Posts filed under 'Obsolete Technology'
I recently finished a book written by B-Love’s friend Mac Montandon about jetpacks. It’s part history, part tale of an obsession with flying devises that can be strapped on like a rucksack. The most famous of these was the Bell Rocket Belt developed in the late ’50s - early ’60s (see it in action at the beginning of Thunderball). The Rocket Belt was somewhat simple in design, relying on hydrogen peroxide for fuel. To create the thrust needed to actually make a man fly, a single tank of nitrogen would press the hydrogen peroxide in two tanks out and into a catalyst chamber, which then created a superheated blast of steam. The Rocket Belt pilot used two hand controls to manipulate the direction of the nozzles, thus steering the Rocket Belt in the desired direction. Probably the biggest disadvantage of the design was the limited flight duration, which topped out at around 30 seconds. This curtailed the Rocket Belt’s appeal to the military, which would have been the main customer of this fanciful flying machine. But the Rocket Belt eventually led to a project that I found even more intriguing: The Bell Jet Belt.
The successor to the Rocket Belt, the Jet Belt, relied on a small kerosene powered jet engine instead of a hydrogen peroxide “rocket” engine. This new design allowed for up to 20 minutes of flight at speeds of up to 120 MPH with a range of about 20 miles. The Flying Belt was built around the W-19 bypass turbofan engine, which was started by a small explosive cartridge. The turbofan design offered a lot of power with little fuel consumption, which gave this jetpack the impressive flying time and range. Like the Jet Belt, controls were provided by means of hand-grips. Maybe somewhat similar to the Harrier jump jet, thrust from the engine was “vectored” by nozzles, giving the pilot the ability to go forward, backward, and rotate from side to side. Interestingly, the kerosene fuel was housed in clear plastic tanks that wrapped around the engine and held about six gallons.
Like the Rocket Belt, the Jet Belt was insanely noisy, making its military value limited (since it would be worthless for surveillance missions). In 1968, the Jet Belt program died and the design was sold to Williams Research Corporation, which later used an updated version of the W-19 engine for the Air Force’s cruise missile program. Another reason why the Jet Belt was probably unattractive to the military was the weight of the whole thing. Without fuel, the Jet Belt topped the scales at 124 pounds. This made it less appealing as a practical flying device that could be used in the field (although if made today, lightweight material could be utilized, like carbon fiber and titanium, to bring the weight down significantly).
While a few jetpack fans have successfully recreated Bell’s Rocket Belt, it appears only one man has tackled the far more complex Jet Belt design. Over in the UK, Richard Brown seems to be making progress on an updated version of the Jet Belt. There are still some real obstacles someone would need to overcome to make the design successful, like keeping the total weight of the jetpack reasonable and protecting the pilot from a catastrophic engine failure that could send fatal bits of fan into a pilots body, but I believe these technical hurdles could be overcome with the copious application of money and time. Of course the real question is why would the world even need a turbojet powered jetpack. The answer is of course it doesn’t fill any real need other than it would be totally cool.
March 22nd, 2010
OK, I don’t need a new project this summer, but I’ve recklessly put another one on my plate. I found the ARP Omni II pictured above on Craigslist for a pretty good price due to a couple issues I’ll mention in a minute. So why bother buying an ARP Omni II you might ask? Good question! The Omni II was a popular “string synth” from the late ’70s to early ’80s and was used by bands as diverse as Joy Division and Supertramp. The whole string synth fad came about in the early ’70s as an alternative to the Melotron, which was an expensive and cumbersome tape-based proto-sampler keyboard. The idea behind the first string synth, the Eminent, was synthesize string sounds rather than play back tape recorded strings like the Melotron. The Eminent lead to the Solina which lead to the ARP Omni I/II, which I guess used the basic design of the Solina, but added a couple of additional features. Pretty much every synth manufacture offered some kind of string synth back in the day (probably thanks to disco) including Roland, Yamaha, and Korg. The key to any of these old string synths is the built in analog chorus/phase effects — without it, a string synth just sounds kind of bland.
The Omni II is a bit of an odd beast even by ARP standards. It is basically three analog synths in one box sharing a common keyboard. It’s neither monophonic (meaning it plays one note at a time) or polyphonic (meaning it plays chords) but paraphonic which means that it is capable of playing all the notes on the keyboard using something called divide down technology. Polyphonic synths were quite rare in the ’70s. On of the few was the the Prophet 5, but it was also quite expensive. These string synths used the same technology as transistor based organs used allowing for chords but cost far less than standard polyphonic synths.
So what does my Omni need in the way of repairs? Well for one, all the ‘E’ notes sustain when I play the string sounds, which means there is probably a blown capacitor on one of the circuit boards. This is a pretty common issue with a lot of ARP synths from the ’70s. I guess the Omni was the product that kept company executives in cocaine and champagne, but to maximize profits, I think they cut corners wherever they could — like using cheap capacitors prone to failure. I’m also gonna need to either clean or replace all the sliders. I think someone tried to clean them with WD40 or similar, so now they’re pretty much shot. Right now I’m leaning toward replacing, since pretty much all the parts used on the Omni are still being made. Below are some links for other Omni owners to use when sourcing parts.
ARP Sliders
http://www.synthrestore.co.uk
Arp Omni II Switches
https://www.vintagevibe.com
Arp Omni II Chorus Phaser Chip
https://www.vintagevibe.com
Arp Omni II Synth and Bass Voice Chip
https://www.vintagevibe.com
Arp Omni II Voicing Circuit Chip
https://www.vintagevibe.com
Arp String Ensemble Bass Section OP Amp
https://www.vintagevibe.com
Arp String Ensemble Knobs
https://www.vintagevibe.com
ARP Omni II Problems
http://www.vintagesynth.com
Parts List
http://peterunderdog.com
Hear the Omni II in action on one of the best songs ever…
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
http://www.youtube.com
June 30th, 2009
My first CD was either Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason or New Order’s Substance. The only one I was able to find the other day was Substance and it was missing the second disc. If memory serves, this CD was a gift from my parents around Christmas 1988 — making the disc over 20 years old. This album was played endlessly through my high school, college, and graduate school days. So how has it held up? Not so great. It’s scratched to the point of making some songs unplayable. But in terms of the structural integrity of the disc itself, it seems to be in pretty good shape. The disc hasn’t warped and there is no discoloration or signs of degradation from chemical instability. So I don’t think people need to start worrying about their CDs not being playable in 50 years. With a little care in handling, I think any CD should be fine for the long haul. Don’t know about CDRs though. I won’t be able to report on burnable CDs for another 15 years, but I’m not optimistic, since organic dyes are used and are more likely to become unstable over time.
I’m still a fan of CDs in the day and age of downloadable digital music. I like stuff, so the idea of downloading music has never caught on with me. That being said, I’m not the kind of consumer the music industry should be pinning their hopes on, since nearly all of the CDs I purchase these days are used.
February 23rd, 2009
I love my iPod mini. It’s virtually an antique compared to Apple’s newer offerings, but I love the design and materials of the older style iPods despite the now creaky technology. Like a lot of older iPod owners, I’ve been faced with a familiar problem of battery life, or lack thereof. Rather than ditch my beloved mini, I decided to perform surgery and replace the battery myself — no easy task on a device that seems to be devoid of any screws. But like my Mac mini, it just takes some prying to get these things open. A little research of the web yielded a company that sells both replacement batteries and the tools necessary to disassemble the mini. So I decided to dive in and give it a try. Getting the little bugger apart is kind of tricky, but all the guts slide right out once the endcaps have been removed. From here on out, it’s pretty simple to remove the old battery and hookup the fresh one. Reassembling everything is straight forward.
I also decided to build a AA battery charger for the mini for those times when I’m away from AC power. One of my co-workers brought in a bunch of old Altoids tins, so I’ve been searching for a way to put those to use. I found an article online from Make Magazine about creating a homemade charger using the skinny tins. I sourced all the parts online for about $20.00, but I had to solder it all together. The good news is the thing actually works after I got it all sorted out, the bad news is my soldering skills still leave a lot to be desired. I’m getting better, but I still need to work on my technique to get nice clean connections. If anyone wants me to build one of these chargers for them, I would be more than happy to do so. They’ll charge other USB enabled devices — not just iPods.
February 10th, 2009
A few regular readers might remember some old posts where I talked about my attempts to create new discs for the Mattel Optigan organ. I won’t rehash the detailed explanation of what the Optigan is, but in a nutshell, it’s a cheesy home organ that hasn’t been in production for about 35 years. To produce the sounds, audio loops are read from a transparent sound disc. Various discs covered specific musical genres, like country, folk, or polka just to name a few. I’ve always wanted to make my own discs with my own sounds, but technical obstacles always got in my way. I was able to scan existing discs and print copies, but the fidelity was not all that great and it was difficult to punch out the center hole of the disc. Making a disc with brand new sounds presented even more challenges, since software was involved. But some folks with far more technical expertise have managed to do what I never was — create a new Optigan disc. Go here to see a demo. I’m super excited about this development and I’m eagerly awaiting the opportunity to buy a new disc.
October 11th, 2008
I don’t know why I’m so attracted to obsolete technology. Maybe it’s ingrained in my American DNA to root for the underdog. And what a glorious underdog the MiniDisc (MD) is. Introduced in 1992 by Sony, it was a digital alternative to the more expensive DAT format. But Sony has a history of poor marketing when it comes to new media formats (Betamax, Hi-8, etc.) and the MD was no exception. Sony tried to market the MD as a replacement for the CD, but it would have made more sense to sell it as a replacement for the cassette tape, something Philips had tried unsuccessfully with the Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) format.
MD limped along for the rest of the ‘90s before finding its niche, which was affordable digital recording. Because MD cartridges are so small, about 2 inches across, the player/recorders are also small – especially compared to DAT. In 2000, Sony upgraded the MD format to fit more data on a disc using digital compression, allowing more recording time. But Sony totally dropped the ball when the iPod was released by Apple in October of 2001. Instead of allowing the option of playing back MP3s like on the iPod, Sony forced MD users to encode their music files in their proprietary ATRAC format. Finally in 2004, Sony introduced Hi-MD which offered MP3 compatibility and uncompressed audio recording, but they still didn’t have anything like iTunes for users to download music easily (SonicStage=crap!).
I still use my MD player/recorder for a couple of reasons. First, it runs on a single AA battery. If you’re traveling overseas, having something that takes a standard battery and doesn’t need recharging is a plus. Second, the MD is an unobtrusive recording device. I’ve used it for wild sound when filming super 8 and it works great for that. Third, MD player/recorders are cheap. I paid $150.00 new for mine. If I lost my MD, it would be easy and cheap to replace. Would I ever pick my iPod over MD? Well, not until iPods become cheaper and offer easy digital recording. For now, I’ll stick with MD.
August 22nd, 2007
I was holed-up recently due to snow and a flat tire. During some rummaging in the basement, I came across a bunch of my old laserdiscs (LDs) from college. It was a hoot watching ’80s sci-fi classics like The Thing and Aliens on cutting edge ’80s technology. Yeah, LDs don’t have the fancy specs of current DVDs, but I was surprised at how good they still look. I was also stunned to find that LDs were manufactured all the way up to 2000, with Sleepy Hollow being released by Paramount that year. Another interesting fact is LDs are all analog — they playback using frequency modulation technology (although some audio tracks were digitally encoded). There are still folks out there who claim some LDs can deliver better a picture than DVDs because LDs are not digitally encoded and compressed. And I guess some people think LDs offer a more “film like” image. I find DVDs have better detail and richer color rendering, which is probably because luminance (black and white) and chrominance (color) information is transmitted on different signals on DVDs. A really big weakness of the LD format was that the best picture and audio usually came at a price, meaning if you wanted a great player, you needed to spend $$$. DVDs, one the other hand, generally playback the same regardless of player quality and price. Finally, the big advantage LDs have over DVDs is they are not copy protected, allowing you to make VHS copies of your LDs (of course who owns a VHS deck these days?)
Just as an aside, the best TV I’ve ever watched (better than any plasma, DLP, or LCD I’ve seen recently) was at the Wilsonville Incredible Universe circa 1995. It was your basic flat-tube CRT set around 36 inches (widescreen!), but it had an amazing picture and cost, like, $9,000. They were using the Criterion Collection version of 2001 on LD to demo the set and the picture almost made me pee my pants. The only time I’ve seen 2001 look better was the re-release of the 70mm print circa 1997 in Chicago at the Navy Pier IMAX. I still wonder who made this TV because I would love to find it secondhand. It must have had some pimp-ass comb filter technology working its mojo to produce such a great picture.
MCA Laserdisc - The Ultimate Consumer Analog Video Format?
http://www.retrothing.com
January 19th, 2007
Like I need another piece of antique technology cluttering up the house. But for $50.00 on Craigslist, I just couldn’t help myself. So what’s that newly acquired keyboard device pictured below? Well, it’s an E-mu Emulator II+, one of the first affordable digital samplers to hit the market in 1984. To call it affordable might be a stretch, considering the II+ retailed for $9,995.00 new, but you have to understand the only other high end sampler available back in those days, the Fairlight, cost a staggering $100,000.00. What I find appealing about the Emulator II+ is that it’s actually a combination sampler/analog synthesizer. The samples are stored digitally in memory (a whole megabyte!), but are played back through analog circuits. The Emulator II+ has some rudimentary modulation options, but the coolest thing is the filter…the same analog filter found in the legendary Prophet 5. Also worth mentioning is the fact I’ve always coveted the Emulator II after seeing bands like New Order using them during the ‘80s on MTV. For me, the Emulator II was very British cool – even though it was made here in the states. But most of you probably remember the Emulator II from the film Ferris Beuller’s Day off (*cough* *cough*).
Actually, this isn’t my first experience with an Emulator. In the late ‘90s, I owned an E-mu Emax SE sampler, which was basically an Emulator II on a single chip with a better floppy drive and fewer features. The Emax was a nice enough sampler, but it wasn’t nearly as easy to use as an Emulator II. Sadly, my Emax blew its power supply a couple of years ago and was stolen from my garage by a meth freak. As it turns out, this funky sample player that I bought for like $30.00 almost a decade ago, the oddball Oberheim DPX-1, will also playback Emulator II discs. That is so cool. I can make samples on the Emulator II and then play them back on the DPX-1, which is useful since not all the keys work on the Emulator II. Speaking of things not working, more stuff works on the Emulator II than not, but it does have some issues, mainly the already mentioned flakey keyboard. One of the circuit boards securing some of the buttons on the front panel is lose, so I’ll have to repair that. But on the upside, the LCD works fine as does the backlighting, which is a miracle really. I’ll probably send this thing in for servicing at some point, but it’s useable for the time being over MIDI. Oh, one more thing, I managed to find a couple of boxes of brand new five inch blank floppy discs in the basement. Don’t know why I bought them originally, but it must have been in anticipation of the Emulator II.
Large Photo
Large Photo
Large Photo
Emulator II: Overview
http://www.emulatorarchive.com
Oberheim DPX-1
http://www.emulatorarchive.com
New Order live, 1984, ‘Blue Monday’ (Emulator I)
http://www.youtube.com
Emulator II Demo by Alan Wilder
http://www.youtube.com
December 19th, 2006
You might remember a post from a while back linking to a gallery full of images culled from slides I scanned. Those images were taken in 1963 by an American traveling in Brazil and given to me by my neighbor Tim. I’ve been meaning to digitize more, but didn’t have access to a slide scanner. Well, that has changed since my father gave me a new scanner for Christmas. It’s a flatbed Epson, but it came with an adapter allowing slide and negative scanning. Check the link if your interested in seeing more of the images.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildfreshness
January 10th, 2006
The Mellotron was an early “sampler” keyboard popular in the late ’60s and early ’70s with rock bands like Yes and the Moody Blues. Those flutes on the Beetles’ song Strawberry Fields? They were made by a Mellotron. Mellotrons were basically a small keyboard attached to a tape bank (a single strand of magnetic tape for each key). And the tapes could be any sound — flutes, strings, drums, whatever. But finding a working Mellotron today is virtually impossible. So, for those handy with a soldering iron, there is another option…build your own!
Melloman (link courtesy of Thorin)
http://www.engadget.com
It looks like a little more work than I’m willing to undertake. Besides, both my Optigans need some TLC first.
October 24th, 2005
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