Characters like Jeffrey at Slipperyskip Computers have started cramming tiny motherboards into some very cool cases.
The Stylophone Beatbox has just been released, 40 years after the original Stylophone took the world by storm.
Paul Schweizer's sailplane designs have introduced thousands of pilots to soaring. My favorite is the 1-26 single-seat glider.
"A collection of the worst library holdings. The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information."
I'm seriously considering submitting an inter-library loan request for "Diseases From Space."
Priming The Pump tells the tale of Radio Shack's TRS-80, the first complete off-the-shelf microcomputer system. Designer Steve Leininger worked alone to build the prototype TRS-80 at a cost of less than $150,000. To keep the retail price low, they modified a black & white television set to serve as a monitor. That explains the machine's signature black-and-silver color scheme, since it's what RCA had on hand.
What happened next jump-started the home computing industry. "John Roach, Tandy's product manager, got an agreement from Charles Tandy to build 3500 units after Leininger demonstrated the prototype; this was exactly the number of stores they had -- Roach figured if no one bought the computers, at least the stores could use them.
Don French, a true believer, predicted they'd sell 50,000 the first year and urged the company to gear up the factory for mass production. Tandy managers, thinking they could never sell that many, were surprised when, in the weeks after the introduction, the Tandy switchboard was paralyzed with over 15,000 calls from people wanting to order a TRS-80. In the first year, over 250,000 people went on waiting lists to buy a TRS-80."
The Zilog Z80-based TRS-80 Model I was shipped as a ready-to-use $599 system. The main board was
built into the keyboard unit and shipped
with a plug-in B&W monitor and portable cassette recorder for
storage.
The base unit could support up to 16K of memory, although an expansion dock (shown above) was available that increased memory to 48K and controlled two floppy drives. I loved the crisp 64 character x 16 line display, although there were no lower case characters in ROM. The cassette-based storage was somewhat finicky, because you had to be careful to set the volume just right to ensure a successful program load.
Radio Shack introduced a number of popular machines throughout the 1980s, but they eventually found it impossible to compete with a tide of inexpensive IBM-PC clones. Sadly, the TRS-80 name is now ancient history and Radio Shack markets a "me too" lineup of name-brand PCs and notebooks.
Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution [also available from Amazon]
Allow me to introduce long-time RT reader Simon Haynes. In addition to his brilliant taste in blogs, Simon is the author of Australia's most popular sci-fi comedy space adventure book series - Hal Spacejock.
Hal is an inept interstellar trader who pilots his ship on a series of improbably amusing misadventures. In the first book, he teams up with Clunk the robot to deliver an awkwardly illegal cargo while outrunning a pesky debt collection robot. Not your typical day at the office.
Now, here's the best part. Simon knows you lot are cheap bastards who can't resist free stuff. He somehow convinced Freemantle Press to release the first title in the series as a free ebook. The giveaway has been a stupendous success - over 50,000 downloads so far.
Simon announced earlier this week that the other books in the series are now available in DRM-free ebook format for a mere AUS$5 each. To get the word out, he's willing to email a free ebook of Hal Spacejock Second Course - the second title in the series - to anyone who blogs or tweets about the release of the Hal Spacejock ebooks before the end of March 2009.
So, there you go. Two award-winning sci-fi comedy books, uninfested with DRM and yours for the taking. What are you waiting for?
Get a free copy of the first Hal Spacejock novel
How to score a free copy of Hal #2
Most retrospectives focus on the games and personalities, rather than exploring the technology that made it all possible. Racing The Beam: The Atari Video Computer System [MIT Press, 184 pages] takes a different approach by showing how the limitations of the Atari VCS shaped the fledgling gaming industry.
Authors Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost delve deep into the architecture and explore the evolution of game play and aesthetics from early VCS titles such as Combat (the pack-in), through the amazing coding skills necessary to bring advanced scrolling games like Pitfall! to life on an aging platform.
From MIT Press: "The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home videogame market so completely that 'Atari' became the generic term for a videogame console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential videogame console from both computational and cultural perspectives.Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms—the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen."
Even though many modern gamers regard the VCS with bemused disdain, it was an incredible leap forward in the late 1970s. Programmers coded in assembly language and cramming an entire game into as little as 4K was an exercise in arcane creativity. Just like modern developers, they faced extreme time constraints, limited budgets and constant pressure to deliver the next smash hit. The big difference is that projects are orders of magnitude more complex than they were thirty years ago.
Racing The Beam is slated for release on March 31, 2009 as the first title in The MIT Press Platform Studies series.
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System [MIT Press]
related:
Atari's Biggest Blunder
Atari 2600 celebrates 30 years of low-rez fun
Atari 2600 Homebrew Games
"Who We Were" is a squarish book befitting the square snapshots within. The authors are collectors of black and white snapshots, or “vernacular photography” as the fancy set likes to say. I've come to know Nicholas Osborn through our mutual fondness of home movies. He's displayed his curated collection of photos at museums, galleries, and on his website at www.squareamerica.com. He and his co-authors have chosen 350 amateur photos spanning some 80 years to tell the story of America in "Who We Were".
Spanning the decades from about 1890 through the 70's, "Who We Were" is a collection of amateur anthropology. These random snapshots found at thrift stores and flea markets could be our relatives doing all the important stuff in life; waving to airplanes, drinking a beer... and of course taking pictures of it all. It's doubtful that the original photographers sought to create art, but somehow when collected together these private yet shared memories take on the qualities of art photography.
The photos capture regular people being themselves, and the book wisely lets the photos speak for themselves too. Most pages feature a single picture annotated with anecdotes from the
original photographers, or a reproduction of text written on the back
of the picture. It only takes a few pages to travel silently between the finer moments of family life and some of the most unfortunate and shameful times in our history.
I'm sure no one thought taking a picture of yet another doughy guy soaking up 50's leisure would be important in the future. I'm grateful to both the photographer for taking the picture, and to the authors of "Who We Were" for doing such a good job of keeping these little bits of history alive.
We live in a time where it's cheaper and easier than ever to take loads of digital photos. The problem is that few people print out pictures anymore. That means no artifacts for future generations (even our own families) to find. "The Way We Were" shows the continued historic value of physical media. Years from now will amateur historians dig through the piles of discarded cell phones to try to dig out grainy low res pictures of life today? I hope so. This book reminds us of what we owe the future - inadvertent art
Here's some great news... The authors gave us an autographed copy of their book to give away to one lucky Retro Thing reader. All readers are eligible to enter. All you have to do is add a comment to this post talking about your favorite snapshot. If you'd like, you can even upload a little version of it to share with all of our readers. Just say a few words about what makes it special to you. On February 7th, we'll pick one comment at random to win the book.
One additional note. Just like our last giveaway, if you're from outside the US or Canada we welcome your entry, but require that you cover the shipping costs to your country. Thanks for understanding, and good luck to all of you!
Bring a little piece of square America home by purchasing "Who We Were" at ten dollars off the cover price. As a bonus you'll receive a genuine vintage snapshot and a DVD of some of Nick's home movie collection.
You can also find the book at Amazon.com
I usually don't mention my own projects on Retro Thing, but the last issue of smallformat - the magazine for amateur Super 8mm and 16mm filmmakers - shipped today, after three years of publication. I owe my sincere thanks to Editor-in-Chief Juergen Lossau for giving me the opportunity to work on this project from the first sentence to the last.
Perhaps it was ridiculously optimistic to think that a traditional film journal could survive in the 21st century, but I think we created a wonderful collection of film articles - 19 issues in all - that will age gracefully.
Back issues are still available, just give me a shout for details.
Visit the official smallformat site [smallformat.de]
I am in awe.
Google Book Search just added a massive collection of vintage magazines, including Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. Amazingly, it looks like Pop Sci first hit newsstands in May 1872. It took another 33 years for Popular Mechanics to arrive on the scene. The ability to instantly search decades worth of material is irresistible, and I will gleefully respond by spending countless hours learning how to build vintage hydrofoils and futuristic transistor radios in my garden shed.
For years I have been a huge fan of home movies. I've researched and collected them for years and have become well versed in the many forms a home movie might take: the “Up and Down the Christmas Tree Movie”, the “Panning Wildly over Scenery Movie”, the “Standing Still Even Though It's A Movie Movie”, and the like. Home films are great for family nostalgia, but amateur movie gear also empowered backyard movie moguls. Though the years many amateurs have tried their hand at remakes and re-imaginings of the adventures of their favorite sci-fi and fantasy characters.
Homemade Hollywood is a new book by Clive Young chronicles the fan film from its earliest days. The author traced the first fan film to 1922 - astonishing! It's a great story of a pair of barnstorming scheisters that hoodwink the folks of a South Carolina town into paying the ersatz filmmakers to shooting an Our Gang comedy in their city. They did actually create the film and have a screening before skipping town, and fortunately a few reels of footage from the movie still exists today.
With the introduction of Super 8 & home video decades later, even more amateurs tried their hand at creating a fan film. In 1992 Dan Poole heard the rumblings of a 
James Cameron helmed film starring Spider-Man. Poole beat Spidey to the screen by a decade with “The Green Goblin's Last Stand” (it's even based on the same issue of the comic that inspired the eventual 2002 movie). This flick is a must-see as they filmed a foolish spectacular stunt with a costumed wall crawler swinging on a rope between buildings 35 feet up in the air – with no safety net!
The book continues on into the modern era, crediting 1997's Star Wars fan film “Troops” (a parody of TV's “Cops”) and the introduction of iMovie and miniDV cameras with igniting the fan film phenomenon. Suddenly practically anyone could create movies with credible special effects, and get an audience of tens of thousands via the internet. With that came innumerable “two guys in Jedi PJ's engaged in a random lightsaber fight in the woods” films, but there have been many gems too.
In the days before the internet, fan films were mostly confined to sci-fi conventions and backyard parties – so they were hard to learn about. Many filmmakers also tended to keep their unauthorized productions on the QT. The big companies that own these cherished characters tend to be skittish and litigious about fans making free with their copyrights. 
Some studios have been smart like Paramount, permitting the lavish “New Voyages” Star Trek fan films that have featured actors and writers from the original series.
Clive Young's book does a great job putting together the unknown history of fan films, even going so far as to index dozens of them in the back. It's a relatively quick read that I hard a hard time putting down, and the many threads of the story are drawn together remarkably well. I never got to make a fan film (they frowned on that sort of thing in film school), but after reading Homemade Hollywood I wish I had. Then again it seems like any film project, no matter what the intent, is going to be a source of drama and problems – so maybe I didn't miss out on all that much!
Homemade Hollywood explores the amateur desire to create more adventures with their favorite TV & movie characters. Readers can admire the can-do attitude of these amateur filmmakers, and if you poke around on the internet you can check out a lot of these movies without waiting for the next Trek convention. If some of those big studio lawyers can take a break from sending out reams of “cease & desist” letters, the book can teach them that fan films are a labor of love, and are the sincerest form of flattery.
links:
Pre-order Homemade Hollywood from Amazon
Visit the author's website
Device, Volume 1: Fantastic Contraption is a beautiful 120-page paperback that highlights brilliant mechanapunk-steam-cybercreations by an international group of artists. The book release accompanies an exhibition of these contraptions at the new Device Gallery in La Jolla, California, which runs from July 19th through September 2nd.
Publisher IDW reports,"'Fantastic Contraption is as much as an experience as it is an exhibition and sets the tone for the unique aesthetic of the Device Gallery,' explains gallery co-owner Amy Brotherton. It’s like being transported in time to Leonardi Da Vinci’s workshop and while the work cannot easily be defined by a genre or medium, the sheer genius is undeniable."
It's amazing to see this movement hit the publishing mainstream, and I continue to hope that it'll have a positive influence on a new generation of young industrial designers and mad scientists. The book will be released on July 29, 2008, but it's available to pre-order for less than $14.
Order a copy of Fantastic Contraption
Visit the official Device Gallery site
Superheroes are synonymous with comic books, but when their popularity is on the wane publishers turn to other measures. There are funny comics, and there are attempts to make otherwise serious books humorous, (an approach that seldom, if ever, works). It makes sense that a publisher like DC comics might have turned to two legendary funnymen to try and inject their pulpy hilarity into 15 cent comic books.
From 1950-68 DC Comics devoted an entire series to the
adventures of Bob Hope. A popular star at the time, each comic depicts comedic mishaps and adventures similar to his feature films. He's surrounded by dishy beauties, and has the habit of calling all the babes "doll" (which is equally annoying in comics as it is in real life).
I gave him a chance, but even in this format * SPOILER ALERT * Bob Hope just isn't that funny. The humor seems intended for children, but Hope's girl-crazy antics are a little too racy for tikes. Even after having read the book, 
I can't figure out what audience DC was intending to reach. All I can say about the experience is that just because a celebrity has a face that's easy to caricature, that doesn't make for a good comic.
DC tried it again in a couple early 1970's issues of "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen". This comic series brandishes a two pronged pincer - Don Rickles in a dual role! In a trippier plot than Bob Hope could handle, Don appears as himself as well as a costumed alter-ego called Goody Rickles.
Superman does eventually show up, but all in all it's a big mess. There's no sign of Rickles' famous brand of insult comedy. Why do a comic book starring Mr. Warmth (Frank Sinatra's nickname for Don), if he only appears as a neutered version of himself?
The Hope comic makes some tiny bit of sense, but the elaborate Rickles cameo with Superman is just odd. It's hard to believe that including Hollywood stars could do all that much to increase sales of comics. On top of that, the presence of real-world celebrities compromises the elaborate universe that comic books work so hard to construct. I don't think that Superman sales soared because the world was just waiting for Rickles to don cape and boots.
As our modern Hollywood continues to plunder the long rich history of comics for more blockbuster ideas, let's hope that neither of these crummy comics become big-budget feature film epics. Wasn't a hundred years of Bob Hope enough?
related:
Marvel Comics go digital
Disney comic strip artist's guide
It's been exactly 30 years (actually, I'm a few hours early) since the first episode of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) was foisted upon unsuspecting BBC radio listeners.We thought we'd celebrate by linking you to several free versions of the H2G2 game, but I'm going to blather a bit first.
The series would spawn a wildly successful five part 'trilogy,' a TV series and even a woefully inadequate feature film that Douglas had the good sense to avoid by reincarnating as a tea-loving deity on a far off world populated by sentient mattresses (For the record, Douglas, the Earth would have been a far more interesting place if you'd skipped the film idea and decided to stick around instead).
It should come as no surprise that Douglas was an alpha technology addict. After earning a daft sum from his books in the early 1980s, he eagerly embraced the Macintosh along with a respectable collection of then state-of-the-art MIDI synthesizers including a Sequential Prophet VS. His favorite feature of the VS was the random patch generator, which seems somehow fitting given his love of Infinite Improbability. Of course, the secret purpose of his music rig could be summed up in a single word: Procrastination. As he famously remarked, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
In 1984, Douglas teamed up with Infocom's Steve Meretzky to release a text-only computer game based on the Guide. It sold a stunning 350,000 copies before getting buried by an avalanche of prettier titles. Douglas explained, "Then graphics games came along and the computer using portion of the human race forgot all about 500,000 years of language evolution and went straight back to the electronic equivalent of banging rocks together - the point'n'click game. Infocom and most of its competitors went to the wall - signaling the arrival of the post-literate society. That's the way it's been for most of the last dozen years."
Luckily, you can experience several online versions of the game, including a Java port of the original and a graphically enhanced '20th Anniverary' edition that the BBC released in 2004. I strongly suggest steeping some tea, getting comfy and spending a few hours trying to keep Arthur Dent alive.
tangentially related:
The BBC ponders The Ultimate Question
Following years of declining sales, Marvel has chosen to leap into the
digital world by launching an online archive service that allows
unlimited access to around 2,500 back issues for $9.99/month. It's easy to
understand why the company chose to go this route. The days of the dime
store rack laden with hundreds of exciting Marvel
and DC titles are long gone, a victim of skyrocketing prices, the
Internet, video games and countless other modern distractions.
I vividly remember the excitement of receiving boxes of 'remaindered' comic books from my local drug store in the late 1970s. The front pages had been removed and returned to the distributor as evidence that they'd been destroyed, but my friends and I didn't care about the damage - we spent days absorbing each and every panel.
Alas, I fear Marvel's new venture is doomed from the start because online browsing can't possibly replace the tactile excitement of flipping through a paper version of your favorite comics (not to mention the classic ads), nor will it entice a new generation of kids to read the "real thing" because the real thing is too bloody expensive these days. The Amazing Spider-Man debuted in March 1963 at a price of 12 cents. Adjusted for inflation, that's 77 cents in 2006 dollars. Unfortunately, the cost of printing and distribution (along with a declining market) has pushed modern cover prices to at least $2.99.
The only people who will be truly excited about the digital archives are likely to be older fans and collectors who get to delve into the back story of their favorite characters at minimal cost and relive moments from their childhood. That said, I'm unlikely to subscribe to Marvel's new service for more than a month or two because a browser-based version of The Incredible Hulk can't compare to the huge stack filled with the heroic deeds of the Fantastic Four, Conan the Barbarian and dozens of others.
Marvel Comics Launches Digital Archive [PC World]
Former comic book store owner Brett Weiss has compiled a 316-page hardcover guide to nearly every official US game release for programmable home consoles prior to the Nintendo NES -- no small feat. The book covers titles for the Adventure Vision, APF MP1000, Arcadia 2001, Astrocade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, ColecoVision, Fairchild Channel F, Intellivision, Microvision, Odyssey, Odyssey2, RCA Studio II, Telstar Arcade, and Vectrex.
Each chapter offers an overview and history of a system, followed by encyclopedia-style entries for each game. There's even an appendix that lists homebrew titles that have been released by amateur programmers. This intriguing reference volume will hit stores in Fall 2007, but it's available now for pre-order.
Update from Bohus:
Having Retro Thing offices in two countries sometimes means that messages don't always get through. We got an advance copy of "Classic Home Video Games" in Chicago, but our carrier pigeon was still getting his skates on while James was merrily posting about the title from Retro Thing in Canada. Here then are a few of my thoughts after cracking the spine of the book.
The first thing that jumped out at me is the book's school textbook vibe. No surprise since McFarland is a noted academic publisher (though their title "Super Bitches and Action Babes" leave me wondering...) which also seems to have influenced the price. Retailing at $55 makes this one of the highest priced video game books I've seen that isn't a coffee table book with a lot of color photography. Fortunately, the writing style isn't dry and clinical like a textbook might be. Weiss offers up accessible reviews of every game released for both popular and obscure game systems.
The problem facing a book like this is how to differentiate from similar sources of the same information. There are countless websites that offer reviews of all of these games, but don't have the quality writing that this title offers - a point in the book's favor. This reference guide also collects all of this content - including some pretty obscure games - in one place. That's another good point.
On the other hand, you could get much the same info from the Digital Press Collector's Guide. It's $25 shipped, has rarity & pricing guides, and also has a healthy online component. Classic Home Video Games also features very little in the way of photography to justify the cost. This book is priced like a serious research work, when most readers are likely to be hobbyists and collectors. All in all, I think that author Brett Weiss delivers on the content & critiques, but the publisher needs to examine the market for the book and adjust the price by about $20. Maybe we can reconvene when the softcover comes out. - Bohus
Classic Home Video Games, 1972-1984: A Complete Reference Guide
George Lucas has rehashed Star Wars more times than I'd care to count: The groundbreaking 1977 original, the remastered 1997 theatrical release (I admit to seeing it on the first night), and the 2004 restoration / reimagining. Each time, the legends surrounding the film grow and people's memories become more and more clouded. What was wrong with Han shooting first, anyway? It's what one would expect from a ruthless mercenary.
J.W. Rinzler's The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film cuts through the myths and time-worn memories in an attempt to tell the true story behind this seminal sci-fi epic. The hardcover version runs 372 pages and outlines how a tale about "Annikin Starkiller” and “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and large gills” named Han Solo evolved into the battle of good vs. evil that we know so well.
It's stunning to realize that 30 years have passed since a young George Lucas took on more than he could chew and pulled off a cinematic miracle. Some have argued that the book focuses too heavily on Lucas, but that is probably because it is impossible to imagine the Star Wars franchise without him. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some wamp rats to hunt on my uncle's moisture farm...
"Using his unprecedented access to the Lucasfilm Archives and its trove of never-before-published “lost” interviews, photos, production notes, factoids, and anecdotes, Star Wars scholar J. W. Rinzler hurtles readers back in time for an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the nearly decade-long quest of George Lucas and his key collaborators to make the “little” movie that became a phenomenon."
The Making of Star Wars [April 2007, Del Ray]
Maybe it's the Mid-Westerner in me, but I've been compelled to bowl for the last few years. I've always been attracted to the kitschy/novelty aspects of the game - the endless parade of ashtrays, greetings cards, the curious trophy I saw of a bowler having dropped the ball on their foot, etc. I've watched the sexiness of the game from the sidelines for long enough, so now I'm in the game!
Growing up, bowling was the only sport I was interested in watching on TV (you've gotta set goals, I guess...) and I was envious of my classmates who had a bowling unit in high school gym. So I was on my own to learn how to bowl on the streets of suburban Chicago (in the alleys, so to speak...). I'm not any good, but it's the only social sport that I've been interested in. All that said, check out my score sheet from last Sunday:
Um, yeah. I'm as freaked out as you. If I break 100 I'm a happy guy - but there it is, seven strikes. I clearly had the "beer frame jitters", then choked in the 10th frame to come within a hair's breadth of 200 - all with rented shoes and an alley ball the color of fever snot. I'm probably making too big a deal about this, but isn't this the exact kind of news to share with friends? I feel so sporty... like a burly guy who drinks Milwaukee's Best - by choice. Perhaps this what it feels like to finally be a man?
Funny thing is that the most helpful aides I've found in bowling are all from the 50's & 60's. Perhaps the immense popularity of the game back then contributed the most to the science of teaching the necessary skills. I've watched some helpful old 8mm & 16mm films, but I also found some help in this 1963 book. While aimed at school children, this skinny book has a lot of essential techniques. You also learn about buying your own ball and shoes, how to keep score, the benefits of automatic pin setting technology, even some snapshots of bowling history and culture.
These tips and tricks have helped my score in real bowling, and unexpectedly have also helped in video game bowling. If I break 200 at the bowling alley I'll stutter out a joyous post, but instead of waiting until Judgment Day for that, how about a future post about the fun that we've been having bowling on the Nintendo Wii?
Classic Retro Thing |
