The Dead Media Notebook Read Online Free Page B

Two slide generators which feed the same pneumatic distribution network are located in each user area to maintain continuous operation during maintenance and reliading periods.
    Positive slides arrive at the display units about 12 sec. after initiation of computer output. This was also a FIELDATA system, experience with which lead directly to the first ASCII standard, in 1963. It used the military MOBIDIC computer, a portable, transistorized computer, apparently under 150 lbs (don’t laugh; most computers in 1959 consumed a thousand square feet).
    Source: ELECTRONIC INFORMATION DISPLAY SYSTEMS”, Spartan Books, Inc, Washington D.C., 1963; edited by James H. Howard, Rear Admiral, U.S.N.(Ret.) [2015 Note: www.wps.com/texts/ARTOC/index.html can be retreived from archive.org]
     

The Magic Lantern; Peck & Snyder’s price list
    From Bruce Sterling
    I have recently come into happy possession of “Peck and Snyder’s Price List of Base Ball, Gymnasium, Boating, Firemen, Cricket, Archery, Lawn Tennis and Polo Implements, Guns, Skates, Fishing Tackle. Manly Sporting Goods, Novelties, &c.” This catalog was published in 1886. In 1971 it was re- released by the “American Historical Catalog Collection” of the Pyne Press at Princeton (LC# 75-24886, ISBN 0-87861-094-4).
    This catalog is a veritable brass mine of dead media, offering startling insights into an entirely vanished nineteenth- century media environment. It offers for commercial sale to the public several media devices I have never heard of, plus over 40 different commercial varieties of “magic lantern.”
    I think it is well to have Mssrs. Peck and Snyder speak for themselves, in the first of what will doubtless turn out to be a long series of Working Notes.
    The Peck & Snyder full-page ad is reproduced in its entirety.
    THE ELECTRO RADIANT No. 2. The Most Popular Magic Lantern Ever Introduced (black and white woodcut illustration—“this cut represents No. 2 Electro Radiant Magic Lantern. PATENTED.”)
    The body of the ELECTRO RADIANT is a cone-shaped reflector which gathers each divergent ray of light and concentrates them all on the main reflector, whence the whole mass of brilliancy illuminated and projects the picture with startling clearness. No combination of lenses, however ingenious, has ever been known to produce equal effects with the light used.
    The ELECTRO RADIANT No. 2 projects on screen a picture 8 feet in diameter. The No. 2 Lantern is made entirely of metal. Including the smoke-stack, it stands over 16 inches high when ready for use, but when taken apart it goes into a box 11x9x12 -- small enough to carry in the hand.
    [Imagine disassembling, by hand, a fire-driven slide projector made entirely of (red-hot) metal. Yes, the Electro Radiant Magic Lantern features a smoke-stack—a domestic, personal smoke-stack for your parlor.]
    The removable parts are the base, the reflector, the lens tubes, the smoke-stack and the lamp. The entire base being removeable, allows the use of any kind of light, whether oil, gas, calcium or electric. A large door at the side gives ample room for manipulating the light. The Slide Box will take in slides 4 ½ inches wide with a 3-inch picture. It is very unusual that slides are made with pictures over 3 inches, and when they are they are for special purposes, and Lanterns have to be made to accommodate them. Therefore our No. 2 Lantern will show the largest of the regulation size slides as well as the smallest and intermediate sizes, whether made by ourselves or others here or in Europe.
    [I note here that Magic Lantern ware comes in several different size formats and from a variety of manufacturers and distributors, who apparently could not agree on a standard.]
    There are 12 slides with 2 ¾ inch pictures packed with each No. 2 Lantern and included in the price. [The traditional “bundled software” or “first taste is free” marketing approach.]
    There are many persons who are able and willing to pay for