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Frankenstations

They're technical anomalies, transcending medium, legality and current technical standards to become something they were never meant to be.

 

 

They're called "Frankenstations". Or "Franken-FMs". Because while most FM radios can tune down to 87.5 FM, the FM radio dial in North America legally begins at 88.1 MHz and ends at 107.9 MHz.

However, 87.7 MHz (or 87.75 MHz to be exact), is/was the analog audio carrier frequency for VHF TV channel 6. Since the end of World War II until the DTV switchover in 2009, people who live in areas with a local TV station on Channel 6 could hear that TV station's audio signal on 87.7 on their FM radios, a fact not lost on the Channel 6 TV broadcasters (KHQ-TV in Spokane, WA promoted this for years.) And it was offered as a way to hear the audio portion of the Channel 6 TV station when you were in your car or away from a TV.

Bear in mind this wasn't a deliberate service the station offered. Just an anomaly of how the radio/TV spectrum was carved up. And unique only to analog VHF TV Channel 6 because the Channel 6 audio carrier frequency was coincidently in a tunable portion of the FM radio dial at 87.75 MHz.

However, in the early 2000s, several low power analog VHF TV stations began popping up on Channel 6. They weren't purposed as traditional TV stations, but as FM radio stations. This is why they are called "Frankenstations" An FM radio station using an audio frequency for TV.

The first Frankenstation was KZND-LP in Anchorage, Alaska. "87.7 The End" went on the air in 1999 and immediately outraged competing broadcasters who thought KZND was cheating and complained to the FCC. As it turned out, the station was using an overlooked loophole that allowed the audio portion of a TV channel to not be synchronized with a video image.

However, being an FM station on the TV band isn't as easy as one would think. First, you're technically a TV station. This means you must at least run some image on the video carrier. Which KZND was not transmitting, so the FCC forced them to start doing so. It wasn't enough the station had the ability to transmit a video image, but it had to actually do it to be within the law, as it was technically a TV station first. A simple graphic card to be broadcast over their video carrier was all the station needed to become legitimate.

Today, KZND now broadcasts on a real FM frequency (94.7.) 87.7 in Anchorage is now a jazz station called KNIK

WLFM-LP in Cleveland, Ohio actually used a Western Digital screensaver as their video carrier image!

Second, you have to be a lot more quieter than standard FM stations because you still must broadcast according to television technical standards. This meant a lot of the problems of a quiet uncompressed FM radio signal, such as "picket fencing", that "fwip-fwip-fwip" sound you hear on FM radio as you drive farther out of the station's primary service area is far more apparent well within the primary service area on an 87.7 Frankenstation. You can't broadcast in stereo either. While Zenith invented both FM Stereo and MTS Stereo TV transmission, the two systems are incompatible. All Frankenstations are mono.

And Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron), which measures radio ratings regards the Frankenstations as actual TV stations and doesn't count them amongst actual FM radio stations.   

However all low power analog TV stations, which had been exempt from the 2009 American digital TV switchover must change over to digital themselves by September 1, 2015.

Which will mean the end of the Frankenstations because the digital signals can no longer be received over standard FM radios.

However since the analog to digital TV switchover there's been talk of expanding the FM radio band down to 76 MHz (similar to how the AM radio band was expanded from 540-1600 kHz to 540-1700 kHz in the late 1980s.) Which would incorporate the Japanese allocated FM radio band (which runs from 76-90 MHz) into the American FM radio band and allow American FM stations to broadcast on those frequencies. But that's only going to happen when the current FM spectrum gets so crunched, there is no alternative.

And we're already pretty much there in some parts of the country.

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Microcassettes

Remember Microcassettes? They were a dictation medium (but so was the original compact cassette) Invented in 1969 by Olympus as the standard cassette started gaining traction as a popular music medium.

For a spell in the early '80s, Sony actually tried to make them as close to a serious audio medium as they could (as they did with the standard cassette.) Including stereo sound and Metal tape formulation microcassettes.

The Microcassette Walkman even included a very rare microcassette version of the FM Tuner cassettes made for standard cassette personal stereos.

They failed. Obviously. Because no matter what they did, an analog tape rolling at 15/16th inches per second will never sound very good no matter what kind of tape you use (cassettes used 1 7/8 IPS, 8-Tracks 3 3/4 IPS)

In modern digital, It's like the sound of a 32 kbps MP3 to a 320 kbps MP3.

And secondly, people kept LOSING the handful of prerecorded albums on these tapes that were made for the Japanese market.

The Microcassette never went further into general use beyond dictation and in telephone answering machines. They have since been replaced by digital recorders.

Competing with the Microcassette (yes, it did have competing formats), was the Minicassette (developed in 1967 by Phillips) and the even tinier Picocassette (1985 by Dictaphone.)

Minicassette

Picocassette

The Exciting Sounds Project & Retrophile Daily

Hey, I have some KILLER new blog links for ya you're sure to love if you enjoy the stuff you read here on History's Dumpster (and you're here, aren't you?)

The Exciting Sounds Project

Retrophile Daily

Happy New Year From History's Dumpster!

And now as we prepare to ring in 2014, I would like us to remember one man of whom it just hasn't been New Year's Eve without. Mr. Dick Clark.

Thank you all so much for a GREAT year!

Cheers!,

Larry

The Star Wars Question & Answer Book About Computers (1983)

"Internet Radio"

And a little white "earbud" too!

 Don't expect to connect this to your wi-fi and hear your favourite podcast.

This radio was made in the late 1960s. And it's a standard AM transistor radio. That's all. Radios like this were the iPods of their day and your 20 song playlist came courtesy of your favourite local Top 40 radio station (almost all of them on AM radio in those days.)

And at the time, what we would later call the internet was then called "ARPANET" And strictly for military and government use only. Computers in the 1960s were extremely huge (often taking up an entire large room and hopelessly limited and underpowered - by 1981 standards!) and were rarely seen outside a laboratory. The very few civilian computers never connected to anything.

The Honeywell 316 was the world's first consumer marketed computer (1969). It was essentially a $10,600 recipe box and pencil. Exactly the thing you want to give someone who allegedly can't cook very well. It had no online connectivity.

 That's not to say people weren't dreaming. Note the "flat screen monitors".

While it's almost spooky to consider someone could use a word that would be so ubiquitous 30 years before it's general use, I think "Internet" just sounded like a fancy hi-tech name for a cheap UK electronics brand at the time this radio was made. (I'd have a hard time with the "time traveler" theory.)

More on the discovery of this radio with a very futuristic name here:

http://www.markhillpublishing.com/the-internet-transistor-radio/

I'm Back.....

My kitty Mr. Smokey Gato investigates the big new box/plaything in my living room this morning....

Tremendous thanks to my friend Justin Beaumonde for sending me a new replacement tower for my computer. Finally, I can get all these drafts finished and up!

11/12/13

Hello Dumpster Divers,

I know I've been slacking. But my desktop computer, which I publish this blog from has totally crapped out on me last week. The motherboard is toast.

The Android app version of Blogger, which I'm writing this from isn't anywhere near as good as the regular desktop version. And I need the ability to upload graphics and videos to illustrate my topics as I go along as well as a REAL keyboard. My big clumsy fingers can't do the screen tapping thing for anything longer than a social media blurb and how I got this far is a new record for me.

Hopefully, I'll have a new computer in a week or two. So until then, History's Dumpster will be on temporary (hopefully) hiatus.

Larry

Chinese Import Video Camera Glasses: A Review

A week ago on a lark, I ordered a pair of Chinese made video sunglasses. They only cost $16.49 - including shipping on eBay.

So I ordered and it did arrive. Quickly...A couple days ago. I got a package from Shanghai. (These photos were taken on my Android tablet. Bear with me.)

 

Comes with carrying case, USB cord and lens cleaning cloth.

"I make these look good..."

The instruction booklet

This also uses a 2 to 32GB Micro SD card (not included.) I pulled a 2 GB card out of one of my old cell phones and reformatted it for use on this.

I was more or less expecting the worst. But they were surprisingly good for the price.

The video quality isn't 1080pi HD (but what were you expecting for $16.49?) But a hell of lot better than what you'd expect for that price. I've seen worse video from $200 cell phones.

The downside:

The video files they record are HUGE in pure AVI format (a little over 1 GB for a 15 minute video shoot) The video here took about 180 MB. So to upload onto the web, you'll need video compression software. I used FFConvert for Linux and converted it to a 27 MB MP4 file. But there are a number of these available depending on your operating system.

The lens is just above the bridge of your nose on these glasses. So you will need to keep your head slightly tilted down (don't shoegaze.) I deliberately aimed my head lower to keep as many faces as possible out of this video (which was shot at a library. I picked it to demonstrate average indoor lighting conditions.)   

The built in mic is extremely sensitive in video recording mode (it encodes in uncompressed PCM.) And if you're talking in a normal volume, you'll overmodulate (cause distortion.) So keep your voice very low when recording.

For straight audio MP3 recording (no video), they're very bad. They encode at 8kHz at 128kbps and sound extremely muffled.

I don't know the overall battery life because first, the instructions say the red LED light will stop flashing when fully charged. But after 24 hours of initial charging, it never stopped flashing. Plus as it takes 1 GB for 15 minutes of video and my micro SD card was only 2 GB, I'll have to buy a full 32 GB card to really find out.

The photos are also pretty bad. And the problem is you have to make a time.txt file in the root file of this for the automatic time stamp on the photos (the time reads in 24 hour UTC and not in standard AM/PM. I tried this in every configuration, but I could never get it to read correctly.) It always read as the default 2008/12/31 00:00:00 (give or take a few seconds)

While the photo and audio capabilities are downers, that's not the BEST feature of these glasses, which is the video recording capability. These glasses have quite a few uses. I wouldn't recommend them for recording concerts, namely because of the sensitive mic audio issues as well as the mysterious battery life. But for quick on the spot video recording of public events incognito, they're PERFECT.

Rating *** (3/5 stars)

You can buy them here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111137776719?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

(This review was made uncompensated and totally independent, based only on my own experience. - Larry)

Apple iPhone Prototype From The '80s?

In the early 1980s, Frog Design and Apple collaborated on this phone prototype with electronic check payment and a stylus for use on the monochrome screen.

R.U. A Cyberpunk? (1993)

Hard to believe an average smartphone in 2013 can do all this and more.....

http://io9.com/are-you-a-cyberpunk-this-early-1990s-poster-explains-i-1231691511

One Weird Trick

Have you ever spotted these web ads and asked yourself "Who do these people think they're fooling?"

"One Weird Trick"....or some variant in ads for everything from mortgage reduction to testosterone building. Nothing screams SCAM louder.

They began appearing around 2008. And became ubiquitous by 2010.

In copy writing, one major no-no is overused superlatives. The reason is simple - They get old. And cliche.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who notices it. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/just-1-weird-trick-to-get-you-to-read-this-article.html

The Thompson Twins Vinyl Video Game

 The Thompson Twins were a 1980's pop group, best known for their hits "In The Name Of Love", "Lies", "Doctor Doctor" and "King For A Day"

(....and just for the record, none of them are twins and neither of them are named or surnamed Thompson....)

They were among a handful of '80s pop groups (including Journey, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and The Stranglers) that had their own video games. In the case of The Thompson Twins, their game came on a vinyl flexi-disc in Quicksilva magazine for the ZX Spectrum computer in the UK (and the Timex Sinclair ccomputer in the USA) Both were short lived home computers (as most were in the '80s.)

You had to play this record on your turntable and record it onto a cassette tape. Then play it on the external cassette drive of the computer (sold seperately) and wait for it to load up. Which took a good 10 minutes.

And when you were done, you had a playable game.

The graphics were horrible (but this was also 1984.) and it was pretty much a very lousy text-based video game. But in 1984, this was state of the art.

Automated Radio Stations

Many people have a disgusted view of radio these days. And who can blame them? They lament the lack of personality, the bland repetitive playlists, the high commercial loads per hour and most annoyingly, the "liner cards" (trust me, the jocks more than anyone HATE these. They know you're not stupid and it's embarrassing on both ends.)

Seriously, what the fuck is "Now Playing An Even Better Mix of Continuous Lite Favorites With More Variety and Less Talk....."

How many of you have heard something like that on the radio and screamed back at it "Well DO WE, NOW? DUH!"

(Please remember it's all radio program director ego masturbation and does not represent the opinions of those who are/were forced to say it, strictly verbatim, to keep their jobs.)

Many of us will look back at the radio industry deregulation of the '90s, which lifted ownership caps on how many radio stations one corporation could own in one city from one AM and one FM to 8 total (5 FM and 3 AM stations. Or vice-versa) as the beginning of bland, stale, canned sounding radio. And to some degree, they're right - it just went south on a MASSIVE scale after that. But corporately programmed, bland boring radio been around longer than you think.

When the FM radio band was finally established in the late '40s it had a really slow start. One was most stations were co-owned with major local AM stations and simply simulcasted their AM programming on FM 24/7. Others simulcasted most of the time and would produce nightly programming. And the rest were upstart independents that focused on their music. Mostly classical music and easy listening/show tunes. Always accentuating the "high fidelity" of FM. 

When FM Stereo debuted in 1961, it wasn't much of a game changer at first. Few stations adopted it immediately and it wasn't until the early '70s when most stations did. So apart from a few daring originals, FM was stagnating.

So in 1966, the FCC decided to do something about it. It wasn't in the back pocket of lobbyists at it is today. So it mandated that all AM/FM combo's FM stations have a mandatory minimum of separate programming from their AM stations.

The radio industry was not happy. Many AM/FMs actually didn't even have separate studios for their FM stations. But they had to get something - ANYTHING to fill all this new airtime. This meant hiring people who will work really cheap, which led to the progressive rock era OR.....

Enter the radio automation machine.

It was first invented in the 1950s, but it didn't work very well because the very first ones played 45 RPM records using a jukebox-like mechanism. The selector mechanism that put each record on the platter had to be cleaned and well lubricated. Often. Otherwise, the selector would not properly retract and as the powerful motor moved the player on to the next selection, the selector would ride along, happily SMASHING every record it encountered..... SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!.

Back to the drawing board.

By the late '60s, they had improved to the point of enough stability (or at least less destructiveness) to make them a viable option for most of the bigger FM stations.  
 
Here's how it worked (in the TM Stereo Rock format):

"Hi..."

First, you panic a little.

Next you opened up four boxes of two track reel, one sided  tape and threaded them accordingly. The 100 Series was for currents. These were newer hits were in sets of two songs, back announced with "That was (last song played) and before that (the first song)"

The 100 series reel was also where the announcer lurked.

The 200 Series were the oldest songs in the format. The 300s were recurrents (songs released in the last 7 years that people still like.)  There was also a 400 series for nighttime airplay. It featured more album cuts and newer or "buzz" material, each back announced with not only title and artist, but also album the song came off of.

New music reels were shipped out to replace older reels several times a year. Currents were replaced every two weeks, recurrents four times a year and oldies twice a year.

And these tape reels needed constant changing, so it was usually up to the jocks in the AM studio to rewind them. These reel to reel machines had POWERFUL rewind motors, they were a marvel to watch the tapes rewind so fast. But you had to make sure the reel hubs were on tightly or the reels would wobble off and fly across the room projectile (and they HURT) and replace them in mid-airshift.

This was also the era of the 2-3 minute pop song, which meant they had to work fast - VERY fast (one can only imagine the horror of hearing "White Rabbit" through the hallway AM air monitors approaching it's end and you're still trying to get a tape threaded in the machine and just as Grace Slick starts singing "Feed your head!......Feed your head!", race back to the AM studio to open the mic before the very last note faded out.)

And under NO circumstances were you allowed to break a sweat.

TM Stereo Rock subscribing stations were required to return the outdated reels back to the company (the metal reels themselves were pretty expensive.) But this left a narrower playlist, so stations often held on to older reels to add more variety.

Next, you put the jingles, commercial spots, PSAs, weather and time checks and mandatory hourly station identification on cart tapes.

Carts are essentially similar to 8-Track music tapes. More about them here.

Then, came the fun part - Programming the beast. Each system was different. Some were computerized, some used switches. And when you're done (and hopefully done right), you had something that sounded like this (This isn't TM Stereo Rock, this is the Drake-Chenault Hit Parade.......)

WRAL 101.5 FM, Raleigh, NC (1974)

As the '70s progressed and FM became more dominate, many automated FMs went live and some used the automation for AM programming.

Like many automated radio stations, KISM-FM's jocks often pre-recorded their shows prior to airtime.

But automated radio never went away. In fact, it's status quo. But using computers today. That big wall of tape machines can all be done from a laptop computer today. Very few stations today have live announcers physically playing the music.

Plan 9

I once installed this on my Dell Inspiron 3700 laptop (circa 1998) in the waning days of 2009 and promptly sent it back to 1990 (as you can see from the screen shot.)

Plan 9 has some things in common with classic UNIX, some old-school UNIX commands are recognized, but everything else goes way off the beaten path. There's a whole different learning curve to Plan 9. 

A whole different learning curve.

The documentation goes on extensively how Plan 9 sets out to be different from any other operating system out there you've used and on that, they have succeeded. 

Giving Plan 9 commands (after a few years of working with terminals, it's pretty simple. It's just that your average Windows non-geek is going to shit a twinkie when faced with the expectations of Plan 9) on how to run programs, how to mount writable media, how to display pictures and play games and read man pages and HTML files, how to copy and paste. Copy and paste is actually "snarf and paste" in the Plan 9 OS. Different, it is. Other than that, it's about as functional as Congress.

Plan 9 replaced UNIX at Bell Labs as the organization's "primary platform in the mid '80s for research and explores several changes to the original UNIX model that facilitate the use and programming of the system, notably in distributed multi-user environments." 

But it doesn't do Flash.

It was first released to the public in 1992. But next to Windows 3.1 or Mac of the time, it looked awfully primitive.

And it still does. Not the big seller in the world of modern computing. I shudder to think how this will even handle a mere DOS emulator, to say nothing of a simple MP3.....

Here's a video of Plan 9:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJZMsaxaNIo

Plan 9 was really just a massive headache to me. But if you're a budding programmer/developer who really wants to get in on the ground floor of something in relatively uncharted waters and make it work, then hit the manual on Plan 9.

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/man/index.html

But here's a handy tip if you're an average computer user who likes to easily surf the web. download anything and easily summon up music. photos and documents on Plan 9 - FORGET IT.

I just wish Plan 9 would get rid of that fat, jelly-bean like rabbit as it's mascot. Find a better logo....PLEASE! 

Like I said, Plan 9 is out there and ready for some SERIOUS R&D. But otherwise, it's not going to amount to much more but a computer hobbyist toy. But that's a one-up in itself: Ever heard of a virus that attacks a Plan 9 computer yet?

"Au Claire de la Lune" Unknown (1860)

Just when you thought you've heard everything in music, comes a blast from the '60s....

That's the 1860s....

Almost two decades before Thomas Edison unveiled his tin foil cylinder phonograph, a little known French scientist named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was also researching audio recording. 

He built a device called a "phonautograph" that recorded sound waves. 

However, unlike Edison, his device had no means of playback. His recordings were made on plate glass and later paper and stored, unplayed for nearly 150 years. There were no known means of playing the recordings without permanent damage to the extremely delicate grooves.

Finally, just a few years ago, with the aid of lasers and computer audio restoration, a 10 second snippet of a human voice singing "Au Clair de la Lune", recorded in February of 1860 was recovered from these recordings. An earlier 1859 recording of a tuning fork and possibly a bit of a human voice recorded in 1857 were also found. But that recording was too short to identify positively.

You can hear the "Au Clair de la Lune" recording below. Granted, the fidelity is extemely low, just barely recognizable. But it's history:

http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune.mp3

There is now a web site dedicated to the digitizing and preservation of phonautpgraph recordings:

http://www.firstsounds.org

The oldest playable recording up until then was the Lambert Talking Clock from 1878. Unlike Edison, who was recording and playing on weak tin foil at that time, Frank Lambert used a sturdy solid lead cylinder. Here is an MP3 of that (the audio on that too was barely recognizeable.):

http://www.tinfoil.com/lam-clock~.mp3

And until the recent playback of the 1860 phonautograph recording, this 1888 wax cylinder of Handel's Israel In Egypt was considered to be the earliest known surviving music recording. Again it's low fi, but eerily beautiful: 

http://www.archive.org/download/EDIS-SRP-0154-17/EDIS-SRP-0154-17.mp3

It was recorded on a wax covered cardboard cylinder, hence the heavy surface noise - especially at the end.

It has been speculated that ancient etched pottery COULD hold sound vibrations from as far back as 1000 B.C. But that hasn't been proven yet. Pottery clay itself is among the worst substances to make a recording on and unless the person making the pottery was singing VERY loudly to tool etching a groove - a possibility, but a very distant one. I doubt it...

Cheers!

Strange Ideas In Computing History: Software On Vinyl Albums

"In July 1977, Software Records launched the first issue of its BASIC software collection recorded on a 12" vinyl record. User could directly transfer programs from its record player to its computer or tape a copy. Sadly, as soon as the vinyl record had a tiny scratch, recorded programs were unreadable.

The first advert (left) was optimistic: "If everybody who read this ad would order one, we would be sold out!"

The second advert came out three months later, it was like a S.O.S.: "If we don't sell a bunch of our BASIC Software Volume 1 albums quick, we'll get fired!".

Were they fired? One thing for sure: Basic Software Volume 2 never came to life..."

- http://www.old-computers.com

Classic Computer Ads

Was it really that long ago you had to shuck out $12,000 for an 80 MB hard drive? (from 1977):

E-Mail, when it was "electronic mail" (from 1981)

Nothing says "helluva man" today like a 4.8k dial-up modem the size of a toaster oven (from 1971):

Now THIS.....Is a LAPTOP!