The Dead Media Notebook (78 page)

I speculate that this vintage early-1960s machine shows so little wear and tear because it is hand cranked rather than electric. College professors are not known for their willingness to do manual work, right?

Ten bucks and it was mine.

I picked up a couple of books on office equipment (I highly recommend these for discovering the details of how all sorts of obscure office technologies actually work) and learned about spirit duplication.

Ah, memories of my youth flooded my mind like a “ditto” induced high. The only problem was where to get the supplies. To operate the beast, one needs a goodly quantity of “spirit duplicating fluid” and a few “master units,” the latter being the blank forms on which master copies are made. I did not even bother calling Staples or Office Depot on this one.

One of the few benefits of living in New Jersey is the close proximity to so many of the crumbling bastions of industrial age manufacturing. In this case, the Repeat-O-Type Manufacturing Corporation in Wayne New Jersey, near Newark indicated that they had plenty of supplies in stock.

Off I went to buy the stuff. The company itself is something of a dead media exhibit. Located in an early 20
^th
century building, these people have apparently been there forever.

Piled in one corner are remnants of the early days of the personal computer—stacks of yellowed IBM PCs. Getting dusty but apparently still in use is an Osborne “portable.”

Peeking out from behind stacks of new toner cartridges and copier supplies are—get this—boxes and boxes of carbon paper, typewriter ribbons, correction fluid, and other reminders of an era now gone. Although my spirit duplicator supplies were close at hand, it had been so long since they sold any that the sales rep had trouble figuring out what to charge me.

Did I hear snickering as I left the building? Back at my office, I find to my great dismay that—in the tradition of Coca Cola—some evil capitalist has changed the formula of my beloved duplicating fluid, which is now quite odorless. Nonetheless, whiffing up a nose full of this stuff is quite painful and not recommended.

“Contains methanol” it says. “If ingested, induce vomiting with a finger or the back of a spoon carefully inserted down the back of the throat” it says.

Now for the demonstration.

My plan to reproduce this semester’s mid-term examination (for a history of technology class) on the “ditto” machine was almost thwarted by a last- minute realization that my office no longer has a typewriter. Was I willing to write out the whole master copy by hand?

It had to be done. I created the master, attached it to the drum, filled the reservoir with fluid, filled the machine with copier paper, and turned the crank. Nothing. Unlike a Xerox copier, the spirit duplicator has about half a dozen adjustments to make before good copies will come out.

The magnitude of feed tension, the pressure against the drum, the flow of fluid to the wick, and miscellaneous other things all have to be fiddled with.

Finally, after much cursing, out they came: shiny, wet sheets covered with purple writing. Suddenly, it was 1975 again.

I was not able to get these into my students hands quickly enough for them to try to achieve that mystical “mimeograph high.

Source: M P Doss, Information Processing Equipment (New York, 1955) Irvin A. Herrmann, Manual of Office Reproduction (New York, 1956) W B Proudfoot, The Origin of Stencil Duplicating (London, 1972)

From George Raicevich

PHONAUTOGRAPH
The ancient Greeks knew that sound as heard by the ear consisted of vibrations of air which, at certain frequencies, could even cause objects to vibrate. Records indicate that resonating panels were commonly used to improve the acoustics of Greek theatre.

Back in the year 18 BC even the Romans installed large metal vases in their amphitheatres, specially tuned to vibrate at certain frequencies.

But it was not until 1857 that the first instrument for recording these vibrations was patented by Frenchman Leon Scott. He called his invention the ‘Phonoautograph’.

The recording medium was a piece of smoked paper attached to the surface of a drum which, when rotated, moved forwards along a helical screw. A stylus was attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, which moved in a lateral direction when the diaphragm was vibrated by a voice. This caused a wavy line to be traced on the smoked paper. A barrel shaped mouthpiece was also included in the design.

This was purely a device for accurately displaying sound waves, and it was not the inventor’s intention to playback a recording.

The Phonoautograph promoted a flurry of activity by inventors in many countries, but it was another twenty years before Thomas Edison brought out his epoch making ‘Phonograph’ in 1897 which could record as well as play back.

Scott’
s smoked paper was replaced by tin foil, and the stylus was attached directly to the diaphragm to trace a recording of variable depth (hill and dale). In subsequent models the tin foil was replaced by a wax cylinder which continued to be used for many years, Edison cylinders were finally discontinued around 1928.

In 1857, Leon Scott invented the phonautograph. His design consisted of a barrel-shaped plastic speaking horn. The upper end was left open, while the lower end was fitted with a brass tube, across which was stretched a flexible membrane.

A stiff pig’s bristle was attached to the outside of the membrane to act as a stylus or pen. A smoked-paper cylinder was rotated beneath the pig’s bristle. When sounds were directed into the horn, both the membrane and bristle moved back and forth, tracing the waveform as a wavy line on the cylinder.

Nevertheless, this design CANNOT reproduce sound. Later, Thomas Edison’s invention consisted of a membrane to which was fastened a steel stylus (that is, the needle in your question) and a cylinder covered with tinfoil. First, the membrane recorded sound as in Leon Scott’s phonautograph, making a series of spiral “hill-and-dale” grooves in the foil surface.

When the stylus was made to travel over the grooves , it made the membrane vibrate in response to the depressions in the grooves. Hence, the motion of the stylus can create the original sound.

Barlow’s Logograph Articulate sounds are accompanied by the explusion of air from the mouth, which impulses vary in quantity, pressure, and in the degree of suddennes with which they commence and terminate.

An instrument which will record these impulses has been termed by its inventor, Lion Scott, a phonautograph, or phonograph, and by Mr. Barlow a logograph; the pressure of air in speaking is directed against a membrane which vibrates and carries with it a delicate marker, which traces a line on a traveling ribbon.

The excursions of the tracer are great or small from the base line, which represents the quiet membrane, according to the force of the impulse; and are prolonged according to the duration of the pressure, different articulate sounds varying greatly in their length as well as in intensity; farther, another great difference in them consists in the relative abruptness of the rising and falling inflections, which make curves of various shapes, of even or irregular shape. The smoothness or ruggedness of a sound has thus its own graphic character, independent both of its actual intensity and its length.

BARLOW’S LOGOGRAPH

…consists of a small speaking-trumpet, having an ordinary mouth-piece connected to a tube, the other end of which is widened out and covered wtih a thin membrane of gold-beater’s skin or gutta-percha.

A spring presses slightly against the membrane, and has a light arm of aluminum, which carries the marker, consisting of a small sable brush inserted in a glass tube containing a colored liquid. An endless strip of paper is caused to traverse beneath the pencil, and is marked with an irregular curved line.

Source Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary, in Telephone, p.2514. (1880: Riverside Press, Cambridge American Journal of Science and Arts, August, 1874, pages 130, 131

From Aaron Marcus

At the National Computer Graphics Association conference in Los Angeles, CA, on 22 March 1990, I attended a special (informal) session about Virtual Reality.

Mr. Ted Nelson, noted inventor of Hypertext, was the first speaker. The second was Mr. Mort Heilig, or Los Angeles, who presented the history of his efforts to create Sensorama in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Mr. Heilig was a Hollywood cinematographer who was experimenting with new media.

He commented that the old cycle of Hollywood cinema was this: conception He showed something he called the Periodic Table of the Senses, a diagram. He showed examples of Smellorama.

In 1955: he invented or showed a spherical room, a total environmental television. He also showed and explained a Telesphere Mask.

In 1960: he patented 3D Stereosound and smell using special glasses. He tried to show his invention to select groups to get it funded for mass production. He wanted to create a kind of kiosk multi-sensory experience.

The typical reaction was rejection. RCA ignored him (I believe he meant RCA Labs in New Jersey).

Investors could not imagine what it would be like, so he built a prototype. I believe he said he still had examples of this equipment in his basement or garage. His demonstration prototype (he showed slides and films of the prototype) used four magnetic tracks to control the sensory displays and nine blowers to create a sense of air movement.

He filmed a motorcycle ride through New York City, which he showed parts of, and a belly dancer.

He also showed some documents of an exhibit and/or a publication from South America somewhere that had published extensive images and diagrams and text about his work and ideas.

He felt a little annoyed that no one in the USA had ever given him such attention.

He seemed to be pleased that this event had given him an opportunity to present a brief history of his work. Unfortunately, no audio or videotape documentation of the event was made.

Source: personal notes

From Richard Kadrey

INVENTING IN SUBURBIA
“Dad,” Peter suddenly blurted out. “Why don’t they have adventure stories on the radio? Something you can put on yourself. This stuff can be so boring.”

Well, why not? How many times has one felt the agonizing boredom on long trips, the irritating fights between brother and sister, as young minds and bodies start to feel cramped? I suppose I could have dropped the idea and gone on to the things that were of more immediate concern at CBS, but I kept thinking of my son’s question.

When I got back to work, I started to wonder how much information one can put on a small record for use in a car without a changer. The answer, it turned out, is easy to figure.

To give us forty-five minutes of playing time on a side, as much content as both sides of an LP, and to give us a record small enough to fit with its mechanism inside the glove compartment, the record would have to be seven inches in diameter and would have to revolve at 16 2/3 rpm, one-half of the LP speed. In addition it required almost three times the number of grooves per inch as did the LP.

I talked it over with my colleagues. I never know whether they’re affected by my enthusiasm or by the idea itself. I generally try to restrain the excitement that surges through me so that my associates won’t feel they are being dominated by my ideas, which I must admit sometimes may seem to go far beyond immediate realizations.

In any case they liked the notion of playing records in an automobile, and they seemed to mean it. So we got to work immediately. Our earlier experience with the LP stood us in good stead, and in just six months we developed the narrowest microgroove in the business, the ultramicrogroove. It was one-third the width of a human hair. The fidelity was superb. It was time to show it to Stanton. I told him I had a gift for him and installed a custom-designed player in the glove compartment of his jet- black Thunderbird. He loved it.

“I thought you’d given up the idea,” he said. Then he added, “I’m glad you didn’t.”

I thought that the ultramicrogroove record turntable might not only work in an auto, but also might become a standard in the record business if radio stations went into broadcasting pop music, which generally comprises short numbers. Remembering the earlier interest of Murphy and others at CBS in the seven-inch record, I proposed it to management.

Paley didn’t think much of this market; in fact, he didn’t think pop music was a market at all. He also felt that record players installed in cars might cause drivers to turn off the radio to listen to records, and thus CBS would lose listeners. I must confess that I didn’t think the world would suffer if car drivers occasionally turned off The Shadow and listened to Debussy.

Here is another case where I couldn’t allow my enthusiasm to be dampened by management’s negativism to new ideas. I decided to go ahead on my own and to see how far I could get with the automobile installation.

Since I was then driving a Chrysler, I thought the Chrysler Corporation might be interested in the device, and got in touch with a man named Kent, who was the company’s chief electrical engineer. A ruddy-faced, middle-aged man who was then pioneering air conditioning in automobiles, Kent was interested in new ideas and invited me to Detroit.

When I arrived, I told him I had something in my car that he just had to see. Curious, he agreed to go with me to the parking lot. Inside the car, I turned on a switch. The music came pouring out of the loudspeaker of the car radio, clear, beautiful, and static-free. Kent was startled. I opened the compartment and showed him the setup. He looked at the strange, homemade tone arm on the player and shook his head.

“It’s fine while you’re parked,” he said. “But what about driving on the road?” “You drive,” I said, offering him the keys. He slipped behind the wheel, put the car in drive, and slid down the highway. The music continued to pour out faithfully. Then he turned into a lot and stopped.