Retro Thing

Secret AM Radio Hidden Inside "Treasure Island" Book

Okay, so let's say that you're a spy.  Enemy agents have cornered you in the book nook of your underground lair.  While they're wringing their hands and laughing maniacally, you make your final request to finish the last chapter of the immortal classic "Treasure Island".

They chortle at your dying request, but indulge your yen for literacy this one last time.  You slip the thick book off of your shelf, open the cover, and subdue them with AM talk radio!

Okay, that actually didn't happen to me, but it's the most likely excuse I can think of for the existence of this strange novelty AM radio.   It's pretty small at approx 4" x 7"x 1.5", and is leather-bound and faux gilded to look like a real book.  It turns on when you open the cover.  I guess in the quest to make novelty radios that looked like absolutely everything (and there were a whole series of different book designs), this was at least sort of functional.  Perhaps for snobs who put on literate airs ("Funny how Johnson has been bringing the same book to the pool for three years...").

Peering into the guts of the thing, it has actual tubes inside!  I've since learned this this radio is a hybrid of tubes and transistors making it a rather rare specimen.  I'd almost fix the few solder breaks, but the battery requirements alarm me.  It requires an "A" sized mercury cell, and a 45V "B" battery, none of which sound healthy.  I think that I'll put the Crosley back on the bookshelf and when the enemy agents come, I'll just throw it at them.

Ad proclaiming "unusual, smart, and pleasurable"

16 rpm Talking Book of "Treasure Island"

Audio books, books-on-tape, or whatever you choose to call them are a booming business; some estimates as high as 2 billion dollars annually in the US.  Recent interest in audio books has been spiked by iPods and other portable electronic players, but before that audio books were a healthy enterprise on cassette.  They're a great way to lighten a lengthy commute, get some housework done, and catch up on classic literature that you might not otherwise read in book form.

The thing that might surprise some is that audio books go way back.  You could call a lot of children's albums audio books, but unabridged works have long been available on LP (either as a straight reading, or dramatized), many special recordings for the blind, and there was also this Talking Book series of recordings.

This 1958 set of eight 7" records follows the 45rpm form factor right down to the great big hole, but these discs spin at 16rpm.  I estimate that each side of a platter would take some 15 - 20 minutes to play at that speed, so the set lasts for four hours.  Voice giant Hans Conried (Snidely Whiplash, Disney's Captain Hook) reads this unabridged "Treasure Island", and other sets in the series featured Basil Rathbone, John Carradine and Ronald Coleman.

I haven't heard these as my only 16rpm turntable isn't here.  I'd like to give the Talking Book a spin (sorry) as I've never read "Treasure Island", and both Conreid's impeccable diction and sinister growl might be the best way to enjoy it.

Conried's voice credits

Pioneer Musiqube Compact Stereo

I first saw the Pioneer Musiqube in 1999 at... um... Toys R Us.  I fell in love with this stereo that was no more than a row of 6" cubes but the $300 price tag, and the poor reputation of mini systems at the time made me leave it behind.

Flash forward to my 30th birthday.  I learned that the Musiqube was actually a decent little system and Pioneer's closeout website had it for $30, and the MiniDisc add-on (the red cube above) for an additional $30.  That numerology was just too powerful to ignore, so I got the last Pioneer Musiqube in the US (much credit to Pioneer - I received a broken component which they repaired for free all in time for my birthday).

It does all the regular mini-system things; CD, MD, Radio, even an Aux input.  It even came with a "soundscape" MD with pre-recorded loops of crickets & surf & other ambient sound.  When in "soundscape" mode, these loops layer with whatever CD or radio you might be listening to.  Weird feature.

The 30 watts aren't going to peel the wallpaper, but for grooving on tunes in my office, it sounds great.  Perhaps because the speakers are made of wood instead of plastic?  I don't have any science behind this idea, but it's a thought... the Musiqube sounds way better than lots of other mini systems I've heard.  Combined with the crazy "Rainbow Rave" (it was available in other colors as well) color scheme, I think that the Musiqube is irresistible - much like the candy it resembles.

Even though this system was out well into the Internet era, there is little data online about the Musiqube, save what I've posted online.  I haven't seen one on Ebay for years (I've bought a few systems as spares), so I guess that it's destined to disappear forever.  What a shame that only products intended for children take enough design risks to actually be a bit chic.

And before you ask, the thing on the left speaker is a fat little SDF Robocop windup toy, and on the right is a fallen postage stamp of Franz Kafka.  Now you know who my heroes are...

smallformat Magazine Issue #2 Out Now!

The new issue of the superlative smallformat magazine just arrived in my mailbox today.  I'm thrilled to see that the magazine is continuing in its high quality coverage of small format filmmaking, and the stylish (almost explicit!) photographs of old movie making gear.

This issue discusses the use of Super 8 and 16mm film aboard commercial airliners for in-flight movies.  I've always wanted to learn more about this as I have airline prints of both Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back.

You'll follow along on a project to hack a video tap for a 16mm camera, visit a film enthusiasts elaborate home theater, and learn more about the elusive single 8 movie format.

smallformat does a great job of covering issues essential to the modern small format filmmaker, retro as well as new gear, sites for developing and transferring film, and of course life after Kodachrome.  The subscription rate might seem a little spendy, but you just can't get this info anywhere else - editor Jurgen Lossau is clearly putting every dollar he can into publishing a magazine deserving of the noble lineage of film.

Homepage for smallformat magazine

Iomega Zip Drive - Voted 15th Worst Tech Ever

I've got to take issue with PC World's list of the 25 Worst Tech Products Of All Time.  I usually don't pay attention to such lists, but their slant on the ZIP drive irked me.  From the tone of the article, you might think that the ZIP was never useful and never worked properly (there were tech problems with some ZIP's, but I never ran into any) - nothing could be further from the truth.

The ZIP was introduced in 1994 as a kind of super-floppy.  Much the same size as a 3.5" disk, it held 100 megs of info (later versions held up to 750 megs).  ZIP's are rugged, portable, and the drives are kind of cute (this is before the iMac brought the idea of "cute" into computing).  While the PC World article mentions the existence of CD-R's in '94, they were actually quite rare and expensive to use.  I was a teacher at a major university at the time, and we had a single CD burner on campus.

ZIP's were essential in my workflow for years as it was a large sized medium that was platform agnostic.  It was often the only reliable way to get info from the PC to the Amiga.  A great bragging point was that a ZIP drive easily connected to a 1985 Amiga - could you say the same about a Mac or PC from that era?

Today the ZIP has been supplanted by burnable CD's and flash media, but there are still times when I could really use a small recyclable storage medium.  ZIP's were perfect for mailing to service bureaus, and floppies still have a lot of use in just transporting documents, drivers, etc.  The PC World article was an unpleasant reminder of how some people worship only at the altar of the latest tech, relegating everything that came before it as a useless joke.

WIKI entry on ZIP Drive

Details on the "Click of Death"

TV Pow! - 70's Video Game Played Via Phone

I've spoken before of locally made kids programs here in Chicago.  In the pre-Atari 70's, I remember one of my earliest glimpses at the world of videogames called TV Pow! Stagehands would roll out a massive console with a black and white (!) TV built in, and "disco - tech" graphics spelled out TV Pow! 

The game was an anemic looking skeet game (black line shooting at a scrolling white line), displayed full screen while a randomly selected at-home player triggered shots by saying "pow" into their telephone.  This was my first look at an interactive game on live TV, and all of Chicago got to watch.

The mystery is what were these TV Pow! consoles?  From what little information there is on the internet, it seems that the "game engine" that "rendered" the "advanced graphics" were modified Fairchild System F systems; the second cartridge based game system.  The hack was to have the Fairchild's "fire" button react to voice.  Though there are rumors that there was just a man inside the cabinet pressing the "fire" button, though the simple audio modification seems more likely.

TV Pow! was broadcast in both the US and Canada (the picture above is from a Michigan affiliate), so there was some enterprising company making these units expressly for the local TV market.  It's a ridiculously simple game by today's standards, but there were a few factors conspiring to make the game difficult.  The main problem was the analog delay between the viewer and the TV station, making it difficult to time shots just right.  Fortunately, spazzy kids conquered the problem by shrieking 'powpowpowpowpowpowpowpowpow" into their telephones.

Memories of watching TV Pow!

San Francisco chimes in (scroll to the middle of the page)

Chicago memories, 3/4 down

Mention in Wiki article on Channel F

The Oscilloscope Clock

I seem to be one of the last three people on Earth who prefers basking in the luminescent glow of a good old cathode ray tube (actually, two of them). That makes me the perfect customer for a CRT-based clock.

The Scope Clock is another of David Forbes' nifty electronic timepieces (we mentioned his Nixie watch in December). It's based on a 3-inch round CRT with "a crystal-controlled microcontroller for generating the timing and scanning the digits, and an analog circle generator system to draw the digits. It makes circles directly from sine and cosine waves. That's why the curves look so clean.

The drawing of the digits is done in segments, each segment being composed of an arc, circle or line. Angled lines are made by putting the same cosine wave onto both the X and Y deflection plates.

The display repetition rate is synchronized to the power line frequency by the microprocessor to prevent image 'swimming' in the presence of strong AC fields. This allows the CRT to be free of magnetic shielding, which would add to the cost and detract from the beauty of the clock."

The Oscilloscope Clock (via Hacked Gadgets)

Oddball Computer Storage: The Exatron Stringy Floppy

Let's rewind to the very early 1980s. Most home computers used cassette tape for program storage. Five and a quarter inch floppy disks were expensive, and hard disks were unheard of. Snail-paced cassette storage was acceptable when you only had 4K of data to load, but prices soon dropped to the point that people could afford far more. A computer with 64K (that's 65,536 characters for those who don't live and breath binary addressing) would take over 36 minutes to load using a 300 bps cassette interface. Yawn.

Exatron thought they'd found the perfect answer with their "stringy floppy" tape system. It was about forty times faster than boring old cassettes. Their drives used a special 1/16-inch endless ribbon of mag tape. The tape functioned like an 8-track, which meant the system couldn't reverse -- you had to play until you found the file you needed.

These little drives were popular among Radio Shack TRS-80 users, but the sexy little Exatron wafer tapes proved to be error prone and the high-speed mechanism occasionally ate one with disastrous results -- leaving a ball of magnetic spaghetti that required careful extraction with tweezers. The drives were advertised for a mere $99.50, but they were quickly surpassed by more reliable floppies that offered the unbeatable advantages of low cost and random data access.

Common TRS-80 system accessories

Bill Fletcher's very dusty Exatron drive (pictured above)

The Oktomat Eight Eyed Camera

The Oktomat is the photographic equivalent of an octopus, except that it's not a sea creature and isn't waterproof. It features eight lenses that capture a series of images on a single 35mm film frame. An entire sequence takes about two and a half seconds to shoot, which is enough to capture very simple animated scenes with the classic "Lomo" look. 

Everything about this little $40 camera is simple -- the top-mounted viewfinder is a fold-down piece of plastic, you can't change film exposure, and the lens is fixed focus. But since your animated sequences are captured on standard 35mm film, you can get them processed anywhere.

More info at the Oktomat mini-site

Reincarnated Computers

No, we're not going to get all religious on you. We're going artsy instead. Here's a great collection of repurposed computer widgets and gizmos that have been brought back to life as... umm.... Art.

Or a BBQ. Or maybe a coffeemaker.

What to do with your old PC? (via OhGizmo!)

Take The Hotel Experience Home With You...

I once worked for a startup software company, which gave me the opportunity to spend lots of time enjoying quite a few North American airports. Murphy has a few laws that relate specifically to this kind of nomadic existence:

(a) Any connecting flights booked at the last moment will involve a stop somewhere desirable (like San Francisco) on the way to somewhere significantly less desirable (like Yellowknife in January).

(b) You left your iPod at the security checkpoint in the desirable city's airport.

(c) You will arrive at your final destination well after midnight, no matter how early in the morning you start your cross-continent trip.

(d) The only remaining rental car smells suspiciously like a mummified cat.

(e) The only remaining hotel room is either next to the elevator shaft or a roomful of mating wildebeest. And something smells like a mummified cat.

(f) The hotel artwork will be the worst stuff you've ever seen. Even worse than the last place you were at.

With that in mind, check out the stuff at Hotel Surplus Outlet. They've apparently just received a shipment of "assorted older artwork and prints," presumably from some of the fine establishments I frequented during my heady dot com days. I might have to pick up a beige lithograph of a wildebeest, just for old time's sake.

Hotel Surplus Outlet (via Boing Boing)

Portable Horoscope Computer by Mattel

Breakthrough technology has brought us miniaturization of practically every sort of device.  In the 70's & 80's there were lots of gadgets that could suddenly fit in your pocket (granted, a rather large pocket).  In a thrilling time when a room sized calculating machine could suddenly fit into people's  flared corduroys, designers must have wracked their brains to figure out what else to make portable.  Games?  Sure.  Langauge translators?  Of course.  The entire bible?  Natch.  So who's the genius who decided that people wanted to carry around a whole astrologer in their pants?

Mattel gained renown for their expansive line of LED sports games that launched a whole industry, making this foray into "utility device" a bit unusual.  The Horoscope Computer predicts compatibility between two people, forecasts upcoming bouts of luck and/or strife in any of 8 aspects of life (love, money, creativity, spirit, etc.), via the LED readout offering terse advice like "go wild".  Oh, and the Horoscope Computer was only available in this classy shade of slop brown.

Like the marginally less odd Casio Biorhythm Calculator I wrote about previously, this unit only claims accuracy through 1987.  So I guess that means that I can't rudder my life by the ancient gods of Mattel until someone develops a conversion table. 

Maybe I shouldn't thumb my nose at a device that makes the occult more portable and user-friendly.  After all, it's easier than carrying Jean Dixon in your pocket.  If you're in a country that didn't have Jean Dixon, don't worry - it wasn't that good of a reference anyway...

More details, including a link to the manual

Coleco's entry into the crowded (I guess) portable astrology field

Bolex Camera Records... yes, records!

It might seem unusual that Bolex would take the trouble to put out records.  After all, they were busy creating some of the best professional and amateur film cameras in the world. Actually these two records could actually do a lot to help you out when it was home movie night at your house.

The top record is a 45 rpm record cramming ten 30 second music tracks on one side, and a few sound effects on the other.  There's no year listed on the record, but it's from the Super8 era.  The jolly guy on the front with the mic is shown recording onto the magnetic sound track of a super 8 film.  Also note the really, really pleased look on the lady's face, but that might be because she's sitting right next to the booze. 

The bottom platter is a cardboard record that was included in a special issue of the Bolex Reporter magazine.  Ross Hunter offers a few words on "Hollywood movie making" which turns out to be pretty good advice for anyone using a camera - even today.  In the few minutes it takes to play the record, you learn to use a tripod and not to zoom so darned much.

Not every company out there takes the time to tutor their customers in how to get maximum benefit from their gear.  There are user forums on the internet for every kind of appliance or device, but the customer must seek them out.  Why not include an inexpensive DVD to help people get started using today's increasingly sophisticated devices?  Then again, I remember when one VCR company included a tutorial video - which ended up being of little use if you couldn't figure out how to hook up the deck.

Prophet64 Music Cartridge Released Today

Here's a P-64 update: The Prophet64 SID music cartridge for the Commodore 64 is finally shipping. They've revamped the site to provide much more information about each of the programs. This looks like seriously old-school fun...

Prophet64 includes four retro-styled music programs on an honest-to-goodness cartridge for the Commodore 64. The cart is priced at a mere 39 euros (about $50) and takes advantage of the C-64's fantastic built-in SID analog synthesizer chip. It'll be available in a few weeks, but if you just can't wait to try it It's available now. And word has it that some versions of the Commodore DTV 30-in-1 game unit will run this software...[although without the analog filter]

"The Prophet64 is a plug and play hardware cartridge for the Commodore 64. It contains four different applications (sequencer, mono synthesizer, bassline TB-303 clone and drummer) providing the 21 century musician an easy and cheap way of integrating the C64 platform and it's legendary audio circuit into the modern studio." Someone is even working on a MIDI interface!

Visit the Prophet64 site

Lovable Ladas

I suspect the main reason -- apart from a bargain pricetag and tank-like design -- that LADAs were sold worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s was that the name rolls of the tongue. La-la-la... LADA. I can't imagine us lazy tongued foreigners embracing the Moscovitch, Volga or (heaven forbid) a Zaporozhetz with the same gleeful enthusiasm.

The most famous LADA is the ВАЗ-2101 -- how's that for a name that rolls off the tongue? The 2101 was introduced in 1970 with your choice of three powerplants ranging from 1.2 to 1.5 L. They put out anywhere from 60 to 75 HP on a good day. On a bad day, LADA owners discovered that these little cars are easy to repair. The 2101 was based on the successful Italian Fiat 124, produced from 1966 through 1974, although the Russian version was pumped out for another 14 years.

AutoVAZ is still in business, turning out a range of sedans and even several variants of the very cool LADA 4X4. The company entered into a manufacturing agreement with GM a few years ago and now produces the very sleek Chevrolet NIVA 4x4 along with a couple of smaller models.

The modern LADA lineup
An American Lada enthusiast site