head archivist

delusion go brrr

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Mayor Jimmy Walker makes the first trans-Atlantic phone call, January 8, 1927. The Times devoted four separate stories to it.

Source: NY Times Archives

[foone]

FUN FACT: I own porn I can't watch.

So this is a copy of Adultery for Fun & Profit, a 1971 X-rated film. It won the Grand Prize at the Amsterdam Adult Film Festival, for the year 1970-1971!

BUT it's on Cartrivision.

Cartrivision was an early home videotape format announced in 1970, released in June 1972, and dead by July 1973.

It has some "fun" features, like not selling VCRs for it: you had to buy it build into a new console TV. Which were huge, because it was the 70s.

There's also issue of Red Tapes (of which this is one!)

See, early on the movie industry hated the idea of home movies. They made all their money on movie tickets, right? People watching movies at home, that's gonna seriously cut into their market. This is why they later sued Sony for the introduction of Beta, arguing that it could be used to pirate movies by recording them off TV. (They lost)

So when Cartridge Television started selling Cartrivision in 1972, none of the movie studios really wanted to start selling their films on home tapes, that idea sounded scary. What if someone had a copy of all their favorite films and could watch them forever at home, and never went to the theaters ever again? The movie studios would go out of business!

So along with releasing a bunch of older B&W movies (the only ones they could license), sporting events, and shows from PBS, Cartridge Television came up with a compromise that worked for the movie studios:

Red Tapes.

So, Cartrivision tapes came in two formats: Black Tapes and Red Tapes. Black tapes you'd buy at the store like any other product, but for Red Tapes (which were relatively recent movies), you instead would go to the store and place an order from a catalog. The store would have it delivered by mail, then you'd come back in and get the tape. You'd take it home, watch it, and then return it back to the store. So... Video rental (like Blockbuster!), except they didn't have any stock on hand, and only got the tapes on-demand by mail? Seems annoying.

BUT OH NO: it's far more annoying than that. See... Red Tapes aren't mechanically like Black Tapes.

You can't rewind them.

You can play them and pause or stop them just like any other tape, but the rewind feature on your Cartrivison TV doesn't work.

So once you start watching a film, you can only go forward from that point. You want to rewatch it? Too bad. Go back to the store and pay for it again.

Here's that tape again. Note that it's red: You can only watch this porn film once. Then you have to return it to the store... the stores that haven't been doing this since JULY OF 1973.

But there's another thing you can see on this picture (barely, because this is a blurry picture, thanks Past!Foone): The visible screws in the corners

So here's the thing: The tape labels for Cartrivision hide the screws. A regular tape will look like this:

BUT when Cartrivision failed in July 1973, a bunch of stores sold off their unsold inventory, including watch-once Red Tapes. And people still had some of the players. But what's the point of having a tape you can't rewind? You've basically destroyed the tape now, since it's stuck at the end and can't be rewound!

So people bought some of those Red Tapes (cheaply, I hope) and then took them home and opened them up with a screwdriver, damaging the labels. They figured out how the no-rewinding mechanism worked, and removed it. So basically every Red Tape you will find for sale on ebay has visible screws, because someone modded it in the past.

Anyway, the format has been dead so long that it's doubly-impossible to watch now. The players were only built into big heavy 1970s TVs, which were long ago thrown out. The tapes have gotten old and brittle. If you somehow DID have a player, and it somehow still worked after half a century, the tape will probably shatter as soon as you try to play it.

And the whole format only lasted 13 months, so there wasn't that much inventory sold in the first place, so there wasn't a huge number of these in existence anyway.

But a final fun fact: Someone HAS managed to get video off one of these tapes. And it was so hard that they made an award-winning documentary about it.

See, this was basically the first home video format for recording TV. The quality was terrible but it was better than nothing, and it turns out some fan with a Cartrivision recorded a copy of Game 5 of the 1973 NBA Finals game. ABC and both teams (LA Lakers & NY Knicks) had video copies of that game... and ALL THREE OF THEM LOST IT. But the fan copy survived, in a format no one could play, on a tape that would shatter if you tried to play it.

So DuArt Media Services got to work trying to rescue the tape. They had to dry it out, bake it, freeze it, soak it in alcohol, and rebuild a broken Cartrivision unit, then do a lot of manual fixups on the digital files they'd captured off the tape, but they finally managed to capture the recording of the game.

This was used for the MSG Network, who were doing a special on the 1973 championship, and had no footage of that pivotal game. With DuArt's work, they had something to show.

DuArt then made a documentary about this, called "Lost and Found: The ’73 Knicks Championship Tape". It won an Emmy.

The punchline? That documentary seems to be lost. I have been looking for years, and have not found a copy, other than a short excerpt on Vimeo.

So yeah. Cartrivision. I'm slightly obsessed with it, even though I've never actually been able to watch a single second of Cartrivison footage. Tapes occasionally show up on ebay, the odd technical manual or spare part, but players are rare, always broken, and probably would just shred the tapes even if they did somehow work. The tapes are just too old. '

Cartrivision is just... dead and gone. Not yet forgotten, but it took media restoration experts a long time and a lot of work to even get a few minutes of footage off one tape. My chances of ever being able to play my Adultery for Fun & Profit tape are basically negative zero.

[objectoccult]

Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, people in the Soviet Union began making records of banned Western music on discarded x-rays. With the help of a special device, banned bootlegged jazz and rock ‘n’ roll records were “pressed” on thick radiographs salvaged from hospital waste bins and then cut into discs of 23-25 centimeters in diameter. “They would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole,” says author Anya von Bremzen. “You’d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha’s brain scan — forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.”

http://objectoccult.com/

OBJECT OCCULT

[shoomlah]

after eight years, I finally updated my huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now in the form of a MUCH more easily updated Google Doc with better organization, refreshed links, and five more pages of books and online resources.

I know tumblr hates links, but it’s worth it for a doc that I can now update with far more regularity going forward! RIP to the original, you did your duty for far longer than you should have. 😔🙏🏼

[headspace-hotel]

I...tried to make a meme and got carried away and made A Thing that is like partially unfinished because i spent like 3 hours on it and then got tired.

I think this is mostly scientifically accurate but truth be told, there seems to be relatively little research on succession in regards to lawns specifically (as opposed to like, pastures). I am not exaggerating how bad they are for biodiversity though—recent research has referred to them as "ecological deserts."

Feel free to repost, no need for credit

[headspace-hotel]

@jacobeprince666

Transplanting is a great idea and easier than a lot of people think

I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest learning to identify some common trees and plants in seedling stage so you can recognize them growing, especially in gravel, which is easy because if you remove the gravel bits carefully you can pull the roots out undamaged, put the plant in a pot, and it will 95% probably live. This is how i've gotten over a hundred seedlings of various trees and flowers

My posts about it should be tagged "gardening" but listen—the landscaping business is by no means "unfortunate." Make it a service offered on the side to identify baby plants, or offer discounts if they let you transplant seedlings from their yard...possibilities are endless!

[detournementsmineurs]

Collection of lachrymatorys (or lachrymosas), these tear catchers or tear vials - sometimes worn on a necklace, sometimes merely held - were used to gather the tears wept by mourners at funerals, to hold the tears of people mourning the passing of loved ones. One type of lachrymosa had a special top which allowed the tears to evaporate (signifying the time to stop mourning), others had a sealed top to allow the tears to last for a year, at which point they would be poured on the grave of the person whom the tears were wept for, Victorian era, 19th Century.

[bludot]

[c----h]

From Here To There: A growing map of Manhattan made only of directions from strangers on scraps. 

[infected]

Merseburger Dom, Germany, photo by martin.in.berlin

[systlin]

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them. 

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.” 

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just. 

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job. 

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

[assasue]

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

[anx1ous-op0ssum]

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”

[whatevercomestomymind]

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

[pbrim]

I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”.  (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.)  She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.”  “Why would you think that, ma’am?”  “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me.  See?”  They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle.  When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.

[catchester]

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.

[hazelsheartsworn]

^^ THE PERSON MENTIONED HERE IS JANET STEPHENS!!

Here’s her YouTube channel with the recreated hair-styles

And the research she did got published in the Journal of Roman Studies (which is a big deal in the Classics world) “even though” she doesn’t have at least a Masters degree in the field.

[To give reference to the gate keeping in this field, she was, I think, only the second or so person without a PhD to be published in the history of the Journal]

But that’s the point, she knew hair and she knew her craft so well that when scholars had ridiculous theories and scoffed at her own, she went ahead and experimented and proved her theories right.