Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

Today is the observed 448th birthday of the Bard.  To celebrate, I scanned portions of a May, 1964 National Geographic article penned by the then director of the Folger Library in Washington, D.C.  In classic National Geographic fashion, the magazine included an amazing map which could not be scanned as a whole.  I hope you enjoy some of the details.

I love this rendition of Puck.

There be monsters here.  This reminds me of the old flat Earth maps that assumed the presence of huge and menacing sea creatures lurking the depths near the edge of the world.

Only a nerd would be excited at finding a vintage magazine featuring Shakespeare's Britain.

Artist's rendition of the Globe.

Of course, there are always the haters that say Shakespeare didn't write the collected works of Shakespeare.  Some say he didn't even exist.  Some point to his signature as being a sign of illiteracy.  I guess that means the majority of doctors can't actually read.  I could say the same for most of my peers in the regulatory compliance world.  My signature is beyond illegible.

I have something special for the Shakespeare deniers: a reminder that on this blog he has some muscle behind him.

As an aside, I am becoming reacquainted with an old friend after the utter failure of a new one.  I've owned an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner for a number of years.  It is a single purpose device with a more complicated interface than most of the family prefers.  It had been supplanted by an all-in-one scanner/printer combination, a HP Deskjet 4480.  The latter is now declared the worst recent piece of technology I have owned other than Windows Vista.  It won't recognize refill cartridges.  Expensive high capacity cartridges work for a dozen or so pages and then are reported as empty or start overprinting lines.  Worse yet, when there is a cartridge problem, the scanner also stops working.

In contrast, the old Epson still works perfectly and the company has supplied updated drivers for Windows 7.  Bear in mind that this scanner dates to Windows XP.  Kudos to Epson!  I wish I could say the same for Adobe's Lightroom (they never updated RAW profiles for 1.0 and force users to buy new software) and the ColorVision Syder2express (no software updates since Vista).   Please bear with me while I get used to the controls and optimize scan file sizes.

For the HP Deskjet 4480, I present an Epic Fail award photo.  I will never buy another new HP printer, even if it is tossed in free with a computer package.

Vultures await the carcass of the HP 4480.  Long may it rot.

Royal Hartford Adjustment Department Circa 1908

Last month a box appeared on our doorstep bearing a gift from a friend.  These photos are taken from a print she picked up many years ago when she lived in the Kansas City area.  It is pretty beat up and the emulsion is doing weird things after 100 years.  But it is still 10 times awesome!

 I am reluctant to take this original print out of the frame given its condition.  Please ignore the reflections.

According to Royal company history, this photo was taken the year the Hartford manufacturing facility started up.  I've looked closely at the machine on the bench and can find no model number identifier.  Was this before they called the No. 1 by that name?

I looked up the studio and found more by the same photographer on a Connecticut history website.
Connecticutt History Online: John C. Nyser  MEK was nerding out on the photo of the book  keeping and penmanship class at the YMCA.

Do a search for Royal Typewriter on the website and you will be rewarded with photos of the factory and the Royal Typewriter Fife and Drum Corps.  Really. Royal Typewriter Company photos

 My photo would probably have been taken on an 8x10 plate.  The print is most likely like a contact sheet and holds a lot of detail.  For you serial number geeks, take a look at the covers.  I can make out one that says 16,541 which would be consistent with a 1907 manufacture date as shown on the Typewriter Serial Number Database.

This was a brand new facility and this portion looks like a pretty decent place to work.

I'll pull this out of the frame and do a proper copy before it falls apart.  This print is a great background for the work bench.  Typewriter and technology ephemera doesn't get much better than this! 

Royal Week at vintagetechobsessions continues through the weekend with a special typewriter waiting in the wings.  Thanks for reading!

The Birthday Blog Post From Space

March, 1964 was a good month.  But I am perhaps a bit biased.

For anyone that has been following this blog, it is no secret that I have a serious love of anything related to space exploration.  It's my birthday and I am going to totally date myself by posting National Geographic images from the month I was born.  I can't think about my birthday without thinking of growing up during the space race.

The excitement of space travel and technology development was the flip side to growing up with the Vietnam War, the Cold War, duck and cover, and its close cousin Mutually Assured Destruction.  I grew up in an era where all of this was shiny and new.  Everything smelled like the future.  Well, except for cars before emission controls.

This has an interesting resemblance to the 1954 kids book version of the the space suit.

 http://vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com/2012/02/dear-mr-glenn.html

This is something of a hybrid between the Soviet and U.S. approach to landing.  Interesting concept, but probably just as well that was all the idea amounted to.

I am still amazed by rockets.

This was actually at the beginning of the article.  The article contains a detailed foldout of the various pieces of Apollo space craft.  The LEM was pretty well thought out five years before we actually got to the moon.

Coming home.  Really, the whole thing is just amazing.

It's funny that I still think of us getting to the moon in terms of "we" and "us".  Certainly, there is some national pride and I would not have wanted the Soviets to get there first.  But I tend to think of actually getting there as an accomplishment for our species.

As much appeal as I find in human space travel, I am still excited by our collective activities in space exploration.  Four years into the Great Recession, it is hard to comprehend the amount of money it would take to lift people and all the stuff they would require to Mars. From my perspective, we need some really good targets before we take the next steps.

We are doing some incredibly good science between our robotic and remote sensing servants. As of March 19, 2012, we have collectively cataloged 762 extrasolar planets including one water world.  Just this week, we learned that Mercury is a really strange place. NASA Messenger Findings

Although our family mourned the loss of the Mars rover Spirit, Opportunity is beginning its ninth year of its three month mission.  Its much larger cousin, Curiosity, is in route to Mars loaded with a comprehensive laboratory tools.  Curiosity won't be dependent on solar power.  We'll see what lessons have been learned on reliability in design.

Although the NASA shuttle program is no more, the International Space Station has been continuously inhabited for over 12 years and zips by overhead every 90 minutes or so.  The U.S. crew members are licensed amateur radio operators.  Beyond having access to high powered transmitters for remote control quadrotors, talking with the ISS crew is the coolest thing I can do with my new FCC Technician license.

Granted, my kids have a space cheerleader at home and friends bound to be future software, computer and robotics engineers.  Although human space flight is a big deal for them, they are equally excited about everything else going on in space research.  At some point we'll probably try out the crowd sourced SETI Live program. http://www.setilive.org/

For me, space is all about inspiration.  I'm thankful for the pioneering work that has gotten us this far.  I'm also excited for the future of space exploration.  When we decide to go, it will no doubt be to someplace incredibly interesting.  Maybe one of our emissaries will get to say hi to Spirit in person.

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/why_we_explore_main.html

 

 More space stuff:
 Amazing kid space ephemera:   http://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/
If you like toy LEMs, you will love these great examples:
 http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2012/03/few-good-lems.html

Olympia, Typewriter of the Jungle

You can read more about me (and bask in my photographic glory) at
http://vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com/2011/11/other-olympia-sm3-in-italic.html

P.S.  Grandfather Simplex still hasn't been reassembled.  So many Olympias, so little time.

Remembering Ralph McQuarrie

In marking the March 3rd passing of Ralph McQuarrie, I did not have to look far for an example of his conceptual art.  The above image came by way of a generous gift of Star Wars memorabilia from a fellow Typospherian.  You know who you are - thanks again!

The cast above includes one of the intermediate renditions of Darth Vader as well as the young Dirk/Luke Starkiller/Skywalker.  At one point, Han Solo was even more of a major character as you will see below.

In the words of Threepio, "I'm backwards!"  I can't bring myself to try this iron on transfer, but I have been happy to see many fine Star Wars t-shirts at Target and through the Thinkgeek catalog.  However, I will never look as good as this crew.

It would be impossible to overstate the influence and creative vision of Ralph McQuarrie.  Envisioning the Lucas Star Wars universe could not have been an easy task.  Even the lowliest, or in this case amazing, bit of Star Wars kitsch would not have been possible without him.

In rummaging through my Star Wars collection, I came across another image that carries on the T-shirt theme.  This comes from Stephen Sansweet's "Star Wars Scrapbook' The Essential Collection".  Interestingly enough, the guy in the logo below is not Dirk Starkiller or Luke Skywaler, it's Han Solo as envisioned by Ralph McQuarrie.

I'll never look this good, either.

 

And here is the story behind the first logo for The Star Wars; also from Sansweet's book.

 We also own signed lithographs of the conceptual art from the run down the Death Star trench and the Millenium Falcon in Docking Bay 94. These were impractical for scanning, but images abound on the web.  Not surprisingly, everything Ralph McQuarrie has gone up in price on ebay.  While these are not particularly rare, they have been reserved wall space in our family room for years.

This last image seems appropriate.  Ralph McQuarrie created special announcements and a beloved series of Christmas cards for the Star Wars empire.   He has moved on, but will always be revered among the Star Wars faithful.

Admiral Byrd - 1934 Paramount Newsreel Book

I started with the back cover because it is simply iconic.

Richard Byrd was hardly the first to reach the South Pole.  Perhaps he is better remembered in the U.S. because this was an American expedition.  He had already garnered respect for his prior flights. 

In addition to the gimmick of flying over the South Pole, the expedition did hard exploration. One memorable factoid from this book is that they discovered an entire mountain range.  I've become a bit spoiled by Google Earth.

Front Cover

This expedition included ships completely loaded with provisions.  This was just one of the airplanes on board.

This photo borrowed from the Wikimedia Commons better shows the full scale of the expedition.

This wasn't a high quality book to begin with and it is definitely showing its age.  This page snapped and presented an opportunity for a clean scan to show off the interesting typeface.  The tone is pretty consistent through the book with the Newsreel Men as part of the community.

This caption sounds like it came straight out of a Wes Jackson movie.  Three expedition members had taken the Fokker on a scouting mission.  While away on foot, a windstorm destroyed the plane and everything in it.  They salvaged a piece of fabric from the wing.  This makeshift flag caught the eye of Admiral Byrd's crew after three days in the Antarctic waste.  Great stuff!

This was relatively early in the wireless era.  They had an entire room dedicated as a radio laboratory and reportedly maintained contact with the outside world for the duration of the expedition.  The book even starts with an amusing story of one of the Newsreel Men wanting to make ice cream.  No problem:  the Wireless Operator simply called (or more likely Morsed) for instructions.

I'm sure the amateur radio operators can comment on this antenna design.  That's a pretty fair amount of wire.  They had terrain and apparently used HF transmission to call home.  My guess is this is an HF rig.  Note the dog team in the background.

This Ford Trimotor lives on today in the Henry Ford Museum.

On the way to the first flight over the South Pole on November 28, 1929.

Looking over this book brought back happy memories.  I grew up during the space race and aspired to becoming a pilot.  In elementary school, I even did a report on Admiral Byrd.  That was before drifting to 20:500 or so nearsightedness rained on that parade. 

Now for a bit of rumination.  Admiral Byrd was one of my heroes and learning about how planes worked taught me a lot about technology.  Today, we take trips into space for granted.  The space shuttle program is grounded, but that has not prevented the continuous habitation of the International Space Station.  Many people are concerned that the lack of an American human space program with grand ambitions keeps us from becoming inspired.

This makes me think about my kids.  The technology oriented one, Gingercat, decided on her own that she wanted a radio license.  Her heroes include Nicola Tesla and Dean Kamen.  We keep up with NASA's robotic probe programs and sent poor Spirit electronic postcards before its last long Martian winter.  Like me, she tends to draw inspiration from past and present innovations and innovators.  She is OK with robotkind doing exploration on behalf of humankind.  However, I can't honestly say she is a typical girl.

Daughter number one is about to start high school in an innovative Animal Health program created in collaboration with K-State University.  She also loves science, but is not quite as obsessive about it as her sister.

Well, this blog post meandered a ways from the original subject matter.  But I can't help thinking about the future of innovation and the current state of science and technology education and inspiration.  I work for a manufacturing company engaged in helping building designers make buildings that don't fall apart in 20 years.  Intellectual capital and the ability to "make" are important priorities for me.

What do you think?  Where does your country stand in terms of innovation?  Do we have a hero deficit and does it matter?

As always, thanks for reading.

Typecast Machine of the Day:  Stuff that was made over 80 years ago and is still going strong.

Montgomery Wards 1912 Typewriters

Front Cover Detail:  100 years ago, Kansas City was still considered to be part of the West.

Front Cover

Front Cover Detail

Back Cover:  This building is still standing and can be seen from Google Street View

Back Cover Detail:  This tells an interesting story of the expansion of the Montgomery Ward distribution system.

 Now we get to the typewriters.  I am not an expert on these early machines.  As this catalog is somewhat scarce, I wanted to at least get information out on the Typosphere.  The catalog itself is a local Flea Market find and is remarkably good condition for a 100 year old piece of literature.

One page is dedicated to typewriters and supplies.  Other writing supplies fill several additional pages.

Montgomery Ward offered ribbons in several standard colors.  Apparently, re-inking was not an uncommon practice 100 years ago.

 This catalog is huge with a vast array of products.  I will do future posts on writing and photographic supplies.