The Dead Media Notebook

by Bruce Sterling

  The cable, called Hawaii-2, could simultaneously carry as many as 138 conversations. But in 1989 a fishing trawler working in shallow water near the California coast accidentally cut the $30 million cable.

  The telephone company could probably have repaired the break, but decided instead to abandon the cable; by then, optical-fiber cables had come into use, and the new cables could carry up to a half million conversations with greatly improved sound quality.

  AT&T announced that it would make the abandoned coaxial cable available to scientists who could find a use for it.

  How I became the first foreigner to operate the Prague Pneumatic Post

  From JC Herz

  “I Got Root on the Prague Pneumatic Post

  In Prague, there is a fully functional municipal pneumatic tube system, the only one still in operation (the one in Paris was shut down long ago). It runs underneath the entire city, five trunk lines, 55 kilometers of tubes, switches, and relays snaking underground from the main post office in Old Town, south to New Town, which was constructed in the 14th century, across the river on the underbellies of three bridges, and all the way up to Prague Castle.

  It takes eight minutes for a pneumatic tube to reach the furthest point on the network. An air blower starts at the point of origin, and a vacuum starts at the destination. On longer lines there is a relay network of air pumps which switch from vacuums to blowers once the tube passes, sort of like booster stations.

  The first message was sent in 1899. On March 4, 1999, the system was 100 years old. Originally, it was for wire telegrams. They came in, were rolled up and sent by pneumatic tube to the most important buildings in the city. After that, the system was used for telexes, which had to be centrally controlled so that the communist secret police could inspect everything.

  The telex room is in the same building: half an acre of ceiling-height shelves, like library stacks except it’s not books, it’s wiring, feeding into the same Cold War telex machines, still ticking.

  The 1960’s were a big decade for the Prague pneumatic post.

  Big traffic in the ‘70s, when the government-run Czech Press Agency was run out of same building, they distributed all approved international information, news, and government propaganda to the newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations via pneumatic tube.

  That ended in 1989, when the Velvet Revolution entitled news providers to get their information wherever they wanted. But instead of fading into obsolescence, the Prague Post stubbornly reinvented itself as conduit for financial documents. Banks.

  When you need an original document within minutes, the pneumatic tube system beats a bike messenger. The system is actually being expanded now, at the behest of the financial sector. And the poetry is that it’s owned and operated by Czech Telecom.

  They have to keep it running because the pneumatic tube lines run alongside the gas lines and if they shut down the system there might be a hazardous build-up and possibly explosions, and it’s cheaper to keep it running than to dig it all up.

  The system loses about $70,000 a year, but at that price it’s a relatively inexpensive early warning system for gas leaks.

  I set up an appointment with the Pneumatic Post Supervisor, since the system isn’t open to the public. And he gave me the whole history and the grand tour. And the whole time there were these tubby ladies with gloves, who’ve probably been working there since the wire days, intercepting and redepositing these pneumatic cylinders, which arrive with a big rattle and a horrendous thud.

  These tubes are moving ten meters per second, and they’re metal, and when they land they hit hard. When he’d finished explaining, one of the red lights in this pipe organ of pneumatic tube conduits began to blink.

  And so I asked, “Can I? Can I do it? Can I put one of the messages in?”

  The tubby ladies eyed me suspiciously but the supervisor agreed. So, poised over the iron and brass console, I opened one of the small, circular hinged doors. And there was an enormous whoosh of brownish smoke and a scary noise and so I threw the capsule into the hole and quickly closed the little door.

  There was more rattling and banging, and a light went on, and I turned to the supervisor and said, “I think I just broke your 100-year-old pneumatic tube system.”

  But he said no, and got one of the maintenance guys to dislodge the capsule with a broomstick, whereupon it zoomed off to its intended location. Most of the tubes have automatic air shut-off, he explained.

  This one was manual and I wasn’t quick enough. One of the tubby ladies nodded smugly. But still, he said, “You are the first foreigner to operate the system. You should get a certificate.”

  Being eight years old inside, I immediately seized on this. “Can I? Can you make me a certificate? Do you have letterhead? Can you type a certificate for me? It would really. I mean, it would really mean a lot.”

  And I actually marched the man into his office and made him type out this certificate on Czech Telecom letterhead: “I hereby certify that Ms. J. C. HERZ has been the first foreigner who personally PUT a Pneumatic Mail System Cartridge into the appropriate aperture of the single and unique Prague Pneumatic Mail System.” Signed, Jiri Hak, Managing Director.

  This piece of paper is now one of my most prized possessions. How often can you go into a country and be the first foreigner to do something? As far as I’m concerned, this is my claim to fame.

  MICRONESIAN STICK CHARTS

  From Allen Varney

  EXCERPT “The low elevation of the [Marshall Islands] and the distances between the atolls make them particularly difficult to sight from the sea. In travels between islands, early inhabitants learned to read the patterns of the waves by watching for swells which would show when land was ahead. “Stick charts were used to teach the secrets of navigation. They were made by tying flat strips of wood together in designs which imitated the wave patterns. Shells were then attached to these sticks to represent the islands.

  “Three kinds of charts were used. The mattang showed wave patterns around a single island or atoll and was used first to teach the basic techniques. The medo showed patterns around a small group of atolls and the rebilit mapped an entire chain, showing the relationships between the islands and the major ocean swells. “All the information contained on the stick charts was memorised and the charts themselves were not actually taken on journeys. Not many present-day Marshallese understand how to read stick charts, though due to their popularity as souvenirs many islanders can still make them.”

  Source: Lonely Planet’s MICRONESIA travel guide, by Glenda Bendure and Ned Friary (3rd edition, 1995, page 71)

  Newspaper via Radio Facsimile

  From Chap and Andrea Godbe

  The idea of sending newspapers et cetera through radio has been used for many years for more than newspapers; it’s widely used even today for weather broadcasts at sea (where I pick them up) and still is used for some older newspapers such as North Korea’s happy little house organ, which I would be happy to read if I spoke Korean and had a high tolerance for old style Communist rhetoric. I’d put this one in the ‘undead’ category.

  Cyclorama

  From Stefan Jones

  Home sought for massive depiction of Battle of Gettysburg

  Rolled up and tucked away in a warehouse in North Carolina is an artistic gem, big as a football field, depicting the glory and carnage of the Civil War’s pivotal battle. State Sen. Ham Horton, a Civil War history buff, is leading a campaign to find a home for what he says is the original Gettysburg cyclorama, predating the one displayed at the southern Pennsylvania battlefield.

  It also may be one of the largest oil paintings in the world. The 376-by-22-foot panoramic painting would require a cylindrical-shape building about 150 feet wide to be properly displayed.

  Horton said the cyclorama was painted by 16 people between 1880 and 1882 working under the direction of Paul Philippoteaux. Philippoteaux visited the battlefield and interviewed sold
iers who fought there so that he could accurately depict the battle, Horton said.

  The same painter in 1884 completed the 360-foot-long work displayed in the Cyclorama Building at the battlefield. The three-day Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 was a bloody defeat for Southern troops who had invaded the North. Coinciding with the Union victory at Vicksburg, Miss., the battle marked the South’s last major offensive of the war, which ended in April 1865.

  The warehoused cyclorama was displayed in Chicago and other cities decades ago, but had been in storage for years when Joe King, a Winston-Salem artist, brought it to the city in 1964. When King died in 1996, he left it to Wake Forest University

  Source: Associated Press, 1999

  Telautograph

  For a a long time Telautograph had the handwriter messaging market to itself. In the late 50’s however Comptometer introduced the Electrowriter which offered a compact system, especially a transceiver (transmit/receive in one box), which directly challenged Telautograph’s cumbersome large units.

  Telautograph came back with a two piece unit using liquid ink (Model DE). Later Telautograph introduced a ball point system, allowing duplicate copies at the receive end which Electrowriter with its liquid ink could not match. However the two systems continued to compete fiercely in the market place and also in recruiting each others personnel.

  The primary market for both was hospitals and clinics. The ability to simultaneously inform multi departments of discharges, diet changes, and patient “expirations” made the units a sine qua non for all hospitals with over 300 beds.

  The Air Force used the unit for weather dissemination to squadrons (weather symbols not available on keyboards). Security systems in prisons when visitors could not be verbally announced.

  Parking garages to retrieve automobliles was another lucrative market.

  Hotels of course was the basic applications (Housekeeping to front desk and back to advise of “ready” rooms) which really gave handwriters their impetus in the early 1900’s continuing until well into the 1980’s.

  Most of the units for both companies were rented, thus creating a substantial cash flow especially since the units were on long term automatically renewing leases. Eventually Electowriter (later known as Info Link) was purchased by a lone individual who milked the revenue base until it dissapeared.

  Telautograph continued with variations of its units which could actually send messages on the telehone lines, but that application never really took off. The installed base of Telautograph units eventually dwindled to nothing, but if you were to talk to an old time Head of Housekeeping in major hotels, you would get a nostalgic sigh expressing a yearning for the units’ superiority to the computer.. Telautograph’s history in the facsmile market is another fascinating bit of history.

  Source: Personal experience. The author was an employee of Telautograph from 1967 to 1983, when then were sold to Danka.

  Cash Carriers (intra-building)

  From Stephen Herbert

  “Cash carriers”, these are still talked of fondly by an older generation in Britain, (were used at least until 1940). Cash inside small cylinders (not cars, exactly) suspended by screw tops was whisked along wires to a central cashier, who sent the change back by the same route. I suppose this was so that, of the many attendants in a large store, only a very few were given the responsibility of dealing with cash. Saved on not having numerous cash registers around as well, I suppose. Can occasionally be seen in action in old British movies.

  [Bruce Sterling remarks: I also received a number of helpful comments referring to the Marx Brothers film “The Big Store” as a film that displays a cash carrier in action. So far, we would appear to have no less than five cash carriers: the Brown system (whatever that may have been), the “light aerial railway,” the cotton-cord conveyor belt, the British wire-and-cylinder system, and a weird pneumatic variant that blew paper around without a container. Not to mention that Marx Brothers device. It seems clear to me now that there was an entire class of mechanical transfer systems, perhaps best classified as “private mail systems?”, that were once used to convey cash, receipts, and other business documents. I eagerly await the discovery and documention of yet more dead “cash carriers.”]

  Cash carriers (intra-building)

  From Rick Inzero

  I’ve seen one. there was one in operation as late as 1996 in a store in Schenectady, NY. (I don’t know if it was a “Brown’s Cash Carrier.”)

  There was an ancient hardware store named “Wallace Armer” on Erie Blvd. in Schenectady. They were in business I presume since the 1800s, along what was then the Erie Canal. Until 1996, when they went bankrupt, they were still using such a cash carrier. It was an overhead cord-and-pulley system with an endless loop of cotton cord that traversed a route around the entire store, going to each check-out area (there were maybe five of them), and then up to a “crows nest”/office in the upper back corner of the store.

  The checker would write up your items, take your cash, fold it up, and put it inside a small shiny rectangular metal box, I’m guessing from memory, approximately 2.5”x4”x1.5” in size.

  The checker would also flip something on the box, like metal flaps (a code of some sort, I presume), that uniquely identified the “address”/location of the office. Then the checker would reach up, and hook the box onto a line-mounted metal attachment. In a second, the ever-moving endless cotton cord would pick up the cashbox, whisk it off, and it would zoom around the store overhead (maybe ten feet off the ground), bypassing all the other “stops” along the route, and go up to the cashier in the crows-nest office.

  The cashier would make change, write “paid” on your bill, stick it all back in the box, and attach the box back to the moving cord. The box would zoom around the store, again avoiding all the other possible stops, and like magic, derail off the cord at the correct check-out. This conveyor system had a perpetual distinctive soft clickey-clack sound, since the cord had little metal hooks or grabbers on it every few feet (I never knew exactly what caused the sound, as I never saw it idle).

  There was a looped black metal wire-frame cage at each sales area that I suspect was somehow “hard coded” with the address. When derailed, the cashbox would zoom off the cord, and onto the metal wire frame. The cashier would reach up, take down the box, open it, and give you your change and receipt. I used to love going to that store as a kid, just to see them use this device.

  Seeburg 1000 background music system

  From David Forbes

  Back in the late 1950s, the jukebox manufacturer Seeburg produced a background music system for offices and retail establishments to provide some competition for Muzak.

  They invented a new vinyl record format and player to allow 40 hours of music to be played endlessly over the office PA system with no attention from the staff. The systems were installed by jukebox operators all over the country (and presumably the civilized world).

  A new set of records came out every 3 months, so that the hapless listeners wouldn’t have to murder anyone from hearing the same cheery song too many times.

  The records were owned by Seeburg and presumably destroyed after being returned to the factory (subject to a $1 fee per disk), so they are not exactly easy to find.

  The initial player made by Seeburg looks like a microwave oven, complete with window. Instead of the food rotating slowly on the turntable, however, is a stack of twenty-five 9-inch microgroove records revolving at a leisurely 16.66 RPM. The player plays both sides of each record in the stack with a double-sided tonearm, then lifts the stack of records and starts over.

  The later version that I have, the BMC-1, is in a boring sheet-metal box with no window. Naturally, Seeburg had to provide a source of records as well as the player. They created a company called Seeburg Music Library Inc., whose purpose was to provide recordings of the sort that would inspire workers to work harder and happier.

  Vocals are not present, but Top 40 hits and ol
d standards are. Even the mellowest of mellow hits was re-recorded to a state of syrupy sweetness. I have tried to locate the Seeburg company.

  They seem to have been bought by Williams, the pinball and video game maker. No trace remains. The system is mentioned in Joesph Lanza’s wonderful book Elevator Music.

  Source: Personal Experience

  Del Mar CardioCorder

  From Trevor Blake

  [Trevor Blake notes: Recently I have been diagnosed with ‘tachycardia’ - for no particular reason, my heart begins to beat very fast... A surgical remedy is available and I hope to have it within the next few months — wish me luck. But for now, please allow me to share the high point of my experience: wearing the Del Mar CardioCorder, Model 459. Part of my diagnosis included wearing a heart monitoring device that is an honest to goodness dead media. This description of the Del Mar CardioCorder is based on personal observations, Web research and conversations with the fellow who put it on me]

  The Del Mar CardioCorder Model 459 is the size of a larger, first-generation Walkman. It is a tape recorder, using normal c60 tapes, but on a single side recorded all my heartbeats for 24 hours - so the thing runs slowly! There was a port like the kind computer network cables use that ran to the sticker pads that were patched on me. There was an ‘EVENT’ button and a ‘TEST SOCKET’ (small audio plug size) but I don’t know what they do. It had three channels, but I don’t know what that means either. And LCD display was likewise not instructive to me. I did, however, understand the 9 volt battery that powered it. The manufacturer was “Del Mar Avionics / 1601 Alton Ave. / Irvine CA 92714-4878.” There was no date on this model but the plus-four postal code is a hint. The hospital I was tested at is replacing these cassette-based recorders with digital ones, and even Del Mar isn’t manufacturing this model any more. A dead media may have saved my life!