The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  “When preset advertising copy began to be provided by advertisers, in the late nineteenth century, the union required that this type could be used as received only if a union Typesetter was employed to reset, print, proof, and throw away the same copy. The union leader who negotiated this requirement is reported to have been a Mr. Bogus, and this redundant make-work typesetting was called ‘bogus’ type and added a word to the language. (There are other explanations for the word, but none that we know of contradicts this one)

  Even as late as the 1980s, most type was set on lead casting machines, and the production manager at the San Jose News complained that his reporters’ stories were being retyped by ‘400-dollar a month secretaries who type 80 words a minute and don’t make mistakes, and then retyped at 40 words a minute on Linotype machines by 800- dollar a month Typesetters who do make mistakes.’

  “In the 1970s when the machines that set type began to use low cost mini, and later microcomputers that automated the old typesetting skills, the need for the ITU members began to decline. One after another, newspapers that were already losing advertising dollars to the new upstart television were hit by ITU strikes called to prevent the loss of jobs for Typesetters. One by one these papers closed their doors forever, and Typesetters were really put out of work.

  “Finally the union had to settle for agreements that said basically, ‘you can’t fire our people, but you can give them any kind of honest work you have available.’ Since these Typesetters had an average age of over 50 years, the papers could use them for anything from driving trucks to managing the paper warehouse, and they’d all be gone, replaced by people with lower wages (if inflation didn’t make the wages equal) within 10 or 15 years.

  “A sad 49 year old Typesetter told me in 1978, ‘My Daddy always told me ‘get a trade’, so I did my apprenticeship and became a Typesetter! Now I’m unemployable!’

  “The ITU no longer exists as an independent union. It had a long proud history,protecting and getting good wages for its members through some very hard times for trade workers.

  We’d be well advised to realize that most of the jobs we do so well now will probably go away or change completely in a single life time, and when you reach the age of the Typesetter quoted above, you probably won’t have a union working to protect your right to work. So stay up to date!

  “Lewis Mumford tells us that the guild of scribes and copyists delayed the introduction of printing presses into Paris for as much as twenty years. In this century people and machines become obsolete almost overnight. Absit omen.”

  Spirit Duplicators

  From David Morton

  The Difference between Mimeograph, Hectograph, and Spirit Duplication

  The item being discussed here is that familiar, purple- inked, smelly technology we all knew in school way back when.

  This is called a “spirit duplicator,” and not a mimeograph, although mimeograph was the generic term for several distinct devices. The word mimeograph was coined by the A B Dick Company, which in the 1887 began manufacturing a stencil-based print duplication system. As W B Proudfoot has shown, the mimeograph was the culmination of a number of inventions, some of which came from A B Dick and some from elsewhere. After purchasing the rights to a process of making stencils invented by Thomas A. Edison, the A B Dick company began selling mimeograph copying equipment under the trade name “Edison’s Mimeograph.”

  The device made copies of hand-drawn stencils one at a time on a “flat bed” duplicator. By the time Dick began selling the device in 1887, the Gestetner company in England was already selling a similar machine called the cyclostyle, but mimeograph became the generic term. The mimeograph printing process used ordinary ink (either water soluble or oil soluble), and could even be used to make multi-color prints. The ink flowed through the perforations in the stencil and onto ordinary paper.

  Stencils could be prepared by hand or, later, on a typewriter. (Proudfoot 1972, p. 76) Eventually, mimeograph machines used a crank mechanism or an electric motor to speed up the process (as did the hectograph and spirit duplicator devices discussed below).

  They all look similar, but are quite distinct. The Hectographic or “gelatin” duplicator, according to one source, “originally applied to a process which involved transferring the material to be copied from a sheet upon which it had been written with a special ink to a pad made from a mixture of gelatin, glycerin, and sometimes glue.”(Doss, 1955, p. 15)

  The technology probably appeared in the 1870s, shortly after aniline dyes were developed in Germany. (Proudfoot, 1972, 36).

  Copies were made by pressing paper against the inked gelatin surface.” The special dye for making the master copy came in the form of ink or in pens, pencils, carbon paper, and typewriter ribbon. The gelatin process was useful for print runs of up to fifty copies. At least eight different colors were available, but purple was the most common “because of its density and contrast.”

  THE SPIRIT DUPLICATOR

  Finally we get to the spirit duplicator. It was invented in 1923 by one Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, founder of the Ormig Company in Germany (Proudfoot 1972, 36). The spirit duplicator master consisted of a smooth paper master sheet and a “carbon” paper sheet (coated with a waxy compound similar to that used in the hectograph) acting “backwards” so that the wax compound (we’ll call it the “ink”) was transferred to the back side of the master sheet itself. The master could be typed or written on, and when finished the “carbon paper” was discarded. The master was wrapped around a drum in the spirit duplicator machine. As the drum turned, the master was coated with a thin layer of highly volatile duplicating fluid via a wick soaked in the fluid. The fluid acted to slightly dissolve or soften the “ink.”

  As paper (preferably very smooth or coated) pressed against the drum and master copy, some of the “ink” was transferred to make the final copy. A spirit duplicator master was capable of making up to about 500 copies before the print became too faint to recognize.

  The spirit duplicator was widely used in educational institutions for making all sorts of documents in small runs. Many students believed that inhaling the distinctive vapors given off by fresh spirit duplicator copies could provide a “high,” a myth that (in my recollection) teachers did nothing to dispel.

  DEAD MEDIA SIGHTING/DEMONSTRATION

  Having spent my entire adult life around universities, I know how these institutions are often the last to hang on to their dead media technologies.

  Everyone I know has a story about using punched card readers as late as the 1980s, or knows somebody still using a manual typewriter.

  Well, about a month ago one department finally cleared out the last of its pre-Xerox copying machines, plus some old printing equipment. In November, 1998, on a routine visit to the Rutgers University surplus store, I noticed a trove of dead print media—a small and very used offset lithograph printing press (way too big for my apartment, unfortunately) a pallet full of very filthy electric mimeograph machines, and a solitary Heyer spirit duplicator.

  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 Repea
t-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 20th 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)

  Phonautograph and Barlow’s Logograph

  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

  Sensorama

  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-sens
ory 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

  Chrysler’s Highway Hi-Fi, pt. one

  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.