Showing posts with label RCA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RCA. Show all posts

Monday, August 26, 2019

I missed all the big events


July 24, 1970: The Antichrist takes up residence at a Baton Rouge, La., appliance store. And I freakin' missed it.

I had no idea that the malevolent ruler of the world had such a fascination with color TV. He and the 9-year-old me would have had something to talk about.

I bet he could have gotten me an RCA AccuColor set long before 1975, when the Old Man finally relented, succumbing to non-stop bitching by me and my mother and admitting that color television was not, alas, a fad. We did not get an RCA from McLeod's, however.

My father was a Magnavox man.

Saturday, August 10, 2019

Music in the night: The anachronism edition

Here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, we're taking a break this week from the Big Show, but not from music in the night.
In the process, I may have accidentally created a historical, technological and cultural mishmash for the ages. Let me explain here. 
While doing some maintenance on our laptop (and waiting for the interminable latest major update to Windows 10 to . . . well . . . terminate), I decided to listen to the radio. So I turned on our 1928 RCA Radiola 18, one of the earliest "light socket" sets, which translates to "electric" from the 1920s technobabble.

IN 1928, a technomiracle was as simple as "No more messy lead-acid batteries in the living room!"

"OK, whatevs," you say. But I totally get it. F'rinstance:

What if everybody's big flat-screen TV set ran off car batteries. In a cabinet. In your living room.

THEN, WHILE still waiting for the computer to update while listening to the local AM-oldies station, I decided to take a couple of geeky, artsy photos with . . . my iPhone. While the radio still is going strong after 91 years, I do not expect the iPhone to still be operational decades after I have ceased to.

Then I uploaded the pictures to the iMac, edited them, then uploaded the finished products to the blog, via the Internet.

So what you see here is a nine-decade span of technological advancement (whether it's "progress" is debatable, depending), several massive leaps of the human imagination and at least as many head-spinning cultural shifts spurred by all the other shifts.

That, when you come to think of it, kind of tires you out. That is all.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Colorfully killed by irony


Remember the old sitcom, Norby?

No, me neither.

Norby, from the creator of the somewhat better-remembered show Mister Peepers,  ran on NBC for exactly four months in 1955. It's notable for being the first sitcom to have every episode filmed in color.

All 13 of them.


David Wayne starred in the show, one of the first regular series in the then-new "compatible color" format on network TV. It was sponsored by Eastman Kodak -- which wanted to sell color movie film just as much as NBC wanted to sell color TV sets for parent company RCA -- and was "Photographed on Eastman Color Film."

Color sitcom on a network that wanted to showcase the newest big thing -- color -- and a photography behemoth that wanted to move Kodacolor . . . what's not to love?


WELL, this is where the irony comes in.

What wasn't to love? The cost. Kodak hated how much it cost to sponsor and film Norby on Eastman Color Film a lot more than it loved trying to sell color film to the 99.9 percent of TV viewers who, alas, could only see the show in lifeless monochrome instead of living color. Remember, in early 1955, an RCA console color TV would set you back $898 in non-devalued American currency.


That would be, not to put too fine a point on it, $7,955.03 in 2016 cash money.

And, friends, there we have it. The first all-color sitcom in TV history was killed by irony -- it just cost too bloody much.

All because it was in color.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Vintage LP du jour

 

On the menu tonight at La Maison de Trois Chords is The Friends of Distinction's Real Friends album, a nice 1970 vintage for our listening pleasure.

Not only does it feature one of my all-time favorite songs, "Love or Let Me Be Lonely," it also sounds better than many new albums right out of the shrink wrap, even though this particular LP left its shrink wrap around 1970.

DO YOU THINK I still could get me a "Complete RCA Catalog" if I mailed a quarter to Dept. C, Rockaway, New Jersey 07866?

On the other hand, maybe I can dig out the Complete RCA Catalog that I did get for 25 cents back then.

Once a geek, always a geek.

That is all.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Exciting. Yeah, that's the ticket


It's exciting!

It's new!

It's an 8-track!

(crickets)

WELL, it also was 1966, and we didn't know any (CLUNK) better. After 1966, the main excite(CLUNK)ment  was when the damn tape jammed in the #&*~!+% 8-track player and $%#@&*! up the whole #$%!*#\ works . . . and why doesn't this tape sound nearly as good as the album???

Son of a bitch.

Pay attention, kiddos, you probably will look back on your iPod just as (ahem) fondly someday -- and by fondly, I mean wistfully derisive of the clearly inferior technology while longing for the days when it ruled the world. Life gets complicated.

And so will you.

Friday, November 09, 2012

An important reminder


Advanced pickups aren't just good in bars and nightclubs. They're absolutely crucial on phonographs.

That's why it's important not only to play your Miracle Surface long-playing records only on the best equipment, but to make sure you're playing your stereophonic albums on the right equipment.

















After all, an RCA "Living Stereo" LP with the advanced Miracle Surface is a terrible thing to waste.

This important hi-fi reminder comes to you courtesy of Revolution 21 and 3 Chords & the Truth.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Back when cassettes ate their peas


"Who wants a tape-cartridge recorder?"

Not enough people, obviously, since I'll bet you've never seen one of these things. This RCA tape-cartridge recorder is a 1959 model, and it's kind of like a cassette deck, only bigger. With better fidelity, too, because it's basically a reel-to-reel machine with the reels in a great big cassette . . . er,
cartridge.

It never stood a chance when little cassettes came along in the mid-1960s.


The world is filled with Philistines! Any idiot knows that Beta the RCA tape-cartridge system is better, but noooooooo!


HEY! You can't argue with "four and one-half years of research."

Well, you can, but that just makes you an audiophobe. Philistine.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Magic lanterns speak in the night


Fire in a glass jar.

Lightning in a bottle.

The warm glow of magic in a darkened room.

This was radio once -- pictures of the mind riding electromagnetic waves through the ether, through glowing filaments in an airless bottle, out a loudspeaker and into your imagination through your ears.
These pictures are what that looked like . . . and looks like today, 83 years after this Radiola 18 originally took up residence in some 1920s radio household. Now it resides in our radio household, though what comes through the cone loudspeaker in 2011 is hardly as exotic as the offerings of 1928 seemed to entranced citizens of a newly established Radioland.

You've seen pictures like these
before in this space; they were from our other Radiola 18, the console set.


THESE PHOTOS ARE from the table model -- quite a large table model, to be sure -- which rests not on a table top, but instead on a wrought-iron stand that contains the set's large loudspeaker.

As I've said previously, radio once was an art form. Radios were art installations.

Now, radio is decidedly utilitarian, and barely that. But if you look hard enough -- and find something old enough that still works enough -- the art shines forth from a fire in a glass jar.

Lightning in a glass bottle.

The warm glow of magic in a darkened room.

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Four walls . . . and a 78


Stand back, people. I got my geek on.

And I'm gonna show you something. More precisely, I'm going to let you hear something.

First, however, the setup. In three . . . two . . . one. . . .


IT'S IRONIC that, after introducing the 45 almost a decade earlier, RCA Victor had pretty much perfected the 78 rpm record by 1957. As I told you in an earlier post that sadly lacked an audio-visual component apart from a snapshot of an old Elvis record, RCA's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was all that.

Let's once again say that like my Elvis 78s, this old Jim Reeves record -- after 54 years and God knows how many plays -- sounds better than most new vinyl today, what there is of new vinyl today, and better than a lot of CDs being cranked out today. Imagine when it was brand new. . . .

Anyway, I've been telling people how it has been all but lost to history how good 78s could sound, and now I've decided to show you. Enjoy.

AND NOW the technical notes. . . .

|geek|

The video was shot with a Nikon CoolPix L20 digital camera. Ambient audio was recorded with a Studio Projects C1 condenser microphone, while the audio from the 78 was off the Webcor record changer's phono output. Both the phono out and the mic output were fed into a Soundcraft stereo mixer, then into a professional sound card.

The audio was recorded to a WAV file with Adobe Audition software, then synced to the Nikon video. The audio track was not cleaned up in any way, just normalized to 98 percent modulation.

|/geek|

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The dawn of hi-fi . . . at 78 rpm


In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.


And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.

I've been putting some more of the records of my youth onto the computer hard drive -- bringing my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess. This is another of those, Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" (above), on a glorious 10-inch shellac platter.

I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.


IN 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it is today.

That goes as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it at left, sitting on a 1955 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.

And you know what? After half a century and change, these records still sound pretty much like new. And I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. A lot worse, because these old 78s sound great.

RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.

I'm itchin' like a bear on a fuzzy tree to play this stuff on the Big Show, I ga-ron-tee.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

When radio was an art form


Computer chips are boring square blocks with a porcupine fetish.

Transistors are little blocks of plastic, metal and minerals.

Vacuum tubes are Dale Chihuly masterpieces of glass and wonder. The older they are, the more spectacular, these little jars of fire and light that bring the world wondrous sounds.


I WAS THINKING about that after our little video demonstration Wednesday of my 1928 Radiola 18 console. Really, that radio is so old, it was made when RCA was an American company.

A big American company at the forefront of an exciting modern world of sound . . . and eventually sight.

Magic waves flying through the ether.

An entire world flooding your parlor at the flick of a switch.

It was the birth of the first "golden age" of mass entertainment. The birth of the "network." The birth of a truly mass culture.


THIS OLD Radiola represents an age of technology that looked a lot more like art. It represents an age, too, where life was more Chihuly and less commodity.


I WAS born into the last echoes of that age -- the age of wooden cabinets and shiny metal trim and tail fins. The age of RCA and Zenith and Philco and Silvertone. The age of flying by the seat of your pants and artistic statements.

The age where radios meant a warm, orange glow in a darkened room, a certain "ethereal" aroma and friendly voices from far away on a summer's night.

I was born into the age of vacuum tubes. And I miss it so.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Dancing the Charleston to heavy metal


When this radio was new, Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States.

The Jazz Age was in full swing.

Flappers were flapping in speakeasies, and everybody was swilling bathtub gin. Wall Street was still flying high, and brother most certainly could spare a dime.

Not that you'd need him to.
Yet.

This is an RCA Radiola 18, most likely in a custom cabinet. This is what you call heavy metal.

If you love vacuum tubes, this is your radio. See the big tube in the back? That's the rectifier, and it appears to be original to the set, manufactured sometime between summer 1927 and 1929. It's one of the earliest radio sets to run on "lamp current" --
that's 120 volts AC to you and me.

IN 1927, the norm was for your home radio (assuming you could afford one) to operate off of a couple of batteries -- one of them a big wet-cell not so different from what's under the hood of your car. That changed with the Radiola 17 and Radiola 18.

In 2011, this Radiola 18 still works just fine. A little arthritic, maybe . . . but aren't we all?

If you're not duly impressed
(and I add that, as far as I know, this old girl has never been restored), let me ask you something.

Do you think your iPod will still be functional in 2095?

Do you think you will?

Thursday, September 30, 2010

The future will run on bull****

Broadcasting-Telecasting, Feb. 1, 1954, Page 70

As you sit in your neighborhood coffee emporium, reaching for your next free latté from the replicator next to your overplush chair as you watch a holographic YouTube video emanating from your atomic-powered iPad, perhaps it would be enlightening to ponder the origins of the technological nirvana of our present age.

Looking at this issue of Broadcasting-Telecasting from way back in 1954, we can see that RCA Chairman David Sarnoff was prophetic as he told the gathered press about the 20-year atomic batteries now powering all our portable electronic devices. About the clean, safe atomic batteries now powering our homes for years upon years -- absolutely free -- for just the low, low cost of the initial purchase.

Never again would the American homeowner have to suffer through a power outage. Never again would consumption or economic limitations be placed upon the American consumer.

Nineteen fifty-four. It was the beginning of not only Atoms for Peace, but also Atoms for Prosperity.

Honey! Hand me the ray gun, will you? No, the garden spider is trying to eat the dog again -- it's already crushed the doghouse trying to get at Rover.

ZAAAAAAAAAAP!

By the way, dear, that dress you're wearing really does something for your tumors. Yeah, the backlight effect on the fabric is really cool.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Let's go to the videotape


Welcome to May 22, 1958. WRC television in the nation's capital is having a big soirée, and they've invited President Eisenhower.

All the bigwigs are there, including the Sarnoff dynasty -- father and son -- which wields the controls at the Radio Corporation of America, parent of the National Broadcasting Co., which owns WRC in D.C., which is dedicating its brand-new, ultramodern radio and TV facilities.

It's all about color today, and I'm not talking the integration battles up on Capitol Hill. I'm talking color television. And during this particular shindig, the president will be appearing in living color for the first time from our nation's capital.

And it all will be preserved for posterity on something called "television tape." That is --
How do the kids say? -- cool.

NOW IF WE press this button on the television-tape recorder, we can fast forward . . .

. . . all the way to 2010, 52 years in the future. Robert W. Sarnoff, president of NBC in 1958, is long dead. His father, RCA founder and chief David Sarnoff, is longer dead.

For that matter, RCA is dead, too. It didn't survive the 1980s, at least not as a corporate entity. A foreign company bought the name to put on cheap electronics made in China.

Ike is dead, commentator David Brinkley is dead, analog television is dead, broadcasting is dying . . . and TV engineers had to round up a tandem of antique videotape recorders and new technology in 1988 to preserve this, the oldest surviving color videotape, for you to watch here now.

For you to make it -- this lost world -- live again.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Veni, vidi, geeky


Let us travel back to the early 1960s, when your Mighty Favog was but a sprite . . . and Americans still made stuff.

Sigh.