(03-11-2024, 09:43 AM)Bally002 Wrote:

(03-11-2024, 09:33 AM)BIAD Wrote: I just don't see what all the ooh-hah is all about -except to appreciate the concern that the people
who steer the Public Relations of the Royal Family would have if a such a photograph didn't originate
from one of their own outlets.

A very elegant and gracious lady.  

Cheeky lad.

Kind regards,
Bally)

Quote:Bukowski died of leukemia on March 9, 1994, in San Pedro, aged 73, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp. The funeral rites, orchestrated by his widow, were conducted by Buddhist monks. He is interred at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes. An account of the proceedings can be found in Gerald Locklin's book Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet. His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explained the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington: "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it."

Charles Bukowski's influence on popular culture:

Charles Bukowski has been depicted on television as well, namely on the Showtime comedy-drama series Californication. The show's main character Hank Moody, played by actor David Duchovny, is an author based in Los Angeles who subscribes to the same kind of lifestyle that Bukowski became known for. The show depicts profuse indulgence of alcoholism, sex and narcotics, which many critics have described as a television adaption of Bukowski's third novel Women.[15] In the ninth episode of the first season, Moody's girlfriend can be seen reading Sifting Through the Madness For The World, The Line, The Way: New Poems, a collection of Bukowski's posthumously-published work.

Quote:The Roswell Police Department has a new official patch, a symbol of the department worn on the shoulders of officers’ uniforms and the image of which is used on various RPD printed and online materials.

The new patch contains elements connecting it not only to the police department, but also the City of Roswell, the State of New Mexico and the Roswell community’s long association with UFO lore. The patch includes the city logo, a Zia symbol, a pair of small alien faces, and the phrasing, “Protect and Serve Those That Land Here.” The patch also features the year the police department was established (1891), recognizing its 133-year history.

Quote:Col. J. Leo Bourassa. He headed up the "Special Facilities Division" within the Office of Emergency Planning. He is the person mentioned in the Blue Book file dealing with the Kecksburg crash.

Aerial photographs of Mount Weather show the presidential heliport where the president is dropped off. The tower that directs in the president’s flight is known as "bluegrass tower." In the Kecksburg Blue Book file right after J. Leo Bourassa’s name you will find (Code blue grass). Another connection to the code "bluegrass" is a paranormal CIA project started in 1955, which I haven’t confirmed yet.

While at the Johnson library I was looking for files on Bourassa and on the "Special facilities Division" to see how it fit into the Kecksburg crash. What I learned about Bourassa while at the library is that he had also been heavily involved in the 1965 blackout of New York City. In fact, he wrote a report to Ellington detailing his findings. Bourassa’s findings hinted at the possible role of UFOs in the blackout.

The White House Role in Crashed UFO Retrievals by Grant Cameron.

Quote:Len Sirowitz, an award-winning advertising art director whose creative work in the 1960s included memorable print ads for the Volkswagen Beetle — like one declaring, “Ugly is only skin-deep” — and a campaign for Mobil in which a car was dropped off a 10-story building to make a point about the perils of speeding, died on March 4 at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.

His daughter, Laura Sirowitz, confirmed the death.

Mr. Sirowitz joined the influential Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency, known as DDB, in 1959, at 27, and spent the next 11 years at the firm conceiving the look of ads for numerous accounts with wit and passion.

“It was quite early in my career that I began to realize that my message needed to not only be bold and daring, but it must stem from the truth … and touch people’s emotions,” he told Dave Dye, who runs the advertising blog From the Loft, in 2015.

Volkswagen was perhaps Mr. Sirowitz’s most important account, and the homely Beetle, nicknamed the “Bug,” was his and copywriter Robert Levenson’s automotive muse. Their collaborations for the German car maker included the ad “Will We Ever Kill the Bug?” in which they positioned a Beetle turned on its roof, like a dead bug. The answer to the question: “Never.” (Though, after a few shots of the car, its roof collapsed.)

(03-08-2024, 04:14 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: @BIAD - Holy Rockin Alice I did not know that! The rock nor about Carroll...

Quote:Stafford became a Lieutenant General on March 15, 1978, and on May 1, 1978 assumed the duties as the Deputy Chief of Staff, Research, Development and Acquisition, at USAF Headquarters in Washington, D.C. During that time he was personally involved in initiating the F-117A Stealth Fighter program. In early 1979, Stafford wrote the initial desired specifications on and started the development of the B-2 "Stealth Bomber." Stafford retired from the Air Force in November 1979.

In June of 1990, Thomas Stafford chaired a team to independently advise NASA how to carry out President H.W. Bush's vision of returning to the Moon, this time to stay, and then go on to explore Mars. He assembled teams of 40 full-time and 150 part-time members from the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and NASA, to complete the study called "America at the Threshold," a road map for the next 30 years of the U.S. Manned Space Flight Program. In 1994, Stafford chaired the committee to review and make recommendations to enhance the efficiency of the research and development initiatives of the NASA Human Exploration Enterprise.

Stafford co-founded the Technical Consulting Firm of Stafford, Burke, and Hecker, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia. He also is on the Boards of Directors of six corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange, one listed on the American Exchange, and two others, including Seagate Technology, Inc. He has served as an advisor to a number of governmental agencies including NASA and the Air Force Systems Command.

In addition to being just the eighth person to earn the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, General Stafford also holds two NASA Distinguished Service Medals, two NASA Exceptional Service Medals, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Force Commendation Medal, and the Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings. He currently resides in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Thomas Stafford quote:

"This is the greatest honor of my life. I am very proud to have contributed to our nation's future in space and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have participated in the beginning of America's venture into the new and endless frontier." (Upon receiving the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.)

The New Mexico Museum of Space History

Quote:By 1961, the mobile soft serve industry was referred to as "one of the fastest growing phenomena in the nation’s economy" and it was estimated that there was about $80 million in sales during 1960. In addition to Mister Softee and Dairy Dan, there were about a dozen or so other privately held mobile soft serve companies, many of whom were based out of Pennsylvania and New Jersey because nearly "80% of all the soft serve ice cream consumed in the United States” was produced in four states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Indiana." The rapid growth is best exemplified by Mister Softee, which started in 1955 with six trucks with $100,000 in sales and grew to 1600 trucks by 1960 grossing approximately $25 million.

In addition to the concern about protecting small cities and towns and the pressure from the Federal government for industry and private corporations to do their part, the mobile soft serve companies likely saw volunteering their trucks as an easy way to gain publicity and further embed themselves as good citizens in the marketplace of the suburban neighborhood from whom they earned their livelihood. In addition to the appearance of the clean white truck, promotions for kids, their military-like uniforms, the Civil Defense decal served to help further position a sales truck as “in place” and acceptable in the uniform and highly regulated suburban neighborhood.

This notion of being “in place” and appearing as a good citizen was especially important during a time when there was an escalated degree of surveillance going on within neighborhoods. While the ice cream trucks of the 1950s and 1960s are often remembered fondly for their expected presence as a part of summer days and evenings of suburban American childhood, they are excluded from most narratives about participation in civil defense and the intersection of government, private corporations, and the suburban nuclear family. The ice cream trucks and their participation in civil defense illustrate the degree to which Cold War militarization pervaded the everyday experience. Not always delivered through expected channels, ice cream trucks’ civil defense volunteerism demonstrate the ways that the privatization of defense during the Cold War came cleverly cloaked in ice cream dessert, childish graphics, carefree music, and everyday ritual of neighborhood families.

Quote:The Door into Summer is a science fiction novel by American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (October, November, December 1956, with covers and interior illustrations by Kelly Freas). It was published in hardcover in 1957.

The idea for the novel came from an incident outlined by Heinlein later:

    When we were living in Colorado there was snowfall. Our cat—I'm a cat man—wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn't leave. Just kept on crying. He'd seen snow before and I couldn't understand it. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn't leave. Then Ginny said, "Oh, he's looking for a door into summer." I threw up my hands, told her not to say another word, and wrote the novel The Door into Summer in 13 days.

The novel opens in 1970 with Daniel Boone Davis, an engineer and inventor, well into a long drinking binge. He has lost his company, Hired Girl, Inc., to his partner Miles Gentry and the company bookkeeper, Belle Darkin. Darkin had been Dan's fiancée, deceiving him into giving her enough voting stock to allow her and Miles to seize control. Dan's only friend in the world is his cat, "Pete" (short for Petronius the Arbiter), a feisty tomcat who hates going outdoors in the snow.
Wiki

Quote:He served in the Department of State from 1945 to 1954, and as the Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet under President Eisenhower from 1954 to 1960. In 1960, Brad won the Arthur S. Flemming Award as One of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in Federal Service. During the Kennedy Administration, from 1961 to 1962, he became the first Executive Secretary of the Peace Corps under Sargent Shriver. Brad then served, from 1962 to 1966, as National Security Assistant at the Treasury Department, graduating from the National War College in 1966. From 1966 to 1967, he was the Executive Director of the presidential National Advisory Commission on the Selective Service. In 1969, Brad returned to the White House to serve as an Executive Assistant to Leonard Garment under President Nixon. During his tenure under Garment, Brad helped to implement President Nixon's policy of Indian Self-Determination. He was instrumental in returning Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo, restoring fishing rights to the Yakima, and passing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. He personally intervened in the AIM takeover of the BIA building, the occupation of Alcatraz, and the standoff at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Beginning in 1974, Brad served as staff aide to First Lady Betty Ford, and from 1975 to 1976, he was President Ford's Assistant Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. From 1977 to 1988, Brad joined the Brookings Institution as a Senior Staff Member of their Center for Public Policy Education. Brad was elected National President of the American Society for Public Administration from 1984 to 1985. He served as a member of the American Political Science Association and an associate of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. For over 30 years he was also a member of the Potomac Corral of the Westerners.

Brad authored three books about the White House Staff, Ring of Power: The White House Staff and Its Expanding Role in Government (Basic Books, 1988), The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond (Brookings Press, 2000), and To Serve the President: Continuity and Innovation in The White House Staff (Brookings Press, 2008). Washington Post Columnist, David Broder wrote that Brad "has made a specialty of examining the workings of the White House and probably knows as much as anyone about how to organize the presidency." In 2004 he was awarded the University of Chicago National Alumni Association's Professional Achievement Citation.

Bradley H. Patterson, Jr. Obituary

Quote:In Greek mythology, Proteus is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea". Some who ascribe a specific domain to Proteus call him the god of "elusive sea change", which suggests the changeable nature of the sea or the liquid quality of water. He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him. From this feature of Proteus comes the adjective protean, meaning "versatile", "mutable", or "capable of assuming many forms". "Protean" has positive connotations of flexibility, versatility and adaptability.

Quote:Rendition by the Trinity Choir of James Edmeston's 1820 hymn "Saviour, Breathe an Evening Blessing", which somehow, on its journey to disc, ended up being enigmatically appended with the title "Autumn". The composer is listed as being Louis Van Esch, about whom we couldn't find any information. An architect by profession, Edmeston was best known for his prolific hymn writing — the total number of which was said to total more than 2000, one written every Sunday.

"Savior, Breathe an Evening Blessing"
by James Edmeston

Savior, breathe an evening blessing
Ere repose our spirits seal,
Sin and want we come confessing;
Thou canst save, and Thou canst heal.

Though destruction walk around us,
Though the arrows past us fly,
Angel guards from Thee surround us;
We are safe if Thou art nigh.

Though the night be dark and dreary,
Darkness cannot hide from Thee; Thou art He who, never weary,
Watcheth where Thy people be.

Should swift death this night o'ertake us
And our couch become our tomb,
May the morn in heaven awake us,
Clad in light and deathless bloom.

Quote:The image seems to first appear in L’atmosphère: description des grands phénomènes de la Nature, written by Nicholas Camille Flammarion, a French astronomer in 1872. The image may have been made by Flammarion himself, and thus bears his name, but really we don’t know who created it. The image includes a caption which reads: “Un missionaire du moyen âge raconte qu’il avait lrouvé le point oû le ciel et la Terre touchent.” “A missionary from the Middle Ages says that he had found the place where heaven and earth touch.” We don’t know Flammarion’s source for this medieval missionary. All we know is that he appears to have used the image to showcase a mistaken understanding of the cosmos, namely a Christianized Ptolemaic understanding of the cosmos as one might find in Dante.

The Flammarion Engraving

Quote:During one such sob session, I told him about a terrifying dream I'd had the night before about seeing TV news of imminent nuclear annihilation, and how I woke up, sweating and unable to breathe, still believing it to be real.

"We should do it!" he said.

"Do what?"

"Pitch it as a movie!"

"I'm talking about an anxiety attack, not a development deal!"

"I'm serious," he said. "What if we were to tell a story on TV but we did it only through what you would be able to see on the news."

"You mean, like Orson Welles's War of the Worlds?"

"Except not about aliens. We'll choose something more plausible and terrifying."

"Like nuclear annihilation, you mean."

"And we'll create all the news footage ourselves."

"Like The Battle of Algiers?"

"Never heard of it."

And so it began.

Book excerpt: "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions" by Ed Zwick

Quote:Higgins was born July 24, 1921, to a cotton-farming family in Oklahoma that was besieged by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl ecological disaster, Higgins said during a video interview in 2022 with the American Warriors YouTube channel.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1939 and trained as a radio operator.

At the time of the attack, Higgins was stationed on Ford Island as a radioman in a squadron of PBY Catalina amphibious planes, which were used for patrol bombing and anti-submarine warfare. They could carry bombs and torpedoes.

A PBY hangar on Ford Island was the first thing to be bombed that morning, noise that sent Higgins and his fellow sailors racing to get outside, he said in the interview. They were stopped by Marine Corps guards at the doors.

“They wouldn’t let us out until the first wave had slacked off a bit,” he said. “[The Japanese] were strafing everything that moved — and some things that didn’t.”

When they did exit, most ran to the runway to roll undamaged PBYs away from the blazing remains of others.

“We were very busy that morning trying to save planes,” Higgins said in the interview. “There were tracers going right past the wing of the plane I was pushing on,” he said.

“The plane I flew wasn’t there; it was a crater about seven feet deep and 20 feet in diameter. No PBY anywhere.”

It likely had disintegrated from the explosion of its full gas tanks and bombs, he said.

Higgins was unscathed by the attack.

“I didn’t even get a Band-Aid,” he said. “I guess I lucked out.”

Luck stayed with him for the rest of the war as he flew missions in a PBY in the vicinity of what is now Indonesia.

Higgins made a career in the Navy, retiring in 1959 as a chief petty officer. In subsequent years he worked for General Dynamics and Northrup Corp.

Stars And Stripes

Quote:In Greek mythology, Tantalus so angered Zeus with his treachery that his punishment was to go thirsty and hungry while standing in an always receding pool of water with bountiful fruit trees just above his reach. His fate serves as a reminder to humanity that foolish actions can lead to unpredictable and enduring consequences.

At Sandia, the name Tantalus is associated with an experimental multiplayer online war game used to study different conditions within cyberdeterrence strategy. More importantly, the game is a human research study to gather data about how people’s decisions during threatening situations can impact national security.

“We’re interested in understanding the theory of cyberdeterrence — the notion that the threat of cyberattacks can modify or inhibit the actions of others,” Jon Whetzel, the lead online game designer, said.

To learn more about the human element of cyberdeterrence, researchers pursued increasing Sandia’s experimental war-gaming capabilities, and the Program for Experimental Gaming and Analysis of Strategic Interaction Scenarios created Tantalus. As part of the PEGASIS portfolio, Tantalus was a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development project on cyberdeterrence funded through the Energy and Homeland Security Investment Area Team. The project recently ended, and the team published its preliminary findings in September.

Combining scientific rigor with the art of war game design

Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences.

“We consider real-world problems,” said systems research analyst Jason Reinhardt. “And the war games are a laboratory where we can experiment on deterrence problems and understand how they change under different circumstances.”

Tantalus is a three-player war game where players navigate between building and defending their nation. Players act as the leader of a hypothetical country with a mission to increase key “metrics” in their country’s mining, infrastructure and manufacturing while fending off attacks from rival countries. The game consists of 12 to 18 randomly selected rounds, with four phases per round: Planning, Threats, Revision and Execution. Players choose to influence or deter each other by force (kinetic, cyber or nuclear) or engage in espionage.

“We wanted to have the players strive for something that could be taken out of reach by the other players,” Jon said.

Quote:Naval Special Warfare Command commander Rear Adm. Keith Davids relived the commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Eight Wednesday, citing a loss of confidence.

The Special Warfare Command release does not indicate where Capt. Richard Zaszewski, who took on the command in August 2021, according to his releasable biography, will go. Deputy Commodore Capt. Stig Sanness assumed the commodore duties.

“There is no impact to NSWG-8’s mission readiness,” reads the release.

There are no additional details about what led to the loss of confidence in Zaszewski’s ability to command.

Zaszewski’s career has mostly been in special warfare since he commissioned into the Navy through the Villanova University Reserve Officer Training Corps. He reported to his first East Coast-based special warfare unit in May 1998.

Since then, he has been a part of nine other special warfare units. His releasable biography does not indicate which units or what billets he had.

Prior to taking over as commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Eight, Zaszewski was at the Joint Special Operations Command in Fort Bragg, N.C.

Over his career, Zaszewski has been awarded a Silver Star, three Bronze Stars and a Legion of Merit, among other commendations.

Navy Removes Special Warfare Group 8 Commodore from Command

Quote:Finally, having spent most of his life emulating Hollywood's great tragic divas, Candy became one herself: "By the time you read this I will be gone," she writes in a letter to Warhol and other friends from her death bed. "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again."

Quote:Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.

The name reputedly derives from a type of firearm, called a dragon, which was a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army.

The title has been retained in modern times by a number of armoured or ceremonial mounted regiments.

The Dragonnades were a French government policy instituted by King Louis XIV in 1681 to intimidate Huguenot (Protestant) families into converting to Catholicism.

Quote:The digitized broadcast manuscripts - The black channel

In 1998, the German Broadcasting Archive decided to digitize the broadcast manuscripts of the GDR political magazine The Black Channel (1960-1989), whose preservation was at risk, and to make them accessible to a broad audience via the Internet as part of the Distributed Digital Research Library. This project was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The presentation of the broadcast manuscripts is supplemented by references to sources and literature as well as the integration of audio and video material from the DRA's holdings.

Quote:Fade to Black

When WW2 ended in 1945, it left communist and capitalist systems eyeball-to-eyeball in the centre of Europe and no more so than in what remained of Hitler’s fortunately short-lived ‘thousand-year’ Reich.

With Germany divided geographically, politically and militarily, both governments in the country were left with a problem -broad swathes of western Germany and almost the entire eastern zone could receive each other’s radio and VHF television output.

For most west Germans and the Federal Republic’s government, this was not a real problem. While ARD and later ZDF picked up a reputation for quality television (by mainland European standards), the Democratic Republic’s television service was, to try to be fair, awful at all times. Western viewers would rarely tune in for anything other than a laugh and were certainly never propagandised by it.

However, the situation was rather different in the east. While the west, as an open society, made few moves against communist broadcasting, the rulers in the east were not so forgiving.

Geography prevented the number one choice – jamming the signal. The need for the largely isolated GDR to live up to its laughable middle initial also made it diplomatically impossible to jam ARD’s transmissions.

So the Orwellian Ministry of Information in East Berlin chose a different tack.

West German television didn’t openly aim propaganda at the east. But its existence itself was a challenge – providing easterners with unbiased and accurate news, ‘capitalist’ entertainment and a forward-looking world view that the Politburo did not share.

Unable to prevent the population from watching, they created Der schwartz Kanal, ‘The Black Channel’, a peak-time ‘news’ programme where government (or Stasi) approved journalists provided a commentary over re-broadcast ARD and ZDF programmes.

In these bizarre, not to say downright creepy, programmes, West German broadcasts were pulled to pieces, with the presenter explaining to the audience the ‘real’ meaning behind the broadcasts they knew the population had been secretly watching.

News was freely re-interpreted. Drama was shown as nothing but arch propaganda against East German ‘democracy’. The lives of westerners were shown to be empty, lacking fulfilment and above all cold to the concerns of each other except where money was involved.

The Stasi – the secret police – kept files on more than a third of the population. Building its profiles from informers, the Stasi requested that East German schoolteachers ask children to draw what clock they saw on television the night before.

Almost invariably it was that of ARD. And that, in the strange world that was communism, was reason enough to keep the Black Channel open.

Quote:While still a student, he invented a device he entitled the "electric telescope". The key component of this invention later became known as the "Nipkow disc". Accounts of its invention state that on Christmas Eve, 1883 when he sat alone at home with an oil lamp, he conceived the idea to use a spiral-perforated disk to divide a picture into a mosaic of points and lines. Another important component of his invention was a selenium photocell.

Nipkow applied for a patent in the imperial patent office in Berlin for his electric telescope. This was for the electric reproduction of illuminating objects, in the category "electric apparatuses". German patent No. 30105 was granted on 15th January 1885, retroactive to 6th January 1884, the 30 marks fee being lent by his future wife. It was allowed to lapse after 15 years. Nipkow had taken a position as a designer in the Berlin-Buchloh Institute and did not continue further development of the electric telescope.

The first practical television systems used an electro-mechanical picture scanning method, the method that Nipkow had helped create with his disc; he could claim some credit for the invention. Nipkow recounted his first sight of television at a Berlin radio show in 1928: "the televisions stood in dark cells. Hundreds stood and waited patiently for the moment at which they would see television for the first time. I waited among them, growing ever more nervous. Now for the first time I would see what I had devised 45 years ago. Finally, I reached the front row; a dark cloth was pushed to the side, and I saw before me a flickering image, not easy to discern."

A few years later, the leadership of the Third Reich saw the propaganda value in claiming television was a German invention, and in 1935 named the first public television station after Nipkow. Paul Nipkow appearing on German TV in the late 1930sHe became honorary president of the "television council" of the Reich Broadcasting Chamber. Nipkow died on the 24th of August, 1940 in Berlin. By government order, he was given a state funeral.

BAIRD TELEVISION

Quote:BAIRD TELEVISION

This site is primarily about John Logie Baird (1888–1946), the Scotsman who was the first person in the world to demonstrate a working television system. On January 26th, 1926, a viable television system was demonstrated using mechanical picture scanning with electronic amplification at the transmitter and at the receiver. It could be sent by radio or over ordinary telephone lines, leading to the historic trans-Atlantic transmissions of television from London to New York in February, 1928.

You will discover herein not only information on Baird and his life's work, but also snippets and stories about other pioneers of television and the development of the television industry to the present day. Updates are made to the site every few months by its creators Malcolm H.I. Baird and Iain L. Baird who are respectively the son and grandson of J.L. Baird.

Quote:H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

by Malcolm Baird, January 2021

This year the Royal Mint has issued coins to mark the 75th anniversaries of the deaths of two highly creative British figures, one in literature and the other in science and technology. A 2-pound coin will recognise the novelist H.G. Wells (1866-1946), one of the earliest writers of science fiction a 50 pence coin will recognise John Logie Baird (1888-1946) and his pioneering work on television. The idea of television provides a connection between Wells the writer and Baird the inventor.

In Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes (1899) the leading character, Graham, falls into a deep trance from which he awakes two centuries later without having aged in any way. This passage gives an uncannily accurate description of a video player, although lacking technical details:

[Graham] puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices.

As a boy growing up in Scotland, John Logie Baird was an avid reader of Wells and he had this to say when he wrote his memoirs in 1941:

I read a great deal of everything and anything and it is interesting to consider what out of all this I have retained. ...One popular author, however, soars far above all others and takes his place among the classics. In my boyhood and youth he was a demi-god, the reading of any new book by him I regarded as a feast: this was H.G. Wells, and today he still occupies a high place although he is no longer a demi-god. I have met him in the flesh and not many can submit to this ordeal and remain gods, certainly not H.G. Wells, that pleasant stubby little man with the squeaky voice. Nonetheless of the popular authors of my youth he is the only one who survives and actually takes his place among the classics.

Although there is no firm evidence that Baird was inspired by The Sleeper Awakes, it seems probable. It is known that he acquired a book by the German physicist Ernst Ruhmer on the photoelectric applications of the metal selenium. He found that the electric signals obtainable from selenium were extremely weak, but the idea of television stayed at the back of his mind until the 1920s by which time amplifiers were available. After three years of intense research, he demonstrated television to members of the Royal Institution on 26 January 1926.



Baird and Wells met for the first and only time in October 1931 onboard the Aquitania, en route to New York. Rather disappointingly, the two men found little to talk about. A later passage from Baird's memoirs ends this story:

Mr. Wells proved to be a substantially built man of medium height with a cap pulled over his eyes, utterly void of any affectation or any effort to impress. A great anticlimax it seemed after the magnificent Sir Oliver Lodge and other overpowering press personalities. No imposing facade here, only a poor vulgar creature like myself. We had a short chat about youth camps. I said these organisations appear to ignore sex. 'Oh well' he said, 'every Jack has his Jill', and that is all I remember of the conversation with my demigod.

H.G. Wells and J.L. Baird

Quote:They were the women responsible for sending and receiving coded messages between federal agencies in the event of a cataclysmic attack on  Washington, D.C.

They practiced their work in the subbasement of Lewis Hall of Science in a classified mission so cloaked even their own families were not privy.

The facility itself was perhaps the worst-kept secret on campus, but the story of what actually went on inside the bunker secured behind vaultlike doors, and of the women who faithfully carried out their work there, remained a mystery until now. Years after the program ended and was declassified in 2000, three of the women recruited and trained to maintain the operational readiness of the facility feel they can safely share their story.

“That’s the first time I typed on an electric typewriter,” says Herr, who had worked as a secretary on a manual model. The women became early computer users, long before the College or most any other civilian institution adopted them. They also learned to send encrypted messages on the KL-7, a cipher machine developed by the National Security Agency. They became adept at decoding incoming messages.

Hering says she felt “a greater sense of urgency” the one time she accompanied her supervisor, Marjorie Spangler Zerkel, to “the mountain,” the nickname for the bunker nestled into a hillside at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. That was the facility designed to house every member of the House and Senate in the event of Armageddon. “I don’t remember exactly why, but I remember taking our work even more seriously after that.”

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(03-22-2024, 02:55 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: 50 years ago, Candy Darling, transsexual actress and friend of Andy Warhol, dies of lymphoma in New York City. She was 29. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she starred in Andy Warhol's films Flesh (1968) and Women in Revolt (1971), and was a muse of the Velvet Underground.


She left a sad letter on her deathbed:

Quote:Finally, having spent most of his life emulating Hollywood's great tragic divas, Candy became one herself: "By the time you read this I will be gone," she writes in a letter to Warhol and other friends from her death bed. "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again."

On March 19, 2024, Cynthia Carr published Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, a biographical portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar.

Quote:OWI head Elmer Davis spread Soviet Katyn propaganda lie in World War II Voice of America broadcasts

President Roosevelt’s chief propagandist Elmer Davis was formerly a well-known New York Times reporter and CBS news commentator. FDR hired him because of his popularity as a radio announcer with a great voice for delivering news, and urged him to continue his radio broadcasts in the United States while working for him in the Office of War Information. Elmer Davis did, thus giving President Roosevelt and the White House an opportunity to propagandize to Americans during wartime. These domestic and international broadcasts did include a lot of useful factual information, as well as anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist messages. However, they also included pro-Soviet messages, including propaganda and lies which Stalin wanted Americans and VOA’s foreign audiences to hear.

At the same time, the Voice of America was not broadcasting in Russian because pro-Soviet Roosevelt Administration officials apparently were afraid of offending Stalin. VOA would not start its Russian-language broadcasts until 1947. While working as the head of the Office of War Information and recording commentaries for the Voice of America and domestic radio networks in the United States, Elmer Davis  managed to deceive and confuse U.S. media and public opinion by claiming that reports of Polish officers being killed by the Russians in the Katyn Forest massacre were “fishy’ and “phony propaganda stories.”

The New York Times reported his radio comments on May 6, 1943, but other New York Times reports highlighted facts pointing to Russia’s hand in the mass murder. At that time, the Voice of America would not report any negative news about the Soviet Union, Stalin or communist parties and front organizations controlled by Moscow. In 1943 VOA news was written and edited by Howard Fast, a best-selling author of historical novels  who later worked for the Communist Party USA newspaper The Daily Worker and received the 1953 Stalin Peace Prize. He also spent three months in a Federal prison after his conviction for contempt of Congress.