Hotel and Restaurant Menus of the 1850s and 1860s

More here: Hotel And Restaurant Menus of The 1850s and 1860s

The History of Videodiscs

Video disc players of some kind have been around as far back as 1898.

The Spiral Motion Picture Camera (1898)

The Spirograph (1907) Similar to The Spiral (above)

The Phono-Vision (1964) used video recorded on vinyl LPs, a technology that would come into commercial use as the Selectavision CED player (below)

MCA DiscoVision - The unfortunately named, very first practical consumer video disc was invented by the Pioneer Corporation of Japan and first licensed and marketed by American record conglomerate MCA Records, the owners of Universal Studios (MCA Records is known today as Universal Music Group) beginning in 1978. It was the very first laser based consumer medium, predating the CD by four years. These discs were two sided and the video quality was not much better than the best video tapes of that time.

They were also ridiculously expensive. In spite of stereo sound (on some discs) and their cool look, there was no way it could compete with the video tape. Video tapes could be home recorded. Video discs could not.

And then there was that name.

You couldn't sell something with "disco" anything in it in America in the early '80s without creating PTSD flashbacks of mirrored balls, white three piece suits and Bee Gees music. We were a nation still in recovery then and sales began to seriously tank.

They tried renaming it the Video LP (VLP), even CD Video before MCA finally gave up on the format.

Pioneer renamed it the Laserdisc and enjoyed some modest success in the early 1990s. They were still outrageously expensive. But there were many technical improvements. But the VHS video tape still dominated. The final blow came with the introduction of the DVD in 1996. Which also successfully killed off the VHS tape format by 2004 with the introduction of the recordable DVD-R and later by, YouTube, Netflix and cloud sharing.

RCA Selectavision - Also known as the CED video disc. Introduced in 1982. what made these different was instead of a laser, they used a stylus, similar to a vinyl LP record. Which is why you inserted the CED disc into the player through it's case and it is removed with the case to play each side.


However, even with the sturdy plastic case, they were not immune to the same problems that plagued vinyl LPs. Including dust (from inside the machine) minor scratches and if you had a smart toddler, they can physically remove the disc from the case by pressing the tabs on the upper corners of the case. And out falls the actual disc. (I knew one guy who had his entire CED disc collection ruined by his girlfriend's mischievous four year old son one horrifying Saturday morning.) The stylus like any vinyl format also had to be changed. By a professional. Often. Or else, the discs would wear out and skip like any other record. And they were not pleasant to look at.



They were discontinued in 1986.

CD-ROM - Most CD's are pretty much CD-ROMs. Meaning they could only be read and not re-recorded. With the CD-RW, they could. However in the mid '90s, computer software and video games was only available on CD-ROMs including your operating system. So all computers of that time had them. And some low quality music videos began appearing on standard music CDs, meaning you could play this disc in your CD-ROM equipped home computer and watch the video on your monitor. There were also instructional videos on CD-ROM. Remember these commercials?

"Try my product?......"

DVD - The DVD format went on sale in Japan on November 1, 1996, in the United States on March 1, 1997, in Europe on October 1, 1998 and in Australia on February 1, 1999. The DVD became the dominant form of home video distribution in Japan when it first went on sale in 1996, but did not become the dominant form of home video distribution in the United States until June 15, 2003, when weekly DVD rentals began outnumbering weekly VHS cassette rentals. The very first movie ever released on DVD was Twister (1996) The DVD could store 4.7 GB of data per disc.

Blu-Ray - is a format designed to supersede the DVD format, in that it is capable of storing high-definition video resolution (1080p). The Blu-Ray disc could store 25 GB of data.

HD-DVD - HD-DVD was a format designed to compete with the Blu-Ray. But the format failed to get a foothold.

 

Are You INSANE??

List of reasons why you could have been admitted into an insane asylum in the late 1800s. Do YOU qualify?

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Ahhh...Cinco de Mayo. The day we Americans celebrate Mexican Independence Day by throwing parties, quaffing margaritas, tequila or Modelo beer and enjoying a fun super tasty South of The Border feast.

But that's not entirely correct. There's lots of fun parties and the alcohol does flow freely. The food is always marvelous and super tasty.

Yet Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican independence day. That's September 16th. Cinco de Mayo is in fact, more of an American holiday than a Mexican one. And one that deserves more recognition than it gets.

Cinco de Mayo's roots begin during the French occupation of Mexico. Mexico at the time was in a real mess. They had 15 years of wars (The Mexican-American War, The Mexican Civil War and The Reform War) and everybody was getting tired of it. Finally in 1861, Mexican President Benito Juarez told Britain, Spain and France to hold off on their debt collection for these wars for two years until they can financially reorganize and get the country back on track.

They sent armies to confront Mexico and collect their debts regardless. Britain and Spain negotiated and backed off. But the French, under the rule of Napoleon III would not hear of it and another war began. Napoleon III wanted to turn Mexico into a French territory and since the Americans at the time were in an ugly civil war, he thought he could establish a strong enough foothold in Mexico, which he could then use to invade America (which was still a very small, very rural country at the time.) By using the Confederate South as proxies.

Napoleon sent 8,000 troops to attack Mexico's 4,500 troops at Veracruz. But on May 5, 1862, the much smaller Mexican army sent the French into retreat. The news reached the border communities of America where people celebrated the news.

While there would be more fighting, a major turning point had begun. Had Napoleon III defeated the Mexicans at Veracruz, the Civil War could have ended very differently.

So Cinco de Mayo is very much an American holiday. (More on Cinco de Mayo)

It was the expanding Latino communities that brought the holiday across America. But it was beer companies in the '80s that helped bring Cinco de Mayo into the American mainstream.

Because if there's one thing everyone LOVES, it's to party.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Corned Beef & Cabbage

 

It's the quintessential St. Patrick's Day dinner food in America, one as mandatory as turkey on Thanksgiving. But how did we come to eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day?

It actually might surprise some that this really isn't an Irish dish at all. 

The original Irish dinner actually used bacon in place of corned beef. And not the bacon strips that are a mandatory staple of American breakfast tables. Or even salt pork. 

In the 19th century, Irish immigrants to the United States began substituting corned beef for bacon when making the dish. Corned beef was more plentiful and cheaper than the bacon used to make the traditional Irish dish.

To make corned beef & cabbage is really simple.

You'll need:

-  3 pounds corned beef brisket with spice packet

This is a corned beef brisket.

This is not.

-  10 small red potatoes 

-  5 carrots, peeled and cut into 3-inch pieces

-  1 large head cabbage, cut into small wedges

 

Place the corned beef in a large pot or Dutch oven, add water (just enough to cover the brisket.) Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for 50 minutes per pound. Add cabbage, potatoes, carrots and onions in the last half hour. Slice across the grain.

(Don't forget the horseradish, Guinness beer or Bailey's Irish Cream!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

  

 

When Cough Medicine Was Cough Medicine

Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins has been called many things, but "talented diva" wasn't one of them. She's regarded as the worst opera singer in history. And that's actually putting it nicely.

Who was Florence Foster Jenkins? Well, let's just say she wasn't exactly Maria Callas.

Born in 1868 to a wealthy family, she studied music and wanted to take formal opera training in Europe. Perhaps sensing something, her father refused to pay for it. After he died, she used her inheritance for formal singing lessons (I'm sure somebody tried to get this tone-deaf woman on key.) And she started public recitals in 1912.

And at this point, I'll just let you hear for yourself....

Her screeching voice had all the grace and subtlety of a vacuum cleaner. And to boot, she often dressed in angel costumes, complete with fake wings.

She often ignored the laughter from audiences, regarding it as jealousy. And she did have probably the best comeback ever to her critics. "People may say I can't sing," she said, "but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

She held yearly recitals at the Ritz-Carlton in New York to her loyal core of fans (yes, she did have fans.) But they were a select few. Just before she died, she did hold a public recital at Carnegie Hall in 1944. And tickets were sold out weeks in advance. She died a month later at 76.  

Her recording career luckily has only been preserved on a few 78 RPM sides, which have been collected and issued posthumously on RCA in 1962. And covered only one side of the LP.

 

 

More.....

The United States That Could Have Been

Click on map to enlarge

RIP The Incandescent Light Bulb

As of today, January 1, 2014, incandescent light bulbs can no longer be manufactured for the USA. (Contrary to popular belief, you can still sell them - there's lots of old stock still floating around out there. They just can no longer be manufactured anymore outside of industrial use. And once the old general consumer stock is gone, they're gone.)

I have two boxes of 40 watt Sylvanias. And they are my nest egg. There will not be just a mere eBay bidding war, but riots in the streets before I sell out.

It's the end of an era that saw us from the 1870s to 2013. Now the only light bulbs made are those weird curly CFL things and LED lights.

THESE fucking things. When they first came out, I thought they were pretty cool because you didn't have to change them as often. Until I had to see them everywhere.

Now I understand the reasons why we're going this way. Incandescent lights put out more heat than light and you do pay more in your electric bill for it. But my kitchen always seemed a little warmer with incandescents. More home-like. I get in the mood for actual cooking easier with incandescents.

And incandescents can last a VERY LONG time. Here's proof:

 I switched to all CFL in my place a year ago and my monthly electric bill went down by $10. But I'm light sensitive and these things are starting to seriously irk me. They glow too white.

It's like an analog to digital conversion. It's good, but too sterile. You can't work your Easy Bake oven with a CFL. And there was such a variety of incandescent lights. All colours and styles. It's going to take CFLs a LONG time to catch up with it all.

The CFL also lacks something else. A warm glow. That's what I miss. And LEDs are almost freakish in their brightness.

And then there's that little mercury problem. Granted it has as much mercury as an average transistor radio. Problem is, some of those radios lasted us for YEARS before they croaked.

My beloved Sears AM/FM transistor radio (1980-1983)....Sigh!

The CFL light bulb is also unpredictable. I put one bulb in a continuously running outdoor light. And it only lasted 5 months The next one burned for over a year. I seem to find that problem a lot with CFLs. 

But change happens.

I accept it. But something deep and subtle is always missing....

Charted History Of The Music Player

(Click to enlarge)

 From ShortList

The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Strange-and-Mysterious-History-of-the-Ouija-Board-229532101.html

The History of Stereo and Quadraphonic Sound

When audio recording began, there was only one sound source (monaural or "mono"). The horn of a cylinder or gramophone record player. And all was well. For most people.

For others, something was missing.

You see, the epitome of a perfect recording is not just an incredibly good performance artistically, but also how lifelike it sounds.

The first is actually easier to achieve than the latter. The most lifelike sounding and the very best artistic recording rarely come together. Even today.

The very first experiments in binaural reproduction (an early form of stereo) go back as early as 1881 (no joke!) At a theater in Paris. The sound was transmitted through two telephone wires to special headsets that received the audio. This was used in hotel rooms and by special subscription service. But it didn't garner much attention, simply because the tinny headsets and 19th century telephone line quality audio was so bad.

An early two-channel playback system, developed and sold in the early 1900s, used a two-channel phonograph cylinder and two mechanical pickups and horns. But it really didn't sound good and the early recordings themselves have been lost to time. To make stereo sound acceptable on a commercial scale, vast improvements in monaural audio fidelity would have to be achieved.

Here's another early attempt at stereo, it's mono, but used a delay effect.

Enter radio.

There were experiments in stereo broadcasting going back to the early '20s. They utilized two radio station frequencies, two radio receivers (VERY rare in most homes of that time) and a special headset that connected into the outputs of both radios and at a time when most earliest commercial radio stations were very competitive, very hard for stations themselves to negotiate (the earliest duopolies of stations didn't happen until the late 1920s.) But again, this was early 1920's AM radio fidelity, while still an enormous leap from the telephone lines of 1881, still had it's own problems. including skywave interference from distant stations, hetrodyne squeal, harmonics from nearby stations and electrical interference.

However, recording had moved from acoustic recording horns to electrical microphones and reproducers. With the dramatic improvements in recording fidelity, the idea of stereo recording was again revisited. In the early 1930s, Bell Labs and RCA Victor made experiments in hi-fi and stereo recording, independent of each other.

Here's an early RCA Victor Mono Hi-Fi recording session with The Paul Whitman Orchestra in 1933.

Here's a VERY early experimental single groove stereo recording made by Bell Labs in 1934

Magnetic tape was also being developed. The first magnetic recordings were made in 1898 on steel wire and the first magnetic tape was invented in 1928. For the most part, they were merely experimental, first because the lengths of wire or tape needed to make reasonable quality recordings were astronomically long. Second, the tapes were made of steel or paper backed magnetic tape, making them prone to breakage. It wasn't until the mid 1930s when German scientists developed the first successful hi-fi tape recordings and it was initially used for Nazi radio broadcasts.

The very first Stereo system offered to consumers was reel to reel tape in the mid 1950s. But they found limited acceptance. Reel tape was awkward, bulky and expensive. Most records however remained monaural - except for a few made by Cook Laboratories. These records were binaural. as mentioned earlier and used headphones instead of speakers for the best reproduction.

They also used two grooves with two cartridges and pickups

  

Single groove full stereo records were finally perfected by 1957 and were sold by 1958. They were an instant sensation. But there were still millions of monaural record players and the heavier tone arms would ruin a stereo record. So record companies made records in both Stereo and Monaural (aka "Mono") versions until 1968.

Stereo radio was also being developed. First using a revival of the AM/AM experiment of the 1920s. When FM was established in the 1950s, AM/FM radio combos experimented with using FM for the left channel and AM for the right.

Yes, there were actually tuner components that allowed you to hear FM on the left channel and AM on the right. This crude form of stereo radio was obsolete by 1961 when multiplex FM Stereo was invented.....

Stereo sound is great. And when it's recorded with care, it can be breathtaking in it's own sense of realism. But you're still only getting what's coming from the front of you. Not the ambiance from the rear as you would in an actual live performance. In the early days of stereo recording, most of the early stereo recordings tried to emphasize the stereo ping-pong, left to right, right to left sound, which is fine if you weren't particular with the realism of sound, just the physical effect of stereo sound. Something to show off your fancy new stereo and what it can basically do to your friends.  

Many early stereo studio recordings (especially those early stereo records from the late '50s and early '60s) were deliberately mixed to highlight these effects. But most pop/rock recordings were originally mixed in mono and later run through a gamut of fake stereo enhancements (echo chamber, reverb, vocals on one channel, instrumentation on the other) instead of going back to the original multitrack studio tapes - if available, and creating a true stereo mix. If it couldn't be done, and in most cases regardless in my opinion, it should have been left alone. It wasn't until the mid '60s when true stereo mixes of pop/rock albums became the norm. The technology and science of stereo recording was improving

And then came Quadraphonic.

Quadraphonic was first used as far back as 1953 (using 4 track tape) in Europe and introduced to the American market by the Vanguard Recording Society in June 1969. Then RCA followed with a Quadraphonic 8-Track tape

In the early 1970s the very first Quadraphonic LPs came out. But there was a problem. There was no uniformly compatible system for making Quad LPs. There were three incompatible systems SQ (developed by CBS Records), CD-4 (developed by RCA, no relation to Compact Discs, which wouldn't be invented for another 10 years) and QS (developed by Sansui).

This created a lot of confusion. And the government wasn't willing to step in and saw this solely as a civil matter beyond their authority (which would be repeated for AM Stereo in the '80s. But what made AM Stereo different was it was a form of radio transmission and that usually automatically falls under government jurisdiction.)

But it was the consumer that suffered the most. Because most labels allied with one system of Quad or the other. For example, if you liked Santana and had an SQ Quad system, you were in luck. Santana was a Columbia artist then and Columbia used SQ exclusively. However, if you also liked The Doors, you were toast. Elektra used the CD-4 Quad system and while those records will play on an SQ system, you won't get Quad sound (and the basic stereo separation of a CD-4 Quad record was not very good on an SQ Quad system. Or even a basic stereo.

 

Click to enlarge and read

There was no true winning system in the Quad war. But it seemed like SQ had far more advantages than CD-4. SQ used creative phasing, while CD-4 Quad records required a special stylus and since the system was encoded using something very similar to how FM Stereo radio is encoded at a very high inaudible frequency. So there was a serious record wear problem. If the portion of the groove where the frequency was encoded was worn, the Quad separation of the CD-4 Quad record was gone as well.

And what about Sansui's QS system? I don't have any personal experience with QS, but I have heard it said the QS system was very similar to SQ.

And like the early stereo recordings, studio engineers of the time were eager to utilize all four channels sonically in every way possible. Including putting each instrument on it's own channel. They had to. You see, most recording studios are acoustically dead places, so there was no way to capture the ambiance of a live recording. They could add artificial reverb and echo to the rear channels (as with the early fake stereo records), but it would sound AWFUL if played on a conventional stereo. So most didn't. I say most because I have heard some REAL atrocities in Quad.

Usually the very best sounding Quad albums were the classical albums recorded specifically in Quad.. They captured the sense of depth and space far better than most pop or rock albums.

Click to enlarge and read

The Quad fad had pretty much died out by 1978. Mostly out of consumer exasperation with the competing systems. But also the extra baggage of two extra speakers. But multiple-channel sound was revived by Dolby for use in movie theaters in the late 1980s

Today, the children of Quad, the DTS and Dolby Surround systems are used in home theater setups and even as a limited edition CD/DVD series - AGAIN with competing and incompatible systems, SACD and DVD Audio. They were introduced in the early 2000s. But like the Quad LPs of the '70s, they too have largely vanished due to consumer frustration as well as indifference.

Your Boss Sings The Hits

When we look for employment, even in record stores, the last thing you expect to get is a free record (that came later in your record store career ;) ....)

Until the '80s, when video tapes and later in the 2000's when DVDs became standard, many employers used records to either train employees or boost morale (in that special way only a nameless, faceless and often clueless mega-corporation can.)

When this practice started, it's hard to say. Instructive records and messages from employers to workers of some sort have been around since the 1890s (and on wax cylinders!)

It wasn't until the 1920s did the major record labels set up custom record divisions. They were initially for businesses or organizations with a large nationwide or regional subscriber/client/employee base, but later allowed their presses to be used for smaller regional music record labels. 

If you were a lucky McDonald's employee in early 1979, you got this Eva-Tone soundsheet to prep you for the latest summer advertising campaign blitz for McDonald's.

I'm not sure what the message is here. Are the employees supposed to remember the lyrics of this jingle?

Bayer Heroin

 

.....and my mom only gave me the orange chewable aspirin!

World's Oldest Colour Photograph

                 All original, not hand tinted! From 1872!


                         Oldest Photograph in history, from 1826.

"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!

Yes! We Have A Cure For That!: Drug Advertisements You'll NEVER See Today.....