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Maintenance Verses New Technology

When our system gets out of whack and we go to the doctor. Though most of the time they are just eliminating possibilities and treating symptoms. The technology and equipment we use every day needs something else. It needs to either work or someone has to to be able to fix it. That is where…

Searching for Captain Thunderbolt

The National Film and Sound Archive in Australia is constantly on the lookout for early material to add to the national collection of our audio visual heritage. One hunt has been for the original 35mm film material of the film Captain Thunderbolt produced in 1951 by Cecil Holmes. Until now only available as an incomplete…

Australian Computer History

History of Computers in Australia Australia had some significant milestones in Australian computer history. Australian computer science made big strides in the construction of early electronic computers and in applications for research, industry and government. Below is just some of the more important steps made at a time when all this was still very new…

When Were the First Sound Recordings

When were the first sound recordings made? If you ask most people about the first sound recording they would reply Edison. He recorded a nursery rhyme on a cylinder gramophone in 1877 and when they do you can tell them they are wrong! They may then state that prior to this mechanical musical devices such…

A Wedding Video Almost Lost

A while back I completed a most interesting project recovering a wedding video. Nothing unusual so far, but this was 36 years old on 1/2″ reel to reel tape in black and white and was almost lost, and before too long would certainly have been. This video format was one of the first small systems….

Magic Lanterns and Early Slide Shows

Englishman Samuel Pepys commented in his diary 1n 1666 of a Mr Reeves demonstrating a “lanthorn that shows tricks”, which so impressed him that he purchased it. Early magic lantern projectors were also described by the Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher in 1671. This was about 200 years before the first photographs were made and so…