Hallmarks In British Ingenuity Presents: The Mellotron

July 28th, 2009 · 6 comments or link to (permalink)

The Mellotron M400 in lucite. Gorgeous….

With the possible exception of a Gibson Les Paul or SG running riot through an overdriven Leslie speaker, there is no more glorious sound than that of a Mellotron being put through it’s paces.
The invention that dates back to the late 40’s was perhaps the first “sampler” that utilized a keyboard and tape loops with pre-recorded tones. Although the intent was to mimic a string section, the result was a lush, uniquely ethereal, unmistakable tone. The design also allowed practically any tone to be recorded and installed for application. Eventually, it became a vestige of 60’s and 70’s rock.
In case you can’t quite place what a Mellotron sounds like, let’s have a look at the wide spectrum of applications that Harry Chamberlain’s invention brought us, shall we?

But when the Mellotron was in the hands of a true master, say Mr. John Paul Jones, the result was pure magic. The Mellotron and Mr. Jones make an appearance at the 1:45 mark, of this live rendition of ‘The Rain Song’ performed at Earl’s Court, London in 1975.

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Charles and Ray Eames: A Communication Primer

February 19th, 2009 · 4 comments or link to (permalink)

The Eames’ showed that films could be approached as a design exercise and as such were the forerunners to much of today’s information design, which has had a resurgence as a result of the Web. Their best known piece is Powers of Ten, but this is another little beauty.

The film is nicely self-referential since it deals with Shannon’s information theory. However, the astounding thing is that the Eames’ were savvy about Shannon’s groundbreaking work which was published only 5 years before. To put this in context, its as if Frank Lloyd Wright had written a book about Einstein’s Special Relativity in 1910, when it wasn’t fully endorsed by the physics community.

Via Kottke Via Infosthetics

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Hoover Dam

June 10th, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

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Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

April 23rd, 2008 · comment or link to (permalink)

Stephen Fry is a supreme technophile with the aura of a bookish technophobe. There is nobody better to present a documentary about early printing technology and how it changed the world. Great stuff – this is the first of six chunks.
via Kottke

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The BBS Documentary – Part 1 – Baud

March 29th, 2008 · 6 comments or link to (permalink)

The BBS Documentary – Part 1 – Baud

Part 1 of what looks like a great documentary series about the Balkanized version of online existence before the Internet took hold. As one of the interviewees points out, people seem to think the Internet came out of nowhere rather than being evolutionary. In the same way, people think that the web created the explosive growth in the Internet, but actually things picked up a year or so before, opening up the evolutionary niche for something like the web to thrive. For that reason, understanding the history of Bulletin Board Systems, through a documentary like this, is the only way to understand the history of the Internet in its proper context.

As an aside, the Altair 8800, pictured, was the computer I used (or rather avoided using) at high school.

jason scott 38 min 19 sec Jan 13, 2007 www.bbsdocumentary.com

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