Looking at LPs, CDs, and DVDs with an electron microscope
An evening pause: This video is even more interesting than my title above, in that the guy making it used his electron microscope to make an animation showing what it looks like when a record needle is running through the tracks of a record. Most cool.
And since vinyl appears to actually be making a comeback, I think that even the younger members of my readership will know what a record is.
Hat tip Thomas Biggar.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Yes– this is (and always has been!) very cool!
(I still have a 3 foot stack of 78 rpm records from the early 50’s, but no longer have a working 78 rpm speed turntable.)
Tangential– does anyone remember and/or have any quadrophonic records? It was a short lived format (late 70’s if I recall correctly), wherein they managed to encode 4 channels onto two tracks. They would play normally on any turntable, but if you had the correct equipment (and 4 speakers) you could get a decent 4 channel effect.
“Vinyl LP sales in the USA hit record numbers during the first half of 2018. Over 7.6 million LPs were sold between 29th December 2017 through the 28th June 2018, a 19.2% increase from the same period in 2017.Vinyl sales now account for over 18% of all physical album sales in the US, a 5% increase from 2017.”
Source: The Vinyl Factory 2018
A tangential, but very cool video:
Suzanne Vega (the ‘mother’ of the MP3 format)
“Tom’s Diner”
(Suzanne Vega records herself to a wax cylinder at the Thomas Edison Historical Park in New Jersey 2013.)
https://youtu.be/NTkhlFyQLlk
3:26
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/the-evening-pause/suzanne-vega-toms-diner/
I worked for the old CMC stereo chain in Atlanta in the early ’80s. We had a record of the 1812 Overture where they used real cannons for the “This is the cereal that’s shot from guns” part. No electron microscope necessary. One glance and you saw the huge jagged line where the cannons went of. Cheap needles would jump out of the groove in fright.
As to Quadraphonic, there [mainly] two (incompatible, of course) formats. One was CD-4 (four discrete channels) and the other was SQ (a matrix recording/decoding method)
One good thing that came out of it was that Dolby Stereo was basically the SQ matrix with the channels turned 45 degrees. (Think of a square turned to the right until it was diamond shaped. What had been the left channel became the center channel and so on)
Coolest thing I’ve seen this week.
eddie–
Great stuff!
-If I recall correctly, I have 2-3 discs that utilized the “SQ” methodology.
(Har– my solution to records that skipped too much?– put a penny on the
Not sure if he mentioned in the video—commercially mass-produced DVD’s and CD’s are physically pressed, in contrast to the disc’s one would create on a PC which are actually “burned” by your disc-writer.
Yo, Blair–
(mid) 1940s Record Pressing Factory
https://youtu.be/uIAwEUplj6Y
13:26
(These are shellac discs for 78 rpm records. Same methodology was adapted for vinyl. The first “LP” was released in 1948.)
excuse me…
“Har– my solution to records that skipped too much?– put a penny on the arm. Ground down the grooves a bit further, but what the heck.”
The last images looked like brail, all very cool stuff, I had no idea that this is the operation of a tone arm, great post.
CD/DVD Manufacturing
https://youtu.be/Ouv4x8zkQEM
4:36
Soul Asylum
“Misery”
https://youtu.be/GLQ2TIul8pI
4:01
>>great visuals of a CD factory.
last one…
“Submerged Turntable”
by Evan Holm
https://youtu.be/fv-xSeizGTw
1:04
Regarding submerged turntable, very cool Wayne
Joe–
http://www.afb.org/LouisBrailleMuseum/braillegallery.asp?GalleryID=47
Q:
Who is old enough to remember…when it was super-cool to go check out your friend’s new amplifier, turntable, equalizer, and/or speakers? (or making a cassette copy of a new album?)
Wayne, turntables not so much. But I do have a large collection of eight track tape’s.
I wonder if there is any videos that show turntables in moving cars… That’s how Motorola got its name.
Max–
8-tracks are becoming quite popular with the Hipster-element.
Wayne, yes more than old enough to remember going to a friends house and ogling their latest turn tables and amplifiers, then I got old and started listening to am radio………..