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killbox July 10 2008, 20:23:34 UTC
not quite related, but have you seen the Dead Media project?
http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/index-cat.html

and something full of awesome is this mechanical tv kit. (my dad has been building his own for a few years)
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/07/build_your_own_mechanical.html

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aisa0 July 10 2008, 20:36:38 UTC
I only heard of the dead media project today, from the same page I learned about edge-notched index cards.

Is that a mechanical tv or a mechanical projector? I'm a bit confused by it.

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killbox July 10 2008, 22:22:01 UTC
its a tv, its a small low resolution tv, based upon making the scanlines by making a large spiral of holes in a disk and shining a light behind a little square of it.

the camera and the fv are very similar, on e has a photo detector behind a disk and a lens and that one sends pulses of light/dark, to the other one that flickers a bulb behind a disk making each line of tv glow as the holes scan across.

here is a very basic diagram.
http://www.hawestv.com/mtv_page/mtv_page.htm

this page has good info on what the Nipkow disk would look like. and how it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television

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foolishboy July 11 2008, 03:10:37 UTC
I can remember using a slide rule at one time, and my dad used them a frequently as a land surveyor. After all, back in the early eighties a slide rule could be more useful than a lot of calculators.

Now though, I wouldn't have a clue.

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tiatanna July 11 2008, 17:01:48 UTC
You really tickled my fancy with this one! You refer to truly ancient systems like an abacus, and then you bring up a system like the notched cards which I used in my job in the mid 1980s (before PCs were in the workplace).

I was Arizona's Natural Areas Manager and was frequently required to respond to environmental impact statements and other land management plans regarding hundreds of identified natural areas throughout the state. I spent hours upon hours setting up my "database" of coded cards. The difference in the system I used was that you used an "icepick" tool to sort through the cards multiple times until you got the subset you needed. I think I still have the cards somewhere. It worked quite nicely, was adaptable, accepted additions and changes, and once set up, anyone could use it.

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