The Dead Media Notebook (7 page)

THE RAPID SELECTOR
Begun in 1937. Bush’s MIT team first built this analyser in 1940. Funding was dropped by a disgruntled FBI and subsequently picked up by various private foundations including Eastman and NCR (Bush was apparently an undaunted spinner of techno-dreams ala Steve Jobs). The Rapid Selector went through several incarnations, but was conceived as a specialized data- retrieval system for business records or scientific research. The Rapid Selector was a microfilm-based analyser consisting of a 7’ tall relay rack, housing the film drives. Like its sister,the Comparator, it used a light- sensing reader system to allow speedy retrieval of microfilmed information. The user compiled a series of punchcard notes that were indexed into microfilm storage by a system operator/librarian. The Rapid Selector would then allow the user to cross-reference other researchers’ additions to the user’s “specialized area” without sorting through irrelevant texts. Bush saw the Rapid Selector as an eventual replacement for card catalogues. Although Bush conquered his basic speed/retrieval problems, the required coding system to access information ultimately proved prohibitively complex. The specialized typewriter for the code-punch was also unworkable. Burke’s text is full of other useful information, follies, and successes that orbit around the development of these pre-digital machines.

Source: Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex
by Colin Burke; Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen N.J., 1994. LOC: HD9696.C772B87 1994

From Bradley O’Neill

Built by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) in the winter of 1962-1963, Cambridge, Mass. An instrument for recording and charting the psychedelic experience.

“The purpose of the ET was to deal with the ‘words cannot express’ aspects of accelerated-brain experience. The subject could indicate any of various levels of consciousness that they were unable to describe at the moment by pressing the appropriate buttons on the typewriter. The signal was recorded on a revolving drum, much the way temperatures are graphed in meteorological stations.

“After the session, when consciousness was operating at slower speeds, the subject would have leisure to examine the recorded data and describe the sequence of events fully and precisely.”

I’d like a more detailed account of this curiosity, as Dr. Leary does not elaborate in
Flashbacks
. But it’s definitely dead.

Source: Flashbacks
by Timothy Leary, 1983, 1990; Putnam Publishing Group, New York. LC# BF109.l43A3 1990

From Bradley O’Neill

Here are various cryptanalytic machines developed before and during WWII. An “ notes those items for which I will submit more detailed working notes. I am listing all of them here beforehand, for purposes of scope, and to encourage any interested souls.

BOMBE - Electro-mechanical machines built by Britain and the US to attack ENIGMA.

COLOSSUS - Britain’s special purpose electronic computer to attack the German FISH system.

COMPARATOR - Bush’s tape based-electronic cryptanalytic machines.

COPPERHEAD - OP-20-G [Naval cryptology division] WWII advanced versions of tape-based electronic cryptanalytic machines.

ENIGMA - German encrypting device.

FISH - German teletype-like automatic encryption systems and devices.

FREAK [no joke!] - U.S. electromechanical cryptanalytic machine, WWII.

FRUIT - Special electro-mechanical adding machine built for OP- 20-G by NCR during WWII.

GOLDBERG - OP-20-G advanced version of Bush’s Comparator.

HYPO - Analog optical crypanalytic machine built by Eastman-Kodak, during WWII.

ICKY - OP-20-G special microfilm machine.

IC MACHINE - Film plate machines, MIT-Eastman made for OP-20-G, WWII.

LETTERWRITER - Special data entry machines IBM built for OP-20-G, WWII.

LOCATORS - OP-20-G and SIS [US Army Cryptanalytic Agency] machines built for identifying locations of code items, but not for counting or tallying. Built during WWII.

MADAME X - SIS relay-based machine to attack German ENIGMA.

MATHEW, MIKE - U.S. electro-mechanical cryptanalytic machines, WWII.

PURPLE - SIS/OP-20-G analog machine built for attack on Japanese diplomatic ciphers.

PYTHON - OP-20-G electrical analog of Japanese enciphering machine, during WWII.

RAPID ARITHMETICAL MACHINE - An unbuilt Vannevar Bush computer of the 1930s.

RAPID SELECTOR - Bush’s ill-fated bibliographic micro-film device.

RATTLER - U.S. Navy electronic machine to attack Japanese automatic encryption systems.

ROBINSON - Britain’s tape-based electronic machines, similar to the COMPARATOR.

ROCKEFELLER ANALYSER - Vannevar Bush/MIT updated version of Differential Analyser, financed by Rockefeller Foundation, completed in late 1930s.

WAVELENGTH ANALYSER - MIT optical-electric analog scientific measuring device, 1930s.

WHIRLWIND - Postwar electronic digital computer built at MIT by group outside of Bush’s circle.

There you are. A veritable fleet of dead (military) media waiting to be explored. These machines are, in many ways, ‘missing links’ in the popular conception of computer evolution.

Source: Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex, by Colin Burke, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen N.J. 1994. LC# HD9696.C772B87 1994.

From Suzanna Layton

“When copra traders set up operations on the island (Niuafo’ou) near the turn of the century, a method of communications became necessary. At one time passing steamers would seal incoming mail for the island in ship’s 40-pound biscuit tins which were then thrown overboard to native swimmers.

“The swimmers had maneuvered a mile or more through the turgid surf, towing the outgoing mail that had been carefully soldered in tins. The swimmers and ship would exchange mail containers and each would be on their way. From this unique method of mail delivery, the island became known as Tin Can Island and the letters carried thus are called Tin Can Mail.

“The swimming mail lasted until 1931 when a shark killed a swimmer. From then on, mail was brought in by outrigger canoe.”

[Bruce Sterling remarks: in a further astonishing twist, the Kingdom of Tonga now makes a commercial business of selling Internet domain names. There is now an automatic registration site on the Web, Tongan Network Information Center (tonic.to) based in a server in the Tongan consulate in San Francisco. TONIC sells Tongan domain name registrations for a hundred dollars each, and is managed by former virtual reality entrepreneur Eric Gullichsen, a notable pioneer of modern dead media.]

Source: Tonga and Tin Can Mail Study Circle

From Darryl Rehr

Desktop Publishing is a phenomenon of the late 20
^th
century. Modern products have made it possible for any office staff to produce material that looks professionally printed.

However, office managers have had other kinds of small-scale publishing methods available to them for more than a century. The words used to describe them were more modest, of course.

At first, they talked about office “copying,” and later they called it “duplicating.” Only today, with computers, coupled with high-definition laser output has the technology grown up enough to earn the term “Desktop Publishing.”

Desktop Publishing’s first century began in 1856, when British chemist William Perkins discovered the first synthetic dye, aniline purple. This dye pointed the way to a wide range of new inks, including “copying ink” used in the first practical method of reproducing business documents. An original written with copying ink was placed against a moistened sheet of tissue, the two were pressed together in a massive iron press, and a copy would appear on the tissue. Since the copy was backwards, the tissue had to be held up to the light to be read.

The copy press became a fixture in every Victorian office. Today, they are sold in antique shops as “book presses,” their true function long forgotten.

Aniline dyes also made another copying process possible. It was invented during the 1870’s, and although it was sold under many brand names, generically it was known as the “hektograph.” The device used a stiff gelatin pad coupled with special hektographic ink made with aniline dye. A document written with the ink was pressed to the pad. The gelatin absorbed the ink after a few minutes, and the original was removed. Blank sheets were then pressed against the pad, and the gelatin released a little of the ink each time, producing a positive copy.

The hektograph was good for about 50 copies. 20
^th
-century spirit duplicators (such as “Ditto”) were a later outgrowth of the hektograph and much easier to use. About the same time as the invention of the hektograph, the first stencil duplicators began to appear.

These used various devices to perforate waxed tissue paper, creating stencils through which ink could be passed. The first of these was Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen of 1876. This gadget used current to vibrate the point of a stylus, creating tiny holes in the stencil to form the image.

A simpler solution came from Eugenio Zuccato who invented the Trypograph in London in 1877. Zuccato put his stencil on the surface of an iron file. When he wrote with a plain stylus, the rough file surface punctured the stencil from below. Edison obtained a U.S. patent for a similar process in 1880, although he did nothing with it for several years.

In 1881, David Gestetner, working in England, invented another simple stencil perforator. Known as the Cyclostyle, it was a pen with a miniature toothed wheel on the end. By writing on the stencil, the wheel rolled along and punched tiny perforations in the sheet.

The last major player to enter the stencil game was A.B. Dick of Chicago. Dick was a lumber merchant who needed a way to duplicate the often-needed inventory lists in his business. Experimenting on his own in 1884, he came up with a file-plate stencil process similar to Zuccato’s and Edison’s, but more practical. Dick saw real market potential in the product and applied for a patent only to find that Edison had beaten him to it. Dick contacted Edison, and proposed the idea of selling the device to the public. Dick’s most brilliant idea in the venture, however, was not the invention itself, but his plan to use Edison’s name on the label! Edison’s name had true star quality in the 1880’s.

Dick coupled it with an intriguing brand-name taken from the Greek, and in 1887 the Edison “Mimeograph” duplicator was born. For several years, the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle duplicators coexisted, each performing the same function using their slightly different methods. With each, finished stencils were placed in a wooden frame so that ink could be pressed through them with a roller. It was messy but effective.

At this earliest stage, however, neither device effectively exploited the Typewriter, another new invention which seemed perfectly suited to be teamed with duplicators.

The Typewriter had been around for about ten years when the Mimeograph and Cyclostyle appeared. Duplicator stencils, however, were backed with thin tissue which was often torn to pieces under the pounding of typewriters. A.B. Dick pounced on the solution to the problem when he bought rights to an 1888 patent for a new stencil backed by a sturdy porous tissue.

The typewriter would penetrate the wax, but not the tissue. Suddenly, the potential for producing thousands of copies from a typewritten original was created.

In 1891, Gestetner helped the technology along another step, by creating an “automatic” printing device, which worked much faster than the old manual wooden frame. A rivalry between Dick and Gestetner might have developed, but instead, their relationship was cordial. In 1893, they agreed to share patents, each using the typewriter stencil and the automatic printer in his own products, and each prospering in the process.

The turn of the century brought the development of rotary stencil machines, which meant that copies could finally be “cranked out” in the literal sense. A.B. Dick’s version of this device was a single drum model with ink inside the drum and forced directly through the stencil. Gestetner marketed a double-drum design, inking the stencil with rollers, which picked up the ink from a tube. Other manufacturers introduced their own models, but for years the two principal names in the industry were Mimeograph from Dick and Cyclostyle from Gestetner.

As stencil duplicators developed for long runs, carbon paper began to replace the copy press for short runs.

Carbon paper was invented in 1806, but was not practical for making copies written with the light pressure of pen and ink. Typewriters changed the situation. Copying with carbons was called “manifolding,” and some typewriters were sold claiming the ability to make up to 25 carbon copies at once!

An alternative duplicating method for very long runs became available after the turn of the century in a device called the Gammeter or Multigraph. This was actually a small rotary printing press, with grooves in its cylinder allowing type to be easily set on the surface. Setting the type took more work than producing a stencil, of course, so the Multigraph’s use was limited. The 20
^th
century brought other new potentials to “office duplicating” advancing it considerably toward “desktop publishing.”

Among the new devices was the Vari-Typer, an evolved form of the old Hammond Typewriter, which had been on the market since 1884. The Hammond was distinctive in that it typed with a single type element, a simple curved strip which could be quickly changed for a variety of typestyles.

In the 1920’s Hammond added variable pitch to its machines, making typestyles in widely different sizes practical for the same machine. Later, the Hammond was renamed Vari-Typer, and the Ralph Coxhead Corporation took it over. The Vari-Typer was electrified and equipped with differential spacing and line justification.

Lines were justified by typing them twice. The first typing determined the number of letters on the line, which was set on a dial. This altered the word spacing to align the right margin for the second typing.