The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  “The story goes that a wager between the Governor of California and one of his friends led Eadward Muybridge to set up his series of cameras. The year was 1877, and the point in the dispute was whether a galloping horse ever had all four legs off the ground at the same time. To settle the question, Muybridge stationed twenty-four cameras side by side along a race track. Twenty-four threads were stretched across the track, and as the galloping horses broke these, it tripped the shutters. (Later a clockwork device tripped the shutter.)”

  [Photos in Ceram’s book show both the arrangement of cameras that is described, and the results. A photo of the Zoopraxiscope (the projector) and some of the disks is on page 124. By the way, Ceram’s book is filled with excellent photos of dead media. I highly recommend it.] [Muybridge’s photography was not limited to animals.]

  Burnes St. Patrick Hollyman in “Film Before Griffith”: “He [Alexander Black] saw Muybridge’s exhibition of moving horses and scientific studies of motion as well as the Zoopraxiscope, which included a picture of a dancing girl in costume.”

  “Initially Muybridge’s aim was to produce instantaneous single photographs; the production of rapid series was incidental. Over the next few years however Muybridge produced and published innumerable series of photographs of every kind of human or animal motion. In the early 1880’s he took the step of re-synthesising [sic] his analysis of motion, projecting the short cycles of movement he had recorded by means of a projecting phenakistiscope, which he called a zoopraxiscope.”

  “The projected images were still not, properly speaking, photographic: Muybridge was obliged to re-draw them onto the glass disks he used in his projector, copying them by hand from his photographic originals.”

  [The disks were flat and circular, and loaded onto the projector’s side in a vertical position. The images ran in succession around the edge of the disk.]

  [Muybridge’s work was to influence Etienne Marey, and Thomas Edison. Edison developed the Kinetoscope after viewing Muybridge’s system.]

  “On February 27, 1988, Mr. Muybridge interviewed T.A. Edison as to the possibility of combining his Zoapraxiscope [sic, I have seen the name of the machine spelled at least three different ways] projector with Edison’s phonograph, but without result, though Mr. Edison did exploit such a combination some years later.”

  Robinson confirms this: “Edison met Muybridge, whose zoopraxiscope evidently gave him the idea for a machine that could record and reproduce images as his phonograph recorded and reproduced sound. He promptly charged his English-born laboratory head, W.K.L. Dickson, with the task of developing something on these lines, and issued the first of a series of caveats designed to protect the tentative researches carried on at his establishment at West Orange, New Jersey.”

  Source: Archaeology of the Cinema, C.W. Ceram, First American edition, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York;

  “The History of World Cinema,” David Robinson, Stein and Day, New York, 1973; “Film Before Griffith,” John L. Fell, editor, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983; “A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television,” Raymond Fielding, editor, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967.

  the Player Piano

  From Eleanor J. Barnes

  I was listening last night to a CD of George Gershwin playing his compositions, derived not from tinny, crackly, bass-deficient 78s, but from piano rolls he made himself. The album is called “Gershwin: The Piano Rolls” and the liner notes are copious on the technology and history of piano rolls as a means of transmitting music otherwise available only as sheet music.

  It struck me that though today we usually think of the player piano (when we think of it at all) as a novelty instrument, it is really not an instrument for playing by a musician, but a playback device for recorded music, just as was the hand-cranked Victrola, hence it, and piano rolls, are a (now-dead) medium.

  Notes excerpted from the liner notes for the 1993 CD, “Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls.”

  “George Gershwin’s virtuosic piano technique and ebullient style bring the Jazz Age to life in this digital recording of 12 of the composer’s piano rolls. Rare tunes never before recorded in any form [sic] are joined with Gershwin’s singular performance of ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ all transferred from the original 1920s rolls to a contemporary concert grand piano. Using the Yamaha Disklavier, a computer-driven descendant of the player piano, Artis Wodehouse has captured note-for-note Gershwin’s own arrangements of his music, in a landmark recording as entertaining as it is historic.”

  “George Gershwin recalled that one of his first musical memories went back to the age of six:

  ‘I stood outside a penny arcade listening to an automatic piano leaping through Rubinstein’s Melody in F. The peculiar jumps in the music held me rooted. To this very day I can’t hear the tune without picturing myself outside the arcade on 125th Street, standing there barefoot and in overalls, drinking it all in avidly.’

  “The player piano was a central force in American musical life between 1900 and 1930. Referred to variously as automatic pianos, pianolas and reproducing pianos, players of all types were found not only in penny arcades, but in homes, concert halls, restaurants, saloons, stores; virtually anywhere music was heard. Player pianos are normal acoustic pianos except that an internal piano- playing mechanism works as a computer using air pressure instead of electrical energy. The paper piano rolls are the ‘software’ used to activate the notes to play. A punched hole in a paper piano roll causes a corresponding note to play as it goes across a ‘reader’; a five-note chord has five perforations, and so on. Air pressure in player pianos is established by foot-pumping the bellows te exhaust the air. In later models, the bellows were motor-driven.

  “Gershwin’s second contact with a player piano was more sustained than the chance encounter in the penny arcade. At around the age of 10, he began teaching himself to play at the home of a friend who had a player piano. Slowly foot-pumping through the roll, the boy placed his fingers over the keys as they were depressed by the roll-playing mechanism. This method of learning was so successful that when a piano intended for brother Ira Gershwin was hoisted into the family’s flat, Ira recalled that ‘No sooner had the upright been lifted through the window of the front room than George sat down and played a popular tune of the day. I remember being particularly impressed by his left hand.”

  “Gershwin’s keyboard skills led him to make piano rolls, beginning when he was a song-plugger and continuing through his early career as an accompanist to vaudevilians and as a rehearsal pianist on Broadway. Before the late twenties, only a player piano could compete with a live performance for sonic presence. The phonograph was still in its infancy, and the old 78 discs produced a thin, bass-weak sound. While Gershwin was growing up (he was born in 1898) player pianos and piano rolls became a huge, lucrative and lavish industry. Happily, Gershwin’s roll making years trace the rise of the player piano; of the approximately 130 rolls he made, the first was issued in 1916 and the last in 1927.

  “Unfortunately, improvements in the sound of the much less expensive phonograph and radio undermined the popularity and perceived affordability of player pianos. During the late 20’s the once thriving roll industry declined, crashing decisively at the onset of the Depression in 1929. As with many other smart and successful musicians of the era, Gershwin went on to make disc recordings and to host his own radio program.

  “Making piano rolls that were spin-offs of his other keyboard work was a relatively easy way for Gershwin to make some quick extra money. Pop piano rolls had to be made and released quickly because they capitalized on the popularity of tunes that had recently been released as sheet music. Intended either for singing or dancing, stereotyped formats and stock devices permeated the medium. Still, roll arrangers were always looking for new musical tricks to amaze and excite the prospective purchaser. One such trick was to overdub; many more notes could be encoded into a
roll than a single pianist could lay down by hand. The result was a full, busy and exhilarating sound…

  “Gershwin recorded two types of rolls. The first (his Perfection, Mel-O-Dee and Universal rolls) was designed for playback on player pianos equipped with levers, knobs and/or buttons that the player pianolist foot-pumping the roll could interactively manipulate to create an expressive performance. The pianolist could often see a dynamic line ranging from soft to loud printed on the roll and follow it to guide the interpretation. The second and more technologically sophisticated type of roll (Gershwin’s Duo-Art and Welte rolls) were called reproducing rolls. These were intended for playback on instruments called reproducing pianos that could automatically execute dynamics..

  “The last selection on this CD is Frank Milne’s 2- roll arrangement of An American in Paris…

  “The piano used to play the rolls for this recording [the CD] is a 9-foot Yamaha Disklavier grand piano. This instrument was chosen because its computer capability offered unprecedented opportunities to refine the performances. In addition, this particular Disklavier piano is a high-quality full-sized concert grand producing a richness of sound and dynamic range which until now has been unusual for piano rolls recorded for CD.

  “Disklaviers are fitted with a computer and optic sensors that record a hand-played performance on floppy disk. On playback from the disk, the Disklavier’s keys move up and down like the old player piano.

  “A rare 1911 88-note Pianola was used for this project for those of Gershwin’s rolls requiring a pianolist’s interpretive intervention. During the heyday of the player piano this comparable piano-playing device was also available for roll playback. A heavy, bulky machine, the Pianola is equipped with expression levers and felt-tipped fingers and can be rolled up to any piano. Its fingers are positioned over the keys, and a roll is inserted. Foot-pumping activates the roll to move the fingers; the pianolist can play with expression by skillful foot- pumping and manipulating the expression levers.

  “When the 1911 Pianola operated by Artis Wodehouse played the rolls on the Disklavier, the Disklavier in turn recorded the same way it does any live pianist. The best takes of each roll captured on disk were then further edited to improve the interpretation. Finally, the 9-foot Disklavier was taken to the auditorium of the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City where it played Gershwin’s rolls from a floppy disk for the microphone, as if Gershwin’s ghost were present at the session.

  “Gershwin’s reproducing rolls were prepared quite differently. Using a piano roll reader, Richard Tonnesen of Custom Music Rolls converted the paper rolls into computer files which specified the location and length of each hole on the roll. Computer programmer Richard Brandle wrote a computer simulation of the reproducing pianos which translated the computer files into MIDI representing the notes, their duration and position in time and relative loudness as executed by the old reproducing pianos. The resulting performances could be played on any Disklavier from floppy disk. Placed in front of the recording microphone, the Disklavier concert grand then played Gershwin’s reproducing rolls from floppy disks for the CD recording..”

  Liner Notes by Artis Wodehouse

  Atari Video Music

  From Nick Montfort

  The cover to the manual has an image of a headphone- wearing woman with a pair of VR-like goggles. On the outside surface of these goggles, a pixelated geometric pattern with rainbow colors is overlaid. The Atari Video Music, however, does not look like a set of VR goggles. It looks like a stereo rack component.. It plugs into the stereo for input and TV for output. From the manual cover:

  “Video Music adds a totally new dimension to the high fidelity listening experience. For the first time ever, you actually SEE the music you hear. You can explore a limitless pattern of brilliant shapes, patterns and colors, visually synchronized on your TV screen to the music from your stereo system.

  “Video music generates images from digital selection, responding within milliseconds to the intensity and tempo [I wish I could figure out the tempo of a piece of music within milliseconds!] of the music being played. You can control colors, shapes, and patterns while creating an audio-visual concert. Or, set the controls to automatic and let the unit function with its own random selection.” There are four buttons for shape (solid, hole, ring, and auto), as well as knobs for gain, color, and contour, and buttons to set the scan rate. The manual explains the complex-looking process of adjusting the image, with illustrations suggesting the different results you can get. The obligatory amusing anecdote about this dead medium comes from Zap, pages 49-50:

  “Bob Brown, an engineering supervisor from Atari, has just designed Video Music, a game [Atari’s manual does not claim that this thing is a game] that hooked up to the TV set and the stereo so that the sound from the stereo produced psychedelic visuals on the TV screen. It was Atari’s most off-the-wall product. The man from Sears asked what they were smoking when they designed it, and one of the technicians stepped out from the back room and produced a lit joint.”

  Source: VIDEO MUSIC MANUAL (Owner’s Manual Model No. Model C-240), Atari, Inc. (No date, but previous to 1978);

  ZAP: The Rise and Fall of Atari, Scott Cohen, McGraw-Hill, 1984. ISBN 0-07-011543-5.

  the Elcaset cartridge tape and player

  From David Morton

  The Elcaset was a cartridge tape format introduced by several Japanese electronics firms in the late 1970s for use in high fidelity audio home systems.

  “Basically, Elcaset is a king size cassette [i.e. Large cassette, hence the name] measuring about six by four inches, versus about four by two and a half inches for the Philips cassette. It is three quarters of an inch thick; the Philips is a half-inch thick.

  The Elcaset runs at 3 ¾ ips [inches per second]; the Philips at 1 7/8 ips.

  “The Elcaset was a compromise between the all-out performance of an expensive reel-to-reel deck and the convenience of a cartridge format. The machines were heavy, sturdy devices more like professional equipment in construction than most home tape recorders.

  Although the tape was stored in a plastic cartridge, when it was inserted in a player a loop of tape was drawn into the workings of the machine, where the precision mechanism pulled it smoothly past the tape heads: “In the new format the tape transport is responsible for accurate movement of the tape past the tape heads. The tape is ‘pulled’ out of the Elcaset and moved between guides built into the transport. In the Philips system, tape movement accuracy is controlled by guides built into the cassette.”

  The tape was divided into six tracks; four were used to store two stereo music programs, the other two were control tracks used to store cueing information. Machines used a form of Dolby noise reduction and some (like the TEAC AL 700) could use optional, external Dolby units to achieve slightly better performance. Introduced at a time when ordinary audio cassettes could not meet reel-to-reel performance, the Elcaset seemed to have some appeal for serious home recording enthusiasts.

  However, the machines were more expensive than high-end cassette units ($650-1200) and record companies never offered a catalog of recorded Elcasets. The machines were pulled off the market within a couple of years, following slow sales. Models actually offered for sale included the JVC LD-777 ($800), the Sony EL-5 and EL-7 ($630 and $880), the TEAC AL-700 ($1100), and the Technics RS-7500US ($650). Marantz announced a line of Elcaset recorders, but I have not confirmed that they actually were offered.

  Source: Larry Zide, “Will the Elcaset Make It,” High Fidelity’s Buying Guide to Tape Systems (1978), pages 28- 30 “Elcaset” Hi-Fi/Stereo Buyers Guide volume 13 (January/February 1978), pages 48, 82.

  Bell Labs Half-Tone Television

  From Trevor Blake

  [In discussing how an image may be sliced into elements for transmission, the half-tone process used in newspaper photography is explained. Immediately following is this curiosity.]

  “It is evident from this discussion of half-ton
e reproductions, that in television, it is really not necessary to transmit and reproduce the entire scene as a single unit each 1/20 of a second. We may split up the scene viewed by the television transmitter, into elementary dots, transmit electrical vibrations corresponding to the brightness or darkness of each individual dot, and reproduce the dots in the same relative order and position at the receiving end. Then our received picture will be made up of a number of dots similar to a half-tone, and if the elements are small enough it will be acceptable. This system has actually been used by Dr. Ives at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, but since a separate circuit was necessary for each element or dot (2,500 circuits in all in this particular apparatus), the system was very complicated and commercially impractical.”

  Source: RADIO PHYSICS COURSE / An Elementary Text Book on Electricity and Radio by Alfred A. Ghirardi, E. E. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, Eighth Impression June 1937 Radio & Technical Publishing Co. 45 Astor Place, New York City

  Popular Science 1932: Naumburg’s Visagraph, the Electric Eye Linotype, Ordering Music by Phone

  From Dan Howland

  “BLIND CAN NOW ‘SEE’ PRINT AND PICTURES “FOR the first time blind persons may actually ‘see’ pictures and read newsprint and typewritten letters, through the medium of their fingertips, with a device that was demonstrated the other day in New York City. Termed the “automatic visagraph” by its inventor, Robert E. Naumburg, it scans a printed page with an electric eye. Black and white outlines of letters and drawings are transformed at high speed into raised and magnified lines, punched by a vibrating needlelike point upon moving sheets of aluminum foil.