digital techniques and searching for more old sound movies.
Source: Videography Magazine, December 1995, Letters to the Editor, pp. 20-21.
Clockwork wall animation—living pictures
From Bill Wallace
“Animated or ‘living’ pictures made by Schoenhut, a Philadelphia toy maker, adorned Victorian walls. In one entitled A Good Joke (ca 1890) two clerics enjoying their wine move their arms and jaws while rocking with laughter. Concealed behind the lithograph is an array of clockwork, string belts, cardboard cams, and wire levers with counterbalancing weights. The scene is animated by a belt-driven cam from a slow-moving shaft in the clockwork while the highest speed axle carries a fast-moving fan that acts as a governor.
“Other patterns for living pictures were provided on flat, lithographed printed sheets to be cut out and animated according to the pleasure of the assemblor.” Also intriguing, but brief, is the description of the serinette, a miniature hand-operated barrel organ “used by 18 th century ladies to teach canaries to sing.” The illusionist Houdin allegedly built an automaton of a young lady winding a serinette, followed by her mechnical bird singing. Dead media within dead media.
Source: Mechanical Toys, by Athelstan and Kathleen Spilhaus, Random House, 1989, $7.99 ISBN 0-517-0560-4
Skytale, the Spartan code-stick
From Nick Montfort
Parker, Parageographer and Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, writes in a note to his 1964 translation of the Lysistrata, on page 121 of the paperback edition:
“Askytale, a tapered rod which was Sparta’s contribution cryptography. A strip of leather was wound about the rod, inscribed with the message, and unwound for transmission. A messenger then delivered the strip to the qualified recipient, who deciphered it by winding it around a rod uniform in size and shape with the first. Any interceptor found a meaningless string of letters.”
If I correctly recall my conversations with Professor Parker on the matter of this code-stick, the device is pronounced something like SCOO-TA-LA.
In the Lysistrata, the women of Sparta and Athens conspire to deny their husbands sex until the two cities end their ongoing war. The men, therefore, wander around with hard-ons the whole time. The code-stick appears in Aristophanes’s comedy in the following scene between an Athenian commissioner and a Spartan messenger: (From page 92 of Parker’ s Translation)
COMMISSIONER [Throwing open the Spartan’s cloak, exposing the phallus.] You clown, you’ve got an erection!
HERALD Hain’t got no sech a thang! You stop this-hyer foolishment!
COMMISSIONER What have you got there, then?
HERALD Thet-thur’s a Spartan epistle. In code.
COMMISSIONER I have the key. [Throwing open his cloak.] Behold another Spartan epistle. In code.
Source THE LYSISTRATA OF ARISTOPHANES, a Modern Translation by Douglass Parker. Mentor Books, NY 1964, 1970.
the pigeon post of ancient Sumer
Ancient Inventions by Peter James and Nick Thorpe is an extraordinarily interesting new book that deserves a place of honor on the shelf of any dead tech enthusiast. Some of its speculations (the ancient Peruvians may have had hot-air balloons, the Parthians apparently had chemical batteries) seem a tad far-fetched; but the book is all the more interesting for that. This book is remarkably erudite, well- documented, very wide-ranging, over six hundred pages long, and its illustrations are particularly apt. The book’s brief chapter on “Communications” in very close in spirit to my idea of an eventual tome on Dead Media, if I ever get around to writing one.
“Airmail Service “The earliest mention of domesticated pigeons comes from the civilization of Sumer, in southern Iraq, from around 2000 BC. Most likely it was the Sumerians who discovered that a pigeon or dove will unerringly return to its nest, however far and for however long it is separated from its home. The first actual records
Source: Videography Magazine, December 1995, Letters to the Editor, pp. 20-21.
Clockwork wall animation—living pictures
From Bill Wallace
“Animated or ‘living’ pictures made by Schoenhut, a Philadelphia toy maker, adorned Victorian walls. In one entitled A Good Joke (ca 1890) two clerics enjoying their wine move their arms and jaws while rocking with laughter. Concealed behind the lithograph is an array of clockwork, string belts, cardboard cams, and wire levers with counterbalancing weights. The scene is animated by a belt-driven cam from a slow-moving shaft in the clockwork while the highest speed axle carries a fast-moving fan that acts as a governor.
“Other patterns for living pictures were provided on flat, lithographed printed sheets to be cut out and animated according to the pleasure of the assemblor.” Also intriguing, but brief, is the description of the serinette, a miniature hand-operated barrel organ “used by 18 th century ladies to teach canaries to sing.” The illusionist Houdin allegedly built an automaton of a young lady winding a serinette, followed by her mechnical bird singing. Dead media within dead media.
Source: Mechanical Toys, by Athelstan and Kathleen Spilhaus, Random House, 1989, $7.99 ISBN 0-517-0560-4
Skytale, the Spartan code-stick
From Nick Montfort
Parker, Parageographer and Professor of Classics at the University of Texas, writes in a note to his 1964 translation of the Lysistrata, on page 121 of the paperback edition:
“Askytale, a tapered rod which was Sparta’s contribution cryptography. A strip of leather was wound about the rod, inscribed with the message, and unwound for transmission. A messenger then delivered the strip to the qualified recipient, who deciphered it by winding it around a rod uniform in size and shape with the first. Any interceptor found a meaningless string of letters.”
If I correctly recall my conversations with Professor Parker on the matter of this code-stick, the device is pronounced something like SCOO-TA-LA.
In the Lysistrata, the women of Sparta and Athens conspire to deny their husbands sex until the two cities end their ongoing war. The men, therefore, wander around with hard-ons the whole time. The code-stick appears in Aristophanes’s comedy in the following scene between an Athenian commissioner and a Spartan messenger: (From page 92 of Parker’ s Translation)
COMMISSIONER [Throwing open the Spartan’s cloak, exposing the phallus.] You clown, you’ve got an erection!
HERALD Hain’t got no sech a thang! You stop this-hyer foolishment!
COMMISSIONER What have you got there, then?
HERALD Thet-thur’s a Spartan epistle. In code.
COMMISSIONER I have the key. [Throwing open his cloak.] Behold another Spartan epistle. In code.
Source THE LYSISTRATA OF ARISTOPHANES, a Modern Translation by Douglass Parker. Mentor Books, NY 1964, 1970.
the pigeon post of ancient Sumer
Ancient Inventions by Peter James and Nick Thorpe is an extraordinarily interesting new book that deserves a place of honor on the shelf of any dead tech enthusiast. Some of its speculations (the ancient Peruvians may have had hot-air balloons, the Parthians apparently had chemical batteries) seem a tad far-fetched; but the book is all the more interesting for that. This book is remarkably erudite, well- documented, very wide-ranging, over six hundred pages long, and its illustrations are particularly apt. The book’s brief chapter on “Communications” in very close in spirit to my idea of an eventual tome on Dead Media, if I ever get around to writing one.
“Airmail Service “The earliest mention of domesticated pigeons comes from the civilization of Sumer, in southern Iraq, from around 2000 BC. Most likely it was the Sumerians who discovered that a pigeon or dove will unerringly return to its nest, however far and for however long it is separated from its home. The first actual records
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