Sound and color in early film

From the beginning of film history, there were attempts to incorporate sound and color into film. The early attempts are very primitive by today's standards, but very interesting.

Edison's first attempt at incorporating sound and film involved the use of the kinetophone, in which film was watched a film through the peepholes of a kinetoscope. The cabinet of the kinetoscope contained a phonograph, and the viewer/listener heard the sound through a pair of ear tubes.

Information about kinetoscopes and kinetophones can be found here.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison_kinetoscope.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/kstartinventions/a/Kinetoscope.htm

Here is the earliest Edison sound film, from 1894.





I don't know anything about this film, but it's very cool.




Sound films really came of age through the development of "sound on film" where the sound was optically recorded on the side of a film strip. The helped solve the problem of synchronization, which was poor in earlier sound films. Several researchers developed a "sound on film' process but it was the one developed by Lee De Forest that became commercially successful.

Although the first full length film to use De Forest's process was "The Jazz Singer" from 1927, it was used in several shorts, starting in 1923.

Here's a great one, featuring Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.



Here's a preview of a future post on color in early hand painted film, from 1895.




The Wikipedia article on the history of sound in film is really good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film

Quantum computers

This is the first of at least two posts relating to quantum mechanics.

Although quantum mechanics, is weird , extremely abstract, and difficult, it does relate to the everyday world in some ways. One of these concerns the development of quantum computers. Practical quantum computers are still a couple of decades away however.

Standard computers are limited in the amount of data they can hold and transmit. Each binary bit is either a zero or one. In quantum mechanics, the principle of superposition holds that for very small particles under certain conditions, multiple states or positions coexist. Therefore a quantum bit or "qbit" can have the states zero and one at the same time. This allows for an exponential increase in computing power. The technology has developed to the point where a 16 qbit computer has been developed.

Here's a good introductory article on quantum computers:

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer1.htm

An introductory video on quantum computers from Scientific American:



Another interesting video on quantum computers:



Quantum computers will be useful for solving problems that are well beyond the reach of standard computers. This has advantages and disadvantages, one disadvantage being is that current encryption systems, which cannot be broken by standard computers, could potentially be broken by quantum computers.

One function that quantum computers will be very helpful with is searching through large, complex, databases. Here is a demonstration of a 16 qbit computer searching for complex molecular information in a database.

"Daisy Bell" - synthetic speech and a space odyssey

As readers of this blog can tell, I'm very interested in the origins of just about everything, particularly when it relates to music.
The first electronically synthesized speech was created using an analog device, the "Voder", which was demonstrated at the 1939 World's Fair.

Digitally synthesized speech probably originated at Bell Labs in 1962 on the IBM 704 computer. These computers had an estimated 18 bytes of memory, and were the first to use core memory rather then tubes to store binary information.

The song "Daisy Bell", also known as "A Bicycle Built for Two", was digitally synthesized by John L. Kelly, with accompanying music by Max Mathews. It was a major moment in computer history.The writer Arthur C. Clarke was present at this demonstration, and used it in "2001: A Space Odyssey", when the HAL 9000 computer sang it.


The Wikipedia article on the IBM 704:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_704

An article by Bell Labs on text-to-speech synthesis:

http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1997/march/5/2.html


A photo of an IBM 704:



http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/704.html

Daisy Bell", "sung" by the IBM 704.




The notes here refer to the computer used as an IBM 7094, a later model. It seems that the IBM 704 however was in fact the computer used, since it's referred to that way in the Bell Labs article.

Computer speech from Bell Labs - this also includes "Daisy Bell"

http://www.wfmu.org/365/2003/062.shtml

Some music from the "Music for Mathematics LP". The cover for this LP was designed by Alex Steinweiss, the first album cover designer.


http://www.wfmu.org/365/2003/260.shtml

Vintage typewriters, Mark Twain, and the Paige Typesetter

The history of typewriters is really interesting. Some early typewriters looked very strange. The "Sholes & Glidden Type Writer" was first marketed in 1873. Only 5 000 were sold over the next five years. It did use the QWERTY keyboard, but only typed capital letters. It took a while for the QWERTY keyboard to become standardized. In 1878, it was replaced by a quieter model that type both lower case and capital letters., It took a while but it sold much better then the original model.


The full story of the early Remington typewriters can be found here.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html

Mark Twain was a very early user of the typewriter, and typed this letter to William Dean Howells on December 9, 1874.

You needn't answer this; I am only practicing to get three; anothe slip-up there; only practici?ng ti get the hang of the thing. I notice I miss fire & get in a good many unnecessary letters & punctuation marks. I am simply using you for a target to bang at. Blame my cats, but this thing requires genius in order to work it just right.

Twain's 1883 novel, "Life on the Mississippi" ,was the first typewritten novel, although Twain didn't type it himself

www.typewritercollector.com is a great site for information about old typewriters, with lots of photos.

Here are photos of two early typewriters from the site.

The Edison



The Crandall



Twain invested heavily in ,and eventually bought the rights to the Paige typesetter., It looked great, and had over 18,000 working parts. However some of the parts didn't work so well, and it lost out to the more efficient Linotype machine.The failure of the Paige typesetter contributed heavily to Twain's bankruptcy.

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/yankee/cymach6.html