The Dead Media Notebook Read Online Free
Author: Bruce Sterling, Richard Kadrey, Tom Jennings, Tom Whitwell
machine that produces a line of squiggles that can only be read by somebody who wants to learn a whole new alphabet! And this at a time when the boss routinely spoke into his Dictaphone or Ediphone for his secretary to hear and transcribe with no additional training!
Underwood, by the way, had a hand in financing Mr. Flowers’ work. One wonders at what point the company cut him off.
[Bruce Sterling remarks: In 1916, “Electrical Experimenter” was published by Hugo Gernsback. Gernsback had not yet formally invented the science fiction pulp, he would launch AMAZING STORIES in 1926, but he frequently larded “Electrical Experimenter” with his proto-SF “Munchausen stories” such as “Thought Transmission on Mars” (1916) and “Martian Amusements” (1916). So much for journalistic hyperbole in the business machine biz.]
Source: The Electrical Experimenter, April 1916
Hotel Annunciator
From Bruce Sterling
B. A. Botkin is further quoting from a book called VALENTINE’S MANUAL OF OLD NEW YORK, 1926, edited by Henry Collins Brown, published by Valentine’s Manual Inc., pages 96-98.
“Before the days of the telephone, hotels had annunciator boards to indicate the room number of a guest calling up the office for service. Then, later, in the Eighties, some one invented a machine to do away with fifty percent of the toil involved in a journey to find out what was wanted and a later journey in supplying it. The machine was in use of most of the hotels of the early Nineties.
“In each room of the hotel was a dial with a movable arrow like a clock hand. On the dial was printed the names of everything a guest would be at all likely to want, all the drinks that were ever heard of, paper, envelopes, telegraph blanks, ‘help,’ a doctor, police, chambermaid, messenger boy, eggs, toast, mils, soup, oysters, breakfast, dinner, tea, in fact every eatable in common demand, a city directory, playing cards, cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, a barber; in short, everything in a list of one hundred to one hundred and fifty necessaries.”
[Bruce Sterling remarks: my dead-media bogometer is ticking over here, a hotel-room clock-dial with 150 separate divisions? Including “oysters” and a galaxy of turn-of-the-century cocktails? The “telegraph blanks” are especially touching, dead media for dead media.]
“The guest pointed the arrow to the name of whatever he wanted and by pressing a button registered his demand on the dial behind the clerk’s desk.
“It was discovered, however, that notwithstanding the wide compass of the dial there was always something a guest wanted that did not appear on its catalogue. Then again the dial was prone to get out of order and a guest calling for ice wate was on occasion surprised with a service of hot tea. The dials were not long in use before they were superseded by the telephone.”
Source: SIDEWALKS OF AMERICA, edited by B. A. Botkin, Bobbs-Merrill Com., 1954, pages 246-247.
The Cyrograph
From Dan Rabin
Mr. Sterling, I just attended your talk at Apple, and I thought I’d try to get this to you before you get home. The Dead Medium in question is the CYROGRAPH. It was a form of authentication for duplicate documents used in the Middle Ages. The document was written in duplicate on a piece of vellum (or parchment); the copies were cut apart and retained by two different parties. Sometimes the cut was deliberately irregular in order to make spurious matches unlikely. In addition, lettering would be placed where the cut was to be made so that both the shape of the cut and the lettering would have to match in order to authenticate the copies.
Source: References (from Library of Congress online catalog): 92-131963: Brown, Michelle. A guide to western historical scripts : from antiquity to 1600 / London : British Library, 1990. 138 p. : ill. ; 29 cm. LC CALL NUMBER: Z114 .B87 1990 92-160830: Brown, Michelle. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts / Toronto ; Buffalo : University of
Underwood, by the way, had a hand in financing Mr. Flowers’ work. One wonders at what point the company cut him off.
[Bruce Sterling remarks: In 1916, “Electrical Experimenter” was published by Hugo Gernsback. Gernsback had not yet formally invented the science fiction pulp, he would launch AMAZING STORIES in 1926, but he frequently larded “Electrical Experimenter” with his proto-SF “Munchausen stories” such as “Thought Transmission on Mars” (1916) and “Martian Amusements” (1916). So much for journalistic hyperbole in the business machine biz.]
Source: The Electrical Experimenter, April 1916
Hotel Annunciator
From Bruce Sterling
B. A. Botkin is further quoting from a book called VALENTINE’S MANUAL OF OLD NEW YORK, 1926, edited by Henry Collins Brown, published by Valentine’s Manual Inc., pages 96-98.
“Before the days of the telephone, hotels had annunciator boards to indicate the room number of a guest calling up the office for service. Then, later, in the Eighties, some one invented a machine to do away with fifty percent of the toil involved in a journey to find out what was wanted and a later journey in supplying it. The machine was in use of most of the hotels of the early Nineties.
“In each room of the hotel was a dial with a movable arrow like a clock hand. On the dial was printed the names of everything a guest would be at all likely to want, all the drinks that were ever heard of, paper, envelopes, telegraph blanks, ‘help,’ a doctor, police, chambermaid, messenger boy, eggs, toast, mils, soup, oysters, breakfast, dinner, tea, in fact every eatable in common demand, a city directory, playing cards, cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, a barber; in short, everything in a list of one hundred to one hundred and fifty necessaries.”
[Bruce Sterling remarks: my dead-media bogometer is ticking over here, a hotel-room clock-dial with 150 separate divisions? Including “oysters” and a galaxy of turn-of-the-century cocktails? The “telegraph blanks” are especially touching, dead media for dead media.]
“The guest pointed the arrow to the name of whatever he wanted and by pressing a button registered his demand on the dial behind the clerk’s desk.
“It was discovered, however, that notwithstanding the wide compass of the dial there was always something a guest wanted that did not appear on its catalogue. Then again the dial was prone to get out of order and a guest calling for ice wate was on occasion surprised with a service of hot tea. The dials were not long in use before they were superseded by the telephone.”
Source: SIDEWALKS OF AMERICA, edited by B. A. Botkin, Bobbs-Merrill Com., 1954, pages 246-247.
The Cyrograph
From Dan Rabin
Mr. Sterling, I just attended your talk at Apple, and I thought I’d try to get this to you before you get home. The Dead Medium in question is the CYROGRAPH. It was a form of authentication for duplicate documents used in the Middle Ages. The document was written in duplicate on a piece of vellum (or parchment); the copies were cut apart and retained by two different parties. Sometimes the cut was deliberately irregular in order to make spurious matches unlikely. In addition, lettering would be placed where the cut was to be made so that both the shape of the cut and the lettering would have to match in order to authenticate the copies.
Source: References (from Library of Congress online catalog): 92-131963: Brown, Michelle. A guide to western historical scripts : from antiquity to 1600 / London : British Library, 1990. 138 p. : ill. ; 29 cm. LC CALL NUMBER: Z114 .B87 1990 92-160830: Brown, Michelle. Anglo-Saxon manuscripts / Toronto ; Buffalo : University of
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