Watch Fantasmagorie, the World’s First Animated Cartoon (1908)

in Animation, Film | September 4th, 2024

Try­ing to describe the plot of Fan­tas­magorie, the world’s first ani­mat­ed car­toon, is a fol­ly akin to putting last night’s dream into words:

I was dressed as a clown and then I was in a the­ater, except I was also hid­ing under this lady’s hat, and the guy behind us was pluck­ing out the feath­ers, and I was maybe also a jack in the box? And I had a fish­ing pole that turned into a plant that ripped my head off, but only for a few sec­onds. And then there was a giant cham­pagne bot­tle and an ele­phant, and then, sud­den­ly I was on an oper­at­ing table, and you know how some­times in a dream, it’s like you’re being crushed to death? Except I escaped by blow­ing myself up like a bal­loon and then I hopped onto the back of this horse and then I woke up.

The brain­child of ani­ma­tion pio­neer Émile Cohl (1857 – 1938), the trip­py silent short from 1908 is com­posed of 700 draw­ings, pho­tographed onto neg­a­tive film and dou­ble-exposed.

Clock­ing in at under two min­utes, it’s def­i­nite­ly more divert­ing than lis­ten­ing to your bed mate bum­ble through their sub­con­scious’ lat­est inco­her­ent nar­ra­tive.

The film’s title is an homage to a mid-19th cen­tu­ry vari­ant of the mag­ic lantern, known as the fan­tas­mo­graph, while its play­ful, non­sen­si­cal con­tent is in the spir­it of the Inco­her­ent Move­ment of the 1880s.

Cohl, who cut his teeth on polit­i­cal car­i­ca­ture and Guig­nol pup­pet the­atre, went on to cre­ate over 250 films over the next 15 years, expand­ing his explo­rations to include the realms of live action and stop motion ani­ma­tion.

Above, you can watch a some­what restored ver­sion of the film, fea­tur­ing music by Fabio Napo­dano. To get a feel for the orig­i­nal grainier silent film, watch here.

For the defin­i­tive biog­ra­phy of Emile Cohl, read Emile Cohl, Car­i­ca­ture, and Film by Don­ald Crafton (Notre Dame).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917 to 1931)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City tonight, May 13, for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

in Archives, History, Music, Technology | September 4th, 2024

Audio cas­sette tapes first appeared on the mar­ket in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dom­i­nate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by hav­ing made it pos­si­ble not just to lis­ten to their albums of choice on the go, but also to col­lect and trade their own cus­tom-assem­bled lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. By the eight­ies, blank tapes had become a house­hold neces­si­ty on the order of bat­ter­ies or toi­let paper for such con­sumers — and just as with those fre­quent­ly replen­ished prod­ucts, every­one seemed to have their favorite brand.


Some pre­ferred tapes from Philips, which devel­oped the for­mat of the Com­pact Cas­sette in the first place. Oth­ers had their pick from Fuji, BASF, Sony, Radio Shack, Scotch (which also made tape of the sticky vari­ety), and a host of oth­er brands besides.

Even some mem­bers of post-cas­sette gen­er­a­tions rec­og­nize the old tagline “Is it live or is it Mem­o­rex?” or Max­el­l’s “Blown Away Guy” in his scarf and LC2. If you’re old enough to have done tap­ing of your own, you don’t need a logo to rec­og­nize your brand; you’ll know it as soon as you spot the design of the cas­sette itself in the online archive at tapedeck.org.


“I built tapedeck.org to show­case the amaz­ing beau­ty and (some­times) weird­ness found in the designs of the com­mon audio tape cas­sette,” writes the site’s cre­ator Oliv­er Gel­brich. “There’s an amaz­ing range of designs, start­ing from the ear­ly 60’s func­tion­al cas­sette designs, mov­ing through the col­or­ful play­ful­ness of the 70’s audio tapes to amaz­ing shape vari­a­tions dur­ing the 80s and 90s.” You can browse the ever-expand­ing col­lec­tion by brand, run­ning time, col­or, and even tape coat­ing: chrome, fer­ro, fer­rochrome, and met­al, by whose dif­fer­ences audio­philes set great store.


Some­what improb­a­bly, in this age where even home CD-burn­ing has been dis­placed by near-instan­ta­neous stream­ing and down­load­ing of dig­i­tal music, the cas­sette tape has made some­thing of a come­back. The near-mytho­log­i­cal allure of the mix­tape has only grown in recent years, dur­ing which artists both minor and major have put out cas­sette releas­es — and in some cas­es, cas­sette-only releas­es. This seems to be hap­pen­ing around the world: a few weeks ago, while strolling an art-school neigh­bor­hood in Seoul, where I live, I passed a cof­fee shop that offered its young cus­tomers rentals of both tapes and Walk­man-style play­ers on which to lis­ten to them. As anoth­er gen­er­a­tion-tran­scend­ing slo­gan has it, every­thing old is new again.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music: When the Music Indus­try Waged War on the Cas­sette Tape Dur­ing the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wob­bly VHS & Oth­er Ana­log-Media Imper­fec­tion

Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers: Hear 90 Hours of Back­ground Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Hey­day

A Free Dig­i­tal Archive of Graph­ic Design: A Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Design Trea­sures from the Inter­net Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

20 Mesmerizing Videos of Japanese Artisans Creating Traditional Handicrafts

in Art, Design | September 3rd, 2024

In Japan­ese “tewaza” means “hand tech­nique” or “hand­craft” and, in this YouTube playlist of 20 short films, var­i­ous arti­sanal tech­niques are explored and demon­strat­ed by Japan­ese mas­ters in the field. For those who are both obsessed with Japan­ese art and watch­ing things get made, these videos are cat­nip. There’s very lit­tle spo­ken, except a few quotes from the mak­ers them­selves, and gen­tle music plays over shots of del­i­cate, intri­cate, and con­fi­dent hand­i­work.

Watch the video up top, a look at how a small group of men forge a Sakai knife. (Yes, we keep expect­ing the music to turn into the Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme too.) No words are nec­es­sary in this exact­ing demon­stra­tion, and just check out the wood-like grain in the met­al.

And the names of these goods denote the towns of origin–Sakai is just out­side Osa­ka, and is one of Japan’s main sea­ports and, yes, known for its knives.

Oth­er videos show the mak­ing of hand­made washi paper from Mino; stun­ning gold leaf pro­duc­tion from Kanaza­wa; paper lantern making from Gifu; dec­o­rat­ed wall­pa­per from Ueno; a Kumano writ­ing brush, and very del­i­cate bam­boo weav­ing from Bep­pu that looks so pre­cise it’s like it’s made by machine, but no, this is all in the eye.

The YouTube chan­nel that has pro­duced these videos, Aoya­ma Square, is a lit­er­al one-stop shop in Tokyo for all the kinds of crafts seen in the videos, and is a mem­ber of the Japan­ese nation­al asso­ci­a­tion that pro­motes and keeps these skills and mini-indus­tries alive. So is this one long ad for a large crafts empo­ri­um? Well, could be. Do we still want to buy some of that beau­ti­ful lac­quer­ware from Echizen? Oh yes, very much so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

The Beau­ti­ful Art of Mak­ing Japan­ese Cal­lig­ra­phy Ink Out of Soot & Glue

Watch a Japan­ese Crafts­man Lov­ing­ly Bring a Tat­tered Old Book Back to Near Mint Con­di­tion

Watch a Japan­ese Arti­san Make a Noh Mask, Cre­at­ing an Aston­ish­ing Char­ac­ter From a Sin­gle Block of Wood

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Behold the First American Board Game, Travellers’ Tour Through the United States (1822)

in Games, History | September 3rd, 2024

Asked to name a clas­sic Amer­i­can board game, most of us would first think of Monop­oly, whose imagery and ver­biage — Park Place, Rich Uncle Pen­ny­bags, “Do not pass go” — has worked its way deep into the cul­ture since Park­er Broth­ers brought it to mar­ket in 1935. Despite that, it isn’t the old­est Amer­i­can board game: that hon­or goes to Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States, which came out more than a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, in 1822. Where­as Monop­oly teach­es its play­ers about real-estate val­ues in Depres­sion-era Atlantic City (as well as a thing or two about cap­i­tal­ism), the old­er game took a larg­er sub­ject for its edu­ca­tion­al ambi­tions: the whole of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.

Of course, that whole was a lot small­er back in 1822, the year after Mis­souri became the 24th state. Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States presents its two-to-four play­ers with the task of tra­vers­ing the young coun­try, begin­ning in Wash­ing­ton and end­ing in New Orleans. This is done by spin­ning some­thing called a “tee­to­tum,” a kind of hybrid between a top and a die, designed to hedge against the sin­ful asso­ci­a­tions of gam­bling. The play­er then moves ahead accord­ing to the dis­tance shown on the tee­to­tum, but must name the unla­beled city on which they’ve land­ed — and, in a more chal­leng­ing vari­a­tion, guess its pop­u­la­tion — in order to remain there.

As they move their pieces across the coun­try, play­ers can also read the includ­ed descrip­tions of each city, town, and region through which they pass. “Pro­mot­ing the val­ue of edu­ca­tion, the game high­lights insti­tu­tions of learn­ing,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Matthew Wynn Sivils. “Philadelphia’s ‘lit­er­ary and benev­o­lent insti­tu­tions are numer­ous and respectable.’ Prov­i­dence boasts ‘Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, a respectable lit­er­ary insti­tu­tion.’ ” Mak­ing their way south, “play­ers learn about Richmond’s ‘fer­tile back­coun­try’ and the ‘pol­ished man­ners and unaf­fect­ed hos­pi­tal­i­ty’ of the cit­i­zens of Charleston. Savan­nah ‘con­tains many splen­did edi­fices’ and Columbia’s ‘South Car­oli­na Col­lege … bids fair to be a valu­able insti­tu­tion.’ ”

As clear-eyed descrip­tions of the Unit­ed States in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, these fall some­what short of Toc­queville — but then, they were writ­ten almost a decade before Alex­is de Toc­queville set foot in Amer­i­ca. Not only did the coun­try still have much expan­sion across the con­ti­nent left to do, it had amassed but a frac­tion of the pow­er and influ­ence it would go on to do in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. How­ev­er com­pelling a spec­ta­cle the U.S. had become to for­eign observers, it must have inspired among its own peo­ple an even stronger yearn­ing to under­stand its nature, and there­fore its future — a yearn­ing the mak­ers of Trav­ellers’ Tour Through the Unit­ed States clear­ly hoped would moti­vate sales. As a prod­uct, it seems not to have been suc­cess­ful, but as an idea, it lives on more than 200 years lat­er in the form of the great Amer­i­can road trip.

via My Mod­ern Met/Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Moth­er of All Maps of the “Father of Waters”: Behold the 11-Foot Traveler’s Map of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er (1866)

he Fiendish­ly Com­pli­cat­ed Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours to Play: Dis­cov­er The Cam­paign for North Africa

The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Board Game, Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s Rol­lick­ing Nov­el

Watch a Playthrough of the Old­est Board Game in the World, the Sumer­ian Roy­al Game of Ur, Cir­ca 2500 BC

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969)

in Music | September 3rd, 2024

Recent­ly an old­er musi­cian acquain­tance told me he nev­er “got into ‘Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that,” refer­ring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floy­d’s career and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of space rock bands. I found myself a lit­tle tak­en aback. Though I was born too late to be there, I’ve come to see “’Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that” as one of the most inter­est­ing things about the end of the sixties—the com­ing of Cap­tain Beef­heart and the Mag­ic Band, of The Soft Machine, of Hawk­wind and oth­er psy­che­del­ic war­riors.

Too oft over­looked in the pop­u­lar Wood­stock/Alta­mont bina­ry short­hand for fin-de-six­ties rock and roll, these bands’ brand of prog/­jaz­z/blues/psych-rock exper­i­men­tal­ism got its due in Amou­gies, Bel­gium, in a 1969 fes­ti­val meant as Europe’s answer to the three-day “Aquar­i­an expo­si­tion” staged in upstate New York that same year.

Spon­sored by Paris mag­a­zine Actuel, “The Actuel Rock Fes­ti­val” fea­tured all of the bands men­tioned above (except Hawk­wind), along with Yes, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cher­ry, and many more. MC’ing the event, and serv­ing as Beefheart’s man­ag­er, was none oth­er than impre­sario of weird him­self, Frank Zap­pa, who sat in with Floyd on “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” bring­ing his con­sid­er­able lead gui­tar prowess to their dark, descend­ing instru­men­tal.

Just above, hear that Zappa/Floyd per­for­mance of the song. The live audio record­ing is fuzzy and a bit hol­low, but the play­ing comes through per­fect­ly clear. Zap­pa, in fact, jammed with near­ly all the artists on the ros­ter, though only a few record­ings have sur­faced, like this one from an audi­ence mem­ber. Of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, Pink Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason said in 1973, “Frank Zap­pa is real­ly one of those rare musi­cians that can play with us. The lit­tle he did in Amou­gies was ter­ri­bly cor­rect.” I think you’ll agree.

Dan­ger­ous Minds records many of Zappa’s rec­ol­lec­tions of the event, includ­ing a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sar­don­ic account he gave in an inter­view with The Simp­sons’ Matt Groen­ing in which he com­plains of feel­ing “like Lin­da McCart­ney” and about the scourge of “slum­ber­ing euro-hip­pies.” Zap­pa appar­ent­ly did not remem­ber jam­ming with Floyd but “the pho­tos don’t lie and nei­ther does the record­ing.” He does recall play­ing with Cap­tain Beef­heart, who says he him­self “enjoyed it.” You can hear Beef­heart’s set with Zap­pa above.

Accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of found­ing Pink Floyd singer and gui­tarist Syd Bar­rett—gone by the time of the festival—footage of the Zappa/Floyd jam exists, part of an unre­leased doc­u­men­tary of the event by Gerome Laper­rousaz. That film has yet to sur­face, it seems, but we do have the film above—slipping between black-and-white and color—of Pink Floyd play­ing “Green is the Colour,” “Care­ful With That Axe, Eugene,” and “Set the Con­trols For the Heart of the Sun.” It’s a must-watch if only for Roger Waters’ bone-chill­ing screams in the sec­ond song.

The fes­ti­val is notable not only for these ear­ly per­for­mances of the new­ly Gilmour-front­ed Pink Floyd, but also for the appear­ance of Ayns­ley Dun­bar, future Zap­pa drum­mer and jour­ney­man musi­cian extra­or­di­naire. Alleged­ly Zap­pa met Dun­bar at the fes­ti­val and was quite impressed with the latter’s jazz chops (though Dun­bar first joined Zappa’s band on gui­tar before mov­ing to drums). You can hear Zap­pa jam with his even­tu­al star drummer’s band, Ayns­ley Dunbar’s Retal­i­a­tion, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix, Pink Floyd, Traf­fic & Oth­er Bands Play Huge Lon­don Fes­ti­val “Christ­mas on Earth Con­tin­ued” (1967)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Download 1,000+ Digitized Tapes of Sounds from Classic Hollywood Films & TV, Courtesy of the Internet Archive

in Archives, Film, Television | September 2nd, 2024

Watch enough clas­sic movies — espe­cial­ly clas­sic movies from slight­ly down­mar­ket stu­dios — and you’ll swear you’ve been hear­ing the very same sound effects over and over again. That’s because you have been hear­ing the very same sound effects over and over again: once record­ed or acquired for one film, they could, of course, be re-used in anoth­er, and anoth­er, and anoth­er. No such fre­quent­ly employed record­ing has a more illus­tri­ous and well-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry than the so-called “Wil­helm scream,” which, accord­ing to Oliv­er Macaulay at the Sci­ence + Media Muse­um, “has been used in over 400 films and TV pro­grams.”

“First record­ed in 1951, the ‘Wil­helm scream’ was ini­tial­ly fea­tured as stock sound effect in Raoul Walsh’s west­ern Dis­tant Drums,” writes Macaulay, but it got its name from a scene in The Charge at Feath­er Riv­er, from 1953: “When Pri­vate Wil­helm takes an arrow to the leg, he lets out the fabled blood-cur­dling cry which came to per­me­ate Hollywood’s sound­scape.”

It may well have been most wide­ly heard in the orig­i­nal Star Wars, “when Luke Sky­walk­er shoots a stormtroop­er off a ledge,” but for decades it was pulled from the vault when­ev­er “char­ac­ters meet a grim and gris­ly end, from being shot to falling off a build­ing to being caught up in an explo­sion.”

Orig­i­nal­ly labeled “Man eat­en by an alli­ga­tor; screams” (for such was the fate of the char­ac­ter in Dis­tant Drums), the orig­i­nal record­ing ses­sion of this much-dis­cussed sound effect is now down­load­able from the USC Opti­cal Sound Effects Library at the Inter­net Archive. It con­tains three col­lec­tions: the Gold and Red Libraries, which “con­sist of high-qual­i­ty, first gen­er­a­tion copies of orig­i­nal nitrate opti­cal sound effects from the 1930s & 40s cre­at­ed for Hol­ly­wood stu­dios,” and the Sun­set Edi­to­r­i­al (SSE) Library, which “includes clas­sic effects from the 1930s into the ’80s” by the epony­mous out­fit. At a Freesound Blog post about the archiv­ing and preser­va­tion of the SSE Library, audio engi­neer Craig Smith notes that the com­pa­ny “main­ly did episod­ic tele­vi­sion shows like Bewitched, I Dream of Jean­nie, The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly, and The Wal­tons.”

Lis­ten­ing through the USC Opti­cal Sound Effects Library will thus prove a res­o­nant expe­ri­ence, as it were, with fans of mid-cen­tu­ry Hol­ly­wood movies and tele­vi­sion alike. It may also inspire an appre­ci­a­tion for the sheer amount of record­ing, index­ing, edit­ing, and mix­ing work that must have gone into even out­ward­ly sim­ple pro­duc­tions, which nev­er­the­less required the sounds of doors, birds, sirens, guns, and falling bod­ies — as well as the voic­es of men, women, chil­dren — to fill out a plau­si­ble audio­vi­su­al atmos­phere. They also reveal, as Smith puts it, “the shared cul­ture of Hol­ly­wood’s take on what things ‘sound­ed like.’ ” Heard in iso­la­tion, some of these may seem no more real­is­tic than the Wil­helm scream, but that was­n’t quite the point; they just had to sound like things do in movies and on TV.

via Mefi

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Doc­u­men­taries: Meet the Artists Who Cre­ate the Sounds of Fish, Spi­ders, Orang­utans, Mush­rooms & More

Down­load an Archive of 16,000 Sound Effects from the BBC: A Fas­ci­nat­ing His­to­ry of the 20th Cen­tu­ry in Sound

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

The Wil­helm Scream is Back

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vintage Film

in Technology | September 1st, 2024

A num­ber of years ago, British Pathé uncov­ered some strik­ing footage from 1922 show­ing two women exper­i­ment­ing with the first mobile phone. A spokesman for the archive said: ”It’s amaz­ing that 90 years ago mobile phone tech­nol­o­gy and music … was not only being thought of but being tri­alled.” “The phone even has a lid which makes it the first flip-phone [that] we are aware of, although it is prob­a­bly not going to win any design awards.” He added, ”We would be delight­ed to hear from any­one who can tell us any­thing about the film, from where it is shot to who the women might be or even about the phone itself.” In the Relat­eds below, you can find more ear­ly visions of 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Browse 64 Years of RadioShack Catalogs Free Online … and Revisit the History of American Consumer Electronics

in Archives, History, Technology | August 30th, 2024

“I bet RadioShack was great once,” writes for­mer employ­ee Jon Bois in a much-cir­cu­lat­ed 2014 piece for SB Nation. “I can’t look through their decades-old cat­a­logs and come away with any oth­er impres­sion. They sold giant wal­nut-wood speak­ers I’d kill to have today. They sold com­put­ers back when peo­ple were try­ing to under­stand what they were. When I was a lit­tle kid, going to RadioShack was bet­ter than going to the toy store. It was the toy store for tall peo­ple.” Yet by the mid-twen­ty-tens, it had become a “pan­icked and half-dead retail empire”; in 2015, it final­ly filed for bank­rupt­cy.

Still, all those cat­a­logs live on, free to browse in the dig­i­tal archive at Radioshackcatalogs.com. The first vol­ume dates from 1939, by which time Radio Shack (as its name was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten) had already been in busi­ness for sev­en­teen years. “This cat­a­log is intend­ed to serve as a com­pre­hen­sive and accu­rate list­ing of what we believe to be the essen­tial and unusu­al require­ments of the radio ama­teur, the ser­vice­man, lab­o­ra­to­ries, indus­tries, and schools,” declares its open­ing let­ter to the cus­tomer. “To boast of our ser­vice in any respect would be so much use­less ver­biage, ser­vice hav­ing been the fea­ture of our growth.”

Nei­ther ser­vice nor growth remained fea­tures of the com­pa­ny by the time Bois was work­ing there. But it had been a pret­ty glo­ri­ous run: to behold the first 50 years of RadioShack cat­a­logs is to behold noth­ing less than the evo­lu­tion of Amer­i­can con­sumer elec­tron­ics. At first direct­ed toward those with seri­ous tech­ni­cal know-how, the com­pa­ny’s offer­ings expand­ed over the decades to appeal to hob­by­ists, then to ordi­nary peo­ple look­ing to intro­duce a bit of elec­tron­ic — and lat­er, dig­i­tal — enrich­ment into their pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lives.

Some Amer­i­cans found their way to RadioShack by build­ing crys­tal radios and sci­ence-fair projects in child­hood; oth­ers began fre­quent­ing its stores while build­ing their first real hi-fi sys­tem, com­po­nent by com­po­nent; oth­ers still got into per­son­al com­put­ing through the store-brand TRS-80 (or “Trash 80,” as more seri­ous com­put­er nerds called it). My own grand­fa­ther was such a habitué that, when he died ear­ly in the nineties, our house sud­den­ly filled up with inher­it­ed RadioShack-only prod­ucts, from Real­is­tic radios to Tandy com­put­ers. (I remem­ber spend­ing many hap­py hours with the Mod­el 100, a prim­i­tive lap­top grand­ly mar­ket­ed as a “Micro Exec­u­tive Work Sta­tion.”)

“This is a con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness that is built to work per­fect­ly in the year 1975,” writes Bois. And indeed, the 1975 RadioShack cat­a­log offers page after won­drous page of remote-con­trolled stere­os (“the ulti­mate in lux­u­ry”) and “action radios”; fiber-optic dec­o­ra­tive light­ing fix­tures, eight-track car tape decks; cal­cu­la­tors promis­ing a “pock­et­ful of mir­a­cles”; and built-it-your­self inter­coms, pock­et lie detec­tors, and “col­or organs.” Alas, like so many com­mer­cial enter­pris­es that rode high in the mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry, RadioShack failed to take advan­tage of the inter­net, and was ulti­mate­ly crushed by it — an iron­ic fate indeed for what had so long been the one-stop tech­nol­o­gy shop. Enter the archive of RadioShack cat­a­logs here.

via MetaFil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

IKEA Dig­i­tizes & Puts Online 70 Years of Its Cat­a­logs: Explore the Designs of the Swedish Fur­ni­ture Giant

A New Online Archive Lets You Read the Whole Earth Cat­a­log and Oth­er Whole Earth Pub­li­ca­tions, Tak­ing You from 1970 to 2002

Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satir­i­cal Film About the Inven­tion of the Audio­phile (1959)

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

The First Cell­phone: Dis­cov­er Motorola’s DynaT­AC 8000X, a 2‑Pound Brick Priced at $3,995 (1984)

One Man’s Quest to Build the Best Stereo Sys­tem in the World

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Maurice Sendak’s First Published Illustrations: Discover His Drawings for a 1947 Popular Science Book

in Art, Science | August 30th, 2024

McGraw-Hill/pub­lic domain; copy from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Once upon a time, long before Mau­rice Sendak illus­trat­ed Where The Wild Things Are (1963), he pub­lished, notes Ars Tech­ni­ca, “his first pro­fes­sion­al illus­tra­tions in a 1947 pop­u­lar sci­ence book about nuclear physics, Atom­ics for the Mil­lions.” Only 18 years old, Sendak pro­vid­ed the illus­tra­tions; his physics teacher, Hyman Ruch­lis authored the text, along with pro­fes­sor Maxwell Leigh Eidi­noff.

Accord­ing to sci­ence his­to­ri­an Ryan Dahn, “Sendak agreed to do the work for 1% of the roy­al­ties, of which he received an advance of $100, about $1600 today.” Not bad for a teenag­er cre­at­ing his first cred­it­ed work.

At Physics Today, you can read Dah­n’s new arti­cle on Sendak’s ear­ly physics illus­tra­tions. You can also read/view all of Atom­ics for the Mil­lions on the HathiTrust web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Only Draw­ing from Mau­rice Sendak’s Short-Lived Attempt to Illus­trate The Hob­bit

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

Mau­rice Sendak Sent Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Let­ters to Fans — So Beau­ti­ful a Kid Ate One

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code

in History, Language | August 29th, 2024

If you find your­self grap­pling with an intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem that’s gone unsolved for mil­len­nia, try tak­ing a few months off and spend­ing them on activ­i­ties like swim­ming and med­i­tat­ing. That very strat­e­gy worked for a Cam­bridge PhD stu­dent named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a sum­mer of non-research-relat­ed activ­i­ties, returned to a text by the ancient gram­mar­i­an, logi­cian, and “father of lin­guis­tics” Pāṇi­ni and found it new­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble. The rules of its com­po­si­tion had stumped schol­ars for 2,500 years, but, as Rajpopat tells it in an arti­cle by Tom Almeroth-Williams at Cam­bridge’s web­site, “With­in min­utes, as I turned the pages, these pat­terns start­ed emerg­ing, and it all start­ed to make sense.”

Pāṇi­ni com­posed his texts using a kind of algo­rithm: “Feed in the base and suf­fix of a word and it should turn them into gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect words and sen­tences through a step-by-step process,” writes Almeroth-Williams. But “often, two or more of Pāṇini’s rules are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly applic­a­ble at the same step, leav­ing schol­ars to ago­nize over which one to choose.” Or such was the case, at least, before Rajpopat’s dis­cov­ery that the dif­fi­cult-to-inter­pret “metarule” meant to apply to such cas­es dic­tates that “between rules applic­a­ble to the left and right sides of a word respec­tive­ly, Pāṇi­ni want­ed us to choose the rule applic­a­ble to the right side.”

That may not be imme­di­ate­ly under­stand­able to those unfa­mil­iar with the struc­ture of San­skrit. Almeroth-Williams’ piece clar­i­fies with an exam­ple using  mantra, one word from the lan­guage that every­body knows. “In the sen­tence ‘devāḥ prasan­nāḥ mantraiḥ’ (‘The Gods [devāḥ] are pleased [prasan­nāḥ] by the mantras [mantraiḥ]’) we encounter ‘rule con­flict’ when deriv­ing mantraiḥ, ‘by the mantras,’ ” he writes. ” The deriva­tion starts with ‘mantra + bhis.’ One rule is applic­a­ble to the left part ‘mantra’ and the oth­er to right part ‘bhis.’ We must pick the rule applic­a­ble to the right part ‘bhis,’ which gives us the cor­rect form ‘mantraih.’ ”

Apply­ing this rule ren­ders inter­pre­ta­tions of Pāṇini’s work almost com­plete­ly unam­bigu­ous and gram­mat­i­cal. It could even be employed, Rajpopat has not­ed, to teach San­skrit gram­mar to com­put­ers being pro­grammed for nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing. It no doubt took him a great deal of inten­sive study to reach the point where he was able to dis­cov­er the true mean­ing of Pāṇini’s clar­i­fy­ing metarule, but it did­n’t tru­ly present itself until he let his uncon­scious mind take a crack at it. As we’ve said here on Open Cul­ture before, there are good rea­sons we do our best think­ing while doing things like walk­ing or tak­ing a show­er, a phe­nom­e­non that philoso­phers have broad­ly rec­og­nized through the ages — and, like as not, was under­stood by the great Pāṇi­ni him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course

Can Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Deci­pher Lost Lan­guages? Researchers Attempt to Decode 3500-Year-Old Ancient Lan­guages

Why Algo­rithms Are Called Algo­rithms, and How It All Goes Back to the Medieval Per­sian Math­e­mati­cian Muham­mad al-Khwariz­mi

How Schol­ars Final­ly Deci­phered Lin­ear B, the Old­est Pre­served Form of Ancient Greek Writ­ing

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Frank Lloyd Wright Thought About Making the Guggenheim Museum Pink

in Architecture, History, Museums | August 28th, 2024

Image via The Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion Archives

Seen today, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, seems to occu­py sev­er­al time peri­ods at once, look­ing both mod­ern and some­how ancient. The lat­ter qual­i­ty sure­ly has to do with its bright white col­or, which we asso­ciate (espe­cial­ly in such an insti­tu­tion­al con­text) with Greek and Roman stat­ues. But just like those stat­ues, the Guggen­heim was­n’t actu­al­ly white to begin with. “Few­er and few­er New York­ers may recall that the muse­um, in a then-grim­i­er city, used to be beige,” writes the New York Times’ Michael Kim­mel­man. “Robert Moses thought it looked like ‘jaun­diced skin.’ ” Hence, pre­sum­ably, the deci­sion dur­ing a 1992 expan­sion to paint over the earth­en hue of Wright’s choice.

Not that beige was the only con­tender in the design phase. Look at the archival draw­ings, Kim­mel­man writes, and you’ll find “a reminder that Wright had con­tem­plat­ed some pret­ty far-out col­ors — Chero­kee red, orange, pink.”

The very thought of that last “leads down a rab­bit hole of alter­na­tive New York his­to­ry,” and if you’re curi­ous to see what a pink Guggen­heim might have looked like from the street, David Romero at Hooked on the Past has cre­at­ed a few dig­i­tal­ly mod­i­fied pho­tos. The result hard­ly comes off as being in taste quite as poor as one might expect; in fact, it could have fit quite well into the Mem­phis-embrac­ing nine­teen-eight­ies, and even the post­mod­ern nineties. The image above, show­ing the Guggen­heim imag­ined in pink, comes from The Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion Archives.

But as it is, “closed off to the city around it, the building’s anti­sep­tic, spank­ing-white facade, today is in keep­ing with the neigh­bor­hood.” That itself is in keep­ing with Wright’s ideas for trans­form­ing the Amer­i­can city, which he kept on putting forth until the end of his life. Attempt­ing to solve “the prob­lem of the inner city,” he con­ceived “fan­tas­ti­cal megas­truc­tures for places like down­town Pitts­burgh, Bagh­dad, and Madi­son, Wis­con­sin,” all of them “city-based but anti-urban projects, divorced from the streets.” Even work­ing in the Unit­ed States’ dens­est metrop­o­lis, Wright expressed a long­ing for the splen­did iso­la­tion of the Amer­i­can coun­try­side, where a man — at least as the lore has it — can paint his house any col­or he pleas­es.

via Messy Nessy/Hooked on the Past

Relat­ed con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Plan to Turn Ellis Island Into a Futur­is­tic Jules Verne-Esque City (1959)

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

Behold Ancient Egypt­ian, Greek & Roman Sculp­tures in Their Orig­i­nal Col­or

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.