It had the distinction of using ordinary photographic film as the playback medium. The film was cut in the shape of a 12” disc which was loaded into the player with a caddy, much like the RCA CED System.
Data was recorded on the disc as a spiral track of dots, which interrupted the laser beam as it was projected through the disc. Thus Laserfilm is a transmissive system rather than reflective, which is characteristic of the popular LaserDisc format.
The first unit was available in 1984, and the last was made in 1986, as this format was apparently never marketed successfully outside of McDonnell Douglas.
All of the players were very well-constructed industrial units, and featured an RS-232 port for external computer control.
McDonnell Douglas used multiple units running in unison for flight simulation. The commercial failure of this format is somewhat surprising, since the use of photographic film, disc mastering and replication was supposed to be much simpler than competing VideoDisc formats.
Indeed, the duplicate discs were merely photographic inverses of the masters. The masters used dark dots on a transparent background, whereas the replicas used transparent dots on a black background. The players were unique in being able to play either a replica or the original master, although to play the master it had to be loaded in the caddy with the label side facing down.
The playback time was limited to 18 minutes of full motion video per disc, and perhaps this was its major downfall. Competing formats were capable of 60 minutes of video per side, or 120 minutes total per disc.
The discs were recorded in CAV format, and could produce 33,200 still frames, 42 hours of compressed audio, or 36 hours of Still-with-Sound (assuming 28.6 seconds of compressed sound per frame).
Source: LASERFILM VideoDisc Player LFS-4400 Operating Instructions, 1986 McDonnell Douglas Electronics Co., Box 426, St. Charles, Missouri 63301
Two-track PlayTape; the Stanton Mail Call Letter Pack
From Robert Spaun
“In early 1967 the four-track cartridge was controlling the industry with Bill Lear and his 8-track format waiting in the wings to become the ‘format of choice’ for the next decade of pre-recorded taped music.
“Enter Frank Stanton, innovator of the 2-track PlayTape system. Stanton conceived the compact 2-track system in the 1940’s war years, when he served in the Navy. Sears and MGM records bought the first working model.
“The machine was unveiled to the general public at an MGM Records distributor meeting in New York in mid- 1966. It was almost instantly a success. PlayTape was touted as a replacement to the transistor radio with the disc jockey removed. It was a light little machine, playing whatever music you wanted to hear . The self- winding tapes played from eight to 24 minutes, and they played anywhere. Quite an accomplishment in 1967!
“Stanton felt that Playtape was a ‘standard system- not competitive with anybody. We have our own niche, from $1.00 - $3.00 retail cartridges, from mono to stereo, from the Beatles and Sinatra to Shakespeare and poetry.’ He would be proven wrong.
“The first two PlayTape units offered were a $19.95 unit sold by Sears exclusively, and an MGM model (retailing at $29.95) that had tone controls and a better speaker. Stanton had in mind over 15 different models to be available in 1967, home tabletop models featuring hi- fi speakers, an auto hang-on unit, a wide variety of portable units and special stereo models.
“Units were cheaply made, sounded like you would expect a 3” speaker to sound and were troubled with the same crosstalk, azimuth problems of the 8-track.
“In addition to musical entertainment, Stanton had the business market in mind for the PlayTape system as well. He introduced a special dictating device for the business market which he envisioned as a replacement for written memos and letters. His idea was marketed to the Smith Corona Corporation and called the Mail Call Letter Pack.
“The units that recorded the messages were advertised at ‘less than $70.00 a pair.’ Letter Pack cartridges were offered in 3, 6, or 10 minute lengths and were reusable. Even though the idea was a forerunner of the IBM dictating machine and to some extent the Internet and E-mail, the concept did not take off and music is still the medium for which PlayTape is remembered.
“In September of 1967, PlayTapes were distributed in five distinctive color cartridges in the following categories:
Black cartridge = equivalent to a 4-song EP, $1.49
Blue cartridge = children’s albums = $1.00-$1.50
White cartridge = 8 songs like an LP, $2.98
Gray cartridge = talk and educational = $1.00-$1.50
“In its heyday of 1967 and 1968, the personalities in the PlayTape inventory reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ in the entertainment world. In the popular music category were such greats as Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Connie Stevens, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Wayne Newton, Judy Garland, Nancy Wilson, Petula Clark, Connie Francis, Ella Fitzgerald, Edie Gorme, Steve Lawrence and hundreds of others.
“The rock n roll category includes such names as the Beatles, the Animals, the Supremes, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and Papas, the Righteous Brothers, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder.
“Also in the PlayTape inventory were the standards - Herb Alpert, Sergio Mendes and an assortment of current Country music hit artists. The total number of artists available on PlayTape at the beginning of 1968 was over 3,000!
“A big boost to the PlayTape format was a contract in April of 1967 to license the entire Motown catalog. Previously, Motown had only once licensed their entire catalog, to Ampex in the open-reel format. Another boost was a contract with Pepsi to promote the youth market. Pepsi offered a PlayTape unit for $12.95 plus 6 cork liners from Pepsi cans. Pepsi promotion increased the sale of PlayTape cartridges almost twofold.
“The PlayTape format targeted two distinct markets = the youth music market and the business market. For whatever reasons, the business market never took hold. The music market enjoyed a limited success. The PlayTape was limited to two tracks, and even though there were several car units, they never really targeted the car audio market as did Mr. Muntz and Mr. Lear.
“Both of these factors helped lead to Playtape’s of educational and business fields, rather than entertainment. LearJet and Muntz both introduced portable players for their formats in the late 1960’s, which stripped PlayTape of its unique portability selling point. Consumers had to commit to a uniform format, and PlayTape was not to be the choice.
“PlayTape did however enjoy several more years in the limelight in Europe, most notably Germany.
Source: Web article by Lynn Fuller
Inuit carved maps
From George H. Brett II
“Three-dimensional maps of coastlines were carved of wood as long as three hundred years ago. These Inuit charts were usually carved from driftwood and are made to be felt rather than looked at.
“Usually the actual landmass has been highly abstracted, it is the edges that can be ‘fingered’ on a dark night in a kayak. Since they are made of wood rather than paper, they are impervious to the weather, and will float if they are accidentally dropped overboard; being three-dimensional they are more functional in terms of accurately rendering shorelines to people in boats or kayaks.”
There is an illustration of two of the wood maps on page 231. This section has an interesting preamble about Inuit spatial sensibilities and how they relate to their sense of direction.
As Papanek says: “This radically different orientation system has been cited by both Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Carpenter as a result of Inuit living in an aural, acoustic, non-linear bubble of space, in a society that is moving directly from a pre-literate to a post-literate (electronic) mode, and has not be moulded by linear thinking.
Source: Papanek, Victor. The Green Imperative: natural design for the real world. Thames and Hudson, 1995. ISBN 0-500-27846-6.
Edison’s Vertical-Cut Records
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From Stefan Jones
Thomas Alva Edison was indisputably the inventor of the phonograph, and the first major manufacturer of these machines.
His wax cylinder machines found their way into hundreds of thousands of homes, and entertained millions.
Less well known is Edison’s bungling attempts to follow up on the success of the cylinder phonograph. Although acoustically superior to Berliner’s disc-playing gramophone, the cylinder machines began losing ground to discs in 1901 and were almost moribund after the first world war. When Edison finally relented, he didn’t follow the rest of the pack.
The below are excerpted from The Fabulous Phonograph by Roland Gelatt:
“The great wartime phonograph boom came along just in time to accelerate the fortunes of Edison’s new Disc Phonograph. It had been officially unveiled in October 1913, when the cylinder was failing fast as a viable article of commerce; and it was pubicised with all the elan that Edison’s ingenious advertising department could muster.” [ All of the records you are likely familiar with, be they shellac 78, 45 singles or 33 /13 RPM vinyl LPs, have laterally cut grooves. Vertical cuts were a holdover from cylinders, but actually offered better sound, SEJ]
“The combination of vertical-cut recording, individually ground diamond styli, and Edison’s usual high standards of construction acted to make these instruments superior acoustically to any competing talking machine..”
“Highly paid singers were put under contract: Emmy Destinn, Frieda Hempel, [etc.]. But Edison was incapable of utilizing this talent to anyone’s satisfaction but his own. He was constantly interfering with the choice of repertoire and would stubbornly refuse to issue recordings that bore the approval of both his own recording directors and the artists themselves.” [Due to their popularity in Europe, and Edison’s own output, American phonograph manufacturers of the Teens produced machines with adaptors that allowed them to play both lateral and vertical cut discs. These faded away as the superior marketing and star-power of Columbia and other major labels overwhelmed the market.—SEJ]
“In 1925 electrical recording had delivered the final blow to Edison’s vertical-cut cylinders and discs. [Even when played back on an acoustic machine, electrically mastered discs captured a greater range of sound and allowed musicians to play naturally, rather than directing their efforts at a recording horn.—SEJ]
“At first the Edison publicists had tried to maintain that electrical recording figured in the mysterious Edison ‘secret process’ but despite the insinuations. the records continued to be recorded mechanically. To offset this drawback, the Edison company launched a long-playing record in 1926 that would give up to twenty minutes of uninterrupted entertainment per side.
“But no one at Thomas A. Edison, Inc. bothered to unfold the possibilities. Complete symphonies, entire operas were not found among the long-playing records issued. Instead there appeared a collection of dinner music played by the Hotel Commodore Ensemble and some operatic overtures played by Sodero’s Band and the American Symphony Orchestra. Not one Edison ‘Long Playing Record’ contained a piece of music lasting longer than the standard four minutes.”
[Edison introduced a few electrically recorded, standard lateral-cut records in the summer of 1929. Ten weeks later, on November 1st, the company announced that it was discontinuing product of both phonographs and records, including its “Blue Amberol” plastic cylinder recordings, which continued to sell steadily in a few parts of the South, decades after the rest of the country had relegated them to attics and junkheaps.]
[While Columbia and Berliner shellac records remain accessible to this day, thanks to the still-honored practice of putting a 78 rpm setting on turntables, Edison’s vertical cut disks are utterly unplayable without one of the specialized machines designed to accommodate them. They are truly dead media.]
Source: Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, J.B. Lippincott Company, New York. First Edition, 1955
The Flame Organ; The Burning Harmonica; the Chemical Harmonica; Kastner’s Pyrophone
From Richard Kadrey
Here is how to make flame sing: obtain a glass tube, one or two inches in diameter, open at both ends, and perhaps two or three feet long. Light a propane torch or similar burner, and insert the nozzle about one fourth of the way into the open lower end of the tube.
If conditions are right, you will hear the tone will begin, not abruptly, but with a growing volume. Gather together a tuned set of such tubes, develop the mechanisms to shut the flames on and off in a controlled manner, and you will have created a flame organ.
The sounds of such an arrangement, according to people who have worked with flame tones, are highly varied.
The system can be refined so as to dependably produce clear, steady tones at the frequency of the tube’s fundamental. Or the mechanism can be adjusted to bring out harmonics. On the other hand, you can take a less controlling approach, and let the system come forth with a menagerie of whoops, shrieks and moans.
One consistent characteristic: the attacks are not sharp; rather, each tone grows as the resonance establishes itself.
The earliest references to “burning harmonica” or “chemical harmonica” come to us from the late 1700s.
A century later the physicist Georges Fredric Eugene Kastner published Les flammes chantantes (Paris, 1875), a description of his fire organ, the pyrophone.
A photograph of this instrument appeared in Kenneth Peacock’s article on color organs in Experimental Musical Instruments, Volume VII #2, September 1991.
It appears as a moderately large console containing a small keyboard, with ten glass pipes rising from it. Later references to fire music generally take Kastner’s pyrophone as a starting point.
Of modern fire organs there are not many. One has been created by engineers at the Tokyo Gas Company. It is fully functional and played regularly in public. In the following pages you will read about three more, created by contemporary artists-in-fire.
Telelogoscopy; Television Screen News
From Paul Lindemeyer
May I submit for your approval the story of my own favorite dead medium, Television Screen News.
I’ve been digging into lost TV history for a while now, hoping to get a book or documentary out of it, and this device is one of the most interesting I’ve come across. Television Screen News, or Telelogoscopy, the ancestor of today’s video character generators, was another of the many mechanical television innovations of John Logie Baird.
Patented in 1927, the device used a disc scanner to televise a moving band of black letters, perhaps four at a time, on a white background.
At first individual 2-1/4” x 3” letter tiles were slotted into a roll of varnished linen, but by 1929, a more practical typewriter and rolls of paper tape replaced this arrangement.
Television Screen News served a need in the days when experimental television could not transmit audio and video at once, and visual definition was too low to allow intricate title cards to be used. It was used to identify stations, performers, and songs as well as its most obvious application, news bulletins.
“Stand by for Television Screen News,” spoken by an announcer interposed on the video frequency, was frequently heard during the Baird 30-line programs given through the BBC London transmitter from 1929-35. W2XAB of the Columbia Broadcasting System used a similar device for station identification in 1932-33.
The visual aspect of Television Screen News was said to be similar to the “zipper” or “motogram” revolving belt used to flash messages across the sides of buildings. It was a reliable test of picture quality for the home enthusiast and was thought in the early 1930s to have great possibilities for educating the deaf and other special applications.
However, along with mechanical television, Television Screen News became obsolete before it could see widespread use.
Source: H.J. Barton Chapple, How ‘Screen News’ Is Televised, Radio Review and Television News, Jan.-Feb.
1933 (pages 292-293); Benn Hall, Television: Talkies of the Air, The Billboard, February 25, 1933 (page 15).
Phonograph History
From Stefan Jones
A History of the Phonograph, with Special Emphasis on Dead Phonograph Formats
Most of this material and all quotes come from THE FABULOUS PHONOGRAPH by Roland Gelatt, J.B. Lippincott, NY, 1955. Although the book ends when 78 rpm records were still in production, “Hi-Fi” was a suspicious fad, and Stereo was still over the horizon, Gelatt’s book is a great read and has great insights as to why recording formats, even technically superior ones, can become Dead Media. I would love to hear what Gelatt would have to say about the last fifteen years. A Note on Terminology: “Phonograph” is the proper name for Edison’s original tin- foil cylinder sound recorder and player, and for the much more practical wax-cylinder player-recorder he commercialized and sold until 1929. The lateral-groove-inscribed-disc playing machine we most often think of as a record player is more properly called a “gramophone,” after the original designed by Emile Berliner. The basic technology reigned virtually unchallenged, with relatively minor improvements, from 1901 to the 1980s. I will use “record player” to refer to all types of machines that play back sound recorded and reproduced via a vibrating needle.
The PHONOGRAPH was invented by Thomas Alva Edison in 1877. The first model used a vertically vibrating needle to inscribe a “hill and dale” pattern in a sheet of tin foil wrapped around a cardboard cylinder. Edison, ever the publicity hog, exhibited the machine to the staff of the Scientific American. A few hundred (?) of the temperamental machines were built and sold for use by traveling exhibitors. A fair number of the celebrities and potentates of the day had their voices recorded, but the tin foil recordings were not durable and no commercial recordings were ever offered.
The Dead Media Notebook Page 28
