Retro Tech by Retrotari

5 weeks ago

A film detailing advancements in computer/digital technology, featuring the 'Graphic 1' computer system at Bell Telephone Laboratories.

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Transcript

00:00The

00:03The

00:10The

00:15The

00:22The

00:26The

00:28We are at the beginning of a new wave of research.

00:42Our creative powers are being stretched.

00:48We're learning surprising things about how we sense the world around us.

00:56Exploring the mysteries of the spoken word.

01:01Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.

01:16It appears to us that the resistors should track very well with one another.

01:19So I think in the first go around here, we should make all the resistors variable.

01:24These men are design engineers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, the research and development

01:29part of the Bell system.

01:32They're about to engage a new breed of computer called Graphic One in a dialogue that will

01:37test the ingenuity of both men and machine.

01:41It's a new way of working out abstract problems in the age-old medium of drawings and designs,

01:46which explains why the technique is called computer graphics.

01:51The researchers have an idea for a telephone filter circuit they want to try out.

01:55But they need a ready answer for the problem.

01:58If they do this, what will happen?

02:01They could spend many hours in the workshop building and testing the real thing.

02:05Instead, they'll draw their circuit directly on Graphic One's cathode ray tube.

02:11The operator talks to the computer with an electronic light pen, which does a precise and easy job

02:17of assembling the symbolic parts of the design.

02:20Diodes, resistors, transformers, and all are automatically positioned by the pen, connecting

02:26them as it goes along.

02:28I think the drawing will be much more readable if we place that three terminal device down

02:32in the lower right-hand corner.

02:33If they change their plan, that's no problem either.

02:42There's no need to memorize complex rules, for the computer signals the action when it's

02:47ready.

02:49If the researchers have done a good job of programming what they want the design to do,

02:53the computer is quick to point out any breakdown in their logic.

02:57The design is complete.

03:20But will it work?

03:22At this stage, a remotely located master computer takes over the job of calculating

03:27the performance curves of the circuit.

03:29Okay, let's go.

03:32All right.

03:34I think it looks good.

03:43We certainly don't have to worry about the amplifier we're using based on this.

03:49On some of these letter things here, we're not doing it right.

03:51It's too gray.

03:53How much trouble is it to get that change to some other color?

03:56Let's find the right place in the program.

03:58Make the appropriate change and we'll run the whole thing again.

04:01Let's make bug A go, what would you say, down one square and right one square.

04:08So you see what we'll get there is the program going through these lines.

04:11A consulting graphic artist and a Bell Laboratory scientist are collaborating on an idea for an

04:17experimental computer-made movie.

04:19That come out of it.

04:20Okay.

04:21And this idea of you being able to program something so we know what it's supposed to

04:24do.

04:25And what I get a great deal of response out of is you don't know what it's exactly going

04:28to do in terms of images.

04:29It's interesting to me that you say the unexpected things that happen.

04:32Yeah.

04:33Because in a sense, the computer has done exactly what you told it to do, right?

04:38Their shooting script is an intricate set of instructions written in one of several programming

04:43languages available.

04:45This one is B-Flix, short for Bell Labs Flix.

04:51This is an excerpt from a B-Flix computer movie showing how the script, now a deck of punch

04:56cards with all the cues typed in, is fed into the computer, winding up as a reel of recorded

05:02tape.

05:05Hi, Bernie?

05:06Yes, sir?

05:07I've got another B-Flix movie here on two reels.

05:09Can you possibly do it now?

05:10Sure, Ken.

05:11Great.

05:12That's the second half.

05:13All right.

05:14And this is the first one.

05:15All right.

05:16Fine.

05:17We'll run it right now.

05:18How do you want these run, Ken?

05:19We'll run it just halfway between F5.6 and F8.

05:23Leave it perfectly in focus.

05:34Under computer control now, the taped information is converted into rapidly moving pictures

05:39made up of a fine mosaic of points of varying light intensity.

05:44A synchronized movie camera automatically photographs the fast moving images as they are

05:49plotted and drawn on the face of a cathode ray tube.

05:50Plotted and drawn on the face of a cathode ray tube.

05:56I can barely make up of a cathode ray tube.

05:57Except the crystal ball.

05:58I can barely make it.

05:59We can barely make it that way.

06:00So you don't have to work with a cathode ray tube.

06:01I can barely make this cut into multiple directions now.

06:02It's too thin.

06:03We'll try to know more.

06:04I can barely make it.

06:05Let's do it.

06:06I can barely make it.

06:07It's too soon to do it.

06:08And a few points before we go, we have to break it down.

06:09It's just the highest one point where you want it.

06:10So you can't do it.

06:11It's up to a vocabulary.

06:12It's a great way.

06:13It's a great idea.

06:14It's a little bit heavy.

06:15It's a little bit loose.

06:16It's a little bitioso.

06:17It's a little bit ali.

06:18I want to reach out to this technology.

06:32I want to incorporate this technology into my art

06:35and have the two mixed together.

06:38For instance, what spellbinds me as an idea

06:39is that I'll be able to sit someplace in a railroad station

06:42and write a movie,

06:44or maybe even pick up a telephone eventually and write a movie.

06:48Besides creating unique visual effects,

06:56computer movies can be used to show phenomena we can't directly see.

07:01This film describes the motion of a communication satellite.

07:05By studying it, scientists can obtain new insight

07:08into the satellite's stabilizing system.

07:11Only a man orbiting alongside could observe it the same way.

07:18Experimenters in visual perception are using computers

07:28to create weird, random patterns that never occur in real life

07:32to find out what and how people see when these patterns are shown to them.

07:37These patterns are curiously reminiscent of the pointillism

07:41of the 19th century artist Seurat,

07:44whose beautifully integrated paintings are formed

07:46by countless computer-like dots and dashes.

07:49The art of Seurat is an incredibly methodical technique

07:53that produced only a dozen or so paintings in his lifetime.

07:56Today, researchers are generating that many in a single day.

08:09The shape and texture of perceived objects are studies

08:12that look deep into the future of communications.

08:15When we learn to separate the relevant from irrelevant in visual information,

08:21we'll be on the way to sending three-dimensional color picture messages

08:24over ordinary telephone lines.

08:26And then we found that when you get back far enough,

08:51not only do the small pictures disappear

08:53because you're not close enough to see them individually,

08:56and the big picture comes across.

08:58But if you get even further back,

09:00then the picture takes on a continuous tone quality

09:03as though it were a photograph

09:04rather than being a very crude, computer-generated,

09:07spatially quantized thing.

09:09One of the interesting things to me was that

09:11you can draw quite a distinguishable picture

09:14on just an 11 by 11 array of black spots and white spots.

09:26The entire musical score accompanying this film

09:31was composed on a computer that can produce nearly endless variations of sounds.

09:36We're interested in finding better ways of describing complicated sounds like speech.

09:42However, speech is still very complicated.

09:46Music is simpler, and some of the methods which we're using here to describe music in terms of a graphical function

09:55can also be used for speech, and we can find out a great deal by studying these simpler sounds.

10:01Programming the score is like composing for conventional musical instruments,

10:15except that notes are replaced by numbers.

10:18The computer converts these numbers into impulses

10:21that cause sound waves to come directly from a loudspeaker.

10:25What actually happens when we hear sounds?

10:40We know that the membrane of the inner ear changes sound waves into audible sensations.

10:45But until recently, no one had seen the whole inner ear in action.

10:50When sound waves strike the membrane,

10:53it makes thousands of microscopic movements per second.

10:57Only by computer could they be calculated

11:00and for the first time pictorially described.

11:04It takes several minutes of this motion

11:06to draw the simple sound of yes.

11:10Since the model of the inner ear is being expressed

11:14mathematically, it can be pictured in different ways.

11:19In this 3D version, the membrane is given a spiral shape,

11:23recoiling as it receives shocks from simulated sound waves.

11:27Now, aside from some of the standard problems of showing three-dimensional movies,

11:35when we show these movies up in Boston,

11:37I think some of the people up there were quite interested and excited in what they saw.

11:41Yes, I suppose that, as an educational tool, it's very good.

11:44It allows people to see things which only mathematicians could see before.

11:48And, in fact, the people who seemed most interested were the medical doctors and people like audiologists.

11:57Human speech, seemingly so simple, is a very complicated process no one fully understands.

12:05To be, or not to be, that is the question.

12:10Whether it is no more in the wild to suffer the swings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

12:17or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them, to die, to sleep.

12:26Those words were spoken by a digital computer, programmed to simulate a speaking machine.

12:32Much of what we know about voice and speech is stored in the computer's memory.

12:37From there, we can experiment with more advanced ideas in areas that are still unknown.

12:43Take stress.

12:45How do we always seem to know just which parts of spoken words to emphasize?

12:51Ruth, let's try to synthesize that sentence.

12:54Okay, do you want monotone pitch?

12:56Let's hear it on monotone first.

12:58Okay.

12:59Scientists can only begin to explain how we speak.

13:03We stress words without thinking, giving them fine shadings of pitch and intensity.

13:10I like my glossy black.

13:13Let's see if you can change that stress on my.

13:16How about on my and black? Would that be all right?

13:20Fine, let's try it.

13:24When phonetic symbols are fed to the synthesizer, it combines them into intelligible speech.

13:31I like my glossy black.

13:34I like my glossy black.

13:37Well, there's more inflection on it, but let's see if we can improve this.

13:41Why don't we look at the pitch curve now?

13:43Well, I think I'll try to make the inflection on black a little bit stronger.

13:52I like my glossy black.

13:56Let's see if I can improve that.

14:00I like my glossy black.

14:04The art of computer graphics is only in its infancy.

14:08Yet it is already stimulating creative thought in far out areas where research is likely to get complex and unwieldy.

14:16It offers not only the means to quicken the pace of discovery, but an ideal way of communicating what we may discover.

14:25It offers not only the use of the

14:51You

The Incredible Machine (1968)

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