay, a remote town on South Africa’s western coastline, are embroiled in a dispute with local racing-pigeon owners. Mine officials say pigeons are being smuggled into mining areas by workers or visitors and laden with gemstones. The pigeons then fly the gems out of the facility over high-security fences.

“This is not the first case of avian theft from the mines, Erasmus says. A few years ago, an imaginative worker used an ostrich to steal a large number of diamonds. The enterprising thief taught the ostrich to wait outside a particular stretch of electrified, high- security fence by regularly tossing food over the fence. When the thief threw diamonds over, the ostrich gobbled them up and later regurgitated them.”

Source: World Press Review, August 1998, page 36 Clippings section, quoting Ralk Kreuger of Deutsche Press Agentur of Hamburg, and Chris Erasmus of the East African newspaper of Nairobi

From Dave Morton

[Dave Morton remarks: My father was telling me recently about an office machine that he used in the 1960s called the “Auto-typist,” an automatic typewriter. I had never heard of this technology, but my mom chimed right in, saying that she had used them many times, acting as if they were the most common things in the world. So I did a little research, and this is one of the things I came up with. The article excerpted below describes some of the products offered by the American Typewriter Company of Chicago, maker of the Auto-typist.]

“Typewriters that think! Well, almost. If you were to see one of the new automatic typewriters at work, you could easily believe that a robot brain had been shackled to its keyboard. For, incredibly, the machine can pour out individual letters.

“The standard automatic typewriter (that reproduced a letter from a piano-roll type of master copy) is familiar to teachers. Each of its letters is like the others produced from the same master. True, the operator may insert individual inside addresses and salutations, so that these letters appear to be individualized. The standard automatic typewriter, however, has, at the insistence of Big Business, been refined far beyond this initial stage, so that letters actually are individualized.

“Reproducing from a master roll on which scores of assorted paragraphs have been entered, the machine can select the paragraphs you want in the order in which you want them. Moreover, the machine will stop automatically at certain points, to permit the operator to insert names, dates, amounts, or other data; and then go on automatically.”. “The secretary goes to the automatic pushbutton typewriter; presses buttons 3, 4, 62, 37, and 31 [the text explains that these refer to pre-programmed paragraphs for form letters]; inserts letterhead stationery; types the inside address and salutation; and pushes the starting button of the machine. Zing! At 150 words a minute, the machine rattles off the five-paragraph letter and closing lines, while the operator calmly goes to a second, a third, and a fourth machine and similarly starts them.”. “The operator needs but one skill; the ability to typewrite.
Even a beginner typist can turn out finished letters comparable to those typed by the best of secretaries. Because the job demands alertness and precision and the ability to work under pressure, the typing skill ought to be automatic so that the operator can devote his attention to running the equipment
.
“An experienced operator has little difficulty in keeping four machines running at once. Consequently, she earns a secretarial salary rather than a typist’s salary, because she can produce as much correspondence as might be produced by a half dozen manual typists.

“The only operation that requires any special practice is the perforating of the master rolls. This is done on a separate machine having a typewriter keyboard.
The automatic typewriters operate at such high speed that they need extra time between juxtaposed letters, to permit the first letter to fall back into the basket before the second letter is struck. Because of this feature, the manufacturer prefers that master- perforation be done by his own or his agencies
’ staffs, though many large users have installed their own perforators and have permitted the manufacturer’s agent to train one of the user’s staff to perforate.

“The automatic typewriter is not an electric typewriter; it is pneumatic. The perforated master roll passes over air-valve slots. Each perforation permits air to escape from a particular slot, thus opening a valve. Each valve is connected by a tiny hose to a bellows, and each bellows is attached to a key. As the valves open, the bellows operates and the typebars are snapped up against the paper. The bellows-to-key arrangement is suitable for use with any make of manual or electric typewriter. The speed of the Auto-typist mechanism can be adjusted to operate any typewriter at the highest speed at which the typewriter is capable of being run.” [Bruce Sterling remarks: So here we have a rapid pneumatic typewriter using a bellows and player-piano roll. This narrative would beggar credulity, if it came from any source less credible than David Morton.]

Source Alan C. Lloyd, Typewriters That Think by Alan C. Lloyd, The Business Education World 27 (April 1947): pages 453-454.

From Jack Ruttan

“Fading memories: fight to save the family album “Modern colour photographs are decaying quicker than Victorian black-and-whites, writes Simon de Bruxelles “Why the past is looking just a little too rosy “Photographs taken as recently as 30 years ago are already fading in the nation’s family albums.

“Millions of images taken since the invention of modern colour photography are changing because of the way their dyes break down. Just as the 19
^th
century is now viewed in shades of sepia, so future generations may look back on the last three decades of the 20
^th
as the era of purple lawns and red skies.

“Kate Rouse, archivist for the Royal Photographic Society in Bath, said: ‘After about 30 years, you begin to see a degradation of the image. The three dyes which make up the picture fade at different rates and there is a shift in colour. Eventually, the image is just going to fade away. We are reaching the point where the first ones have started to degrade and people are beginning to notice.’ “The short life of colour photographs is a headache for gallery and museum curators and archivists from 21 countries who are gathering in York later this month to discuss ways to slow the ageing process, as part of the Arts Council’s Year of Photography.