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Showing posts with label 1940s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1940s. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
A Random Gallery of Vintage Menus
Labels:
1930s,
1940s,
1950s,
1960s,
Advertising,
Alcoholic Beverages,
Beer,
Breakfast,
Cooking,
Crime,
Drugs,
Fine Living,
Food,
Jazz,
Lunch,
Movie,
Restaurants
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Saturday, August 20, 2016
It Seemed Like A Good Idea Part 3
Labels:
1920s,
1930s,
1940s,
1950s,
1970s,
Banned,
Beauty,
Dangerous,
Mail Order,
Novelty,
Obscure tech,
Scam,
Strange Products
Thursday, December 03, 2015
Merry Christmas - Bing Crosby (Decca/MCA/Geffen, 1942/1955)
This is probably the world's best known Christmas album. Nearly every household with a collection of Christmas music has a copy. And it still sells briskly 70 years after it's original release.
It was originally released in 1942 as a 4 record set of 78 RPM discs, later a 10" LP and 4 disc 45 RPM set in 1949. In 1955, the album was expanded to include 4 more songs on the 12" LP.
Original 1942 78 RPM copy |
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Horrifying Vintage Meal Ideas: Halloween Edition
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
"The Lamp of Memory" Yvonne DeCarlo (1942)
In 1942, Yvonne DeCarlo, then 20 years old, a rising star and future Lily Munster recorded a musical film called a soundie, which are pretty much the very earliest music videos. They would be shown in theaters sometimes, or in coin operated jukeboxes and you could also order them on 16mm film for home showings.
More on Yvonne DeCarlo's singing career.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
The Tefifon
When it came to tape machines, the German made Tefifon was one odd duck.....
....That's because it was no ordinary tape machine.
The Tefifon (or Tefi) used perhaps the very first example of an endless loop, like an 8-Track. But no magnetic tape. Instead, it used grooves in the tape, like a vinyl record.
Unlike the 8-Track, most Tefifon tapes are still playable after all these years. The Tefi machine was invented in the 1930s and refined before becoming available in Germany (and it's US export brand, Westrex.) from 1952-1964
The thin grooved tape had the same fidelity as an Evatone sound sheet. Each Tefi tape could play for sixty minutes up to four hours.
Each recording began with 40 seconds of fanfare. This was for the listener to adjust their sound equipment for the best fidelity and insure stable tracking of the stylus and groove.
Here's a full Tefi recording. Their repertoire was mostly of unknown German acts.
More on the Tefi machine and tapes.
Monday, February 02, 2015
Vintage Seattle Restaurant Menus
Labels:
1940s,
1950s,
1960s,
1970s,
Beverages,
Food,
Historical,
Restaurants,
Seattle,
Snacks
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
The Legend Of KLEE-TV
Like some broadcasting ghost story, it gets told again and again.
But like many urban legends, there is a grain of truth underneath the embellishment.
Image: The Pecan Park Eagle |
In 1958, Reader's Digest magazine published an article on how one mysterious afternoon in 1953, a signal showing the station ID card of KLEE-TV, Houston, TX appeared on TV sets throughout the UK - three years after KLEE-TV was sold and their call letters had changed to KPRC-TV.
Now here's the grain of truth: It's not uncommon for local over the air radio/TV signals to reach crazy distances under the right atmospheric conditions. It's a phenomena that happens every night on the AM radio band. But more rarely on FM and TV. But they still happen there.
Overseas reception of FM and TV signals is the rarest of all of what is known as "DXing", an actual hobby amongst radio/TV fans who surf over our ever increasingly noisy airwaves, trying to find those far off stations from hundreds, or even thousands of miles away on locally empty frequencies that can make brief appearances from a few seconds to even an hour or more on FM radio and TV. There are several online web sites and chat boards for DXers.
When you did find a far off station, the receiver of the signal would track down the address of the station and send them a confirmation of what they heard and at what time. To which the station engineer would send back something called a QSL card, which was like a postcard (which it was) with the station logo on them. Engineers used to look forward to getting these letters, as it was a testament to his/her engineering skills.
They don't send out QSL cards anymore (the last one I got was in 1982.) and there are far fewer broadcast engineers today than there were in those days.
In fact, the last convention of broadcast engineers I saw could have been mistaken for an AARP gathering with the number of grey, white and bald heads I saw there. And when they're gone, I'm not sure who is going to take their place. Not many young people seem to be taking up the profession.
But here's the letdown.
First, all broadcast signals fade away into the ether eventually. They cannot reflect back from a different time. If they could, the airwaves would be a far bigger mess today than they already are, considering all that has been transmitted over the last 100 years on every frequency around the world.
Second, the transmitting system of the UK is PAL. The US uses NTSC. Both are digital today, but were then - and still are - hopelessly incompatible with each other. You could not see NTSC video on a PAL TV set and vice versa without a very expensive, very large (which NO housewife would tolerate in the living room) and in the end, useless conversion system
Third, the transmission carrier frequencies of US and UK TV were also different.
And finally, it was all a hoax to sell TV sets in England:
"As it turned out, in a particularly clever marketing effort, a would-be British entrepreneur had sent a form letter to all U.S. TV stations making the claim that their station’s signal had recently been viewed in the UK. For proof, the sender included what appeared to be a photo of that station’s test pattern on a TV screen. Hoping to peddle a TV set he claimed could receive broadcasts from extreme distances, the sender had been working from an old list that did not reflect the Houston station’s change of hands.
All the other TV stations getting the letter tossed it. But when the letter from England got forwarded to KPRC, someone thought it looked like news and the station did a story on it. The Houston station soon figured out what the sender of the letter had been up to, but by then it was too late and yet another urban myth had been born. Like a radio wave moving ever deeper into space, it continues to live on...." - Mike Cox, The Great Texas/British TV Hoax of 1953
Labels:
1940s,
1950s,
British,
Broadcasting,
Rare,
Strange,
TV,
Unexplained,
Urban Legend
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