string can phone

A flickr set.

Distinctly we remember in the golden days of youth being driven to a far-off land where ice water was free and giant, scorching fiberglass jackalope sculptures burned our tender flesh when we were forced to pose for pictures upon them. To this day, we are still not entirely certain where the heck Wall Drug is, but one memory (besides the jackalopes of pain) persists: automatons. A quarter would bring the massive robotic dioramas to life, and they would beat out a high-tempo antiquated tune upon actual instruments that miraculously played without players.

Not surprisingly, there is–as there is for all things–a group devoted to these devices: the Musical Box Society International. These 19th-century minstrels travel to festivals around the country, spreading the joy of mechanized music. And now they have produced a documentary about their craft, Marvels of Mechanial Music. We only wish that rather that DVD, the society had chosen to produce it in zoetrope format, for which you had to pay a nickel to view it.

STOP THE HAND-CRANKED PRESSES: Peter Jackson possesses automusica.

The difficulties of learning the Japanese language are well-documented, and possibly no task is more daunting to the novice than learning its written form, kanji. The complications of their very language became a detriment to Japanese office managers, who pride themselves on utmost efficiency and productivity. A way to write faster was needed. They saw how the typewriter had increased the productivity of the American officeplace, but American typewriter design was obviously impossible to use with the massive Japanese character set, which can consist of as many as 50,000 characters. The quest to create a kanji typewriter led to a complete re-examination and streamlining of the Japanese language. We at SCP salute the editors of The Book and the Computer who have superbly documented the evolution of the Japanese writing machine as part of their series, Japanese in the Age of Technology.

Once or twice daily, a young delivery lad knocks on our door with the latest bundle of post. We flip the endearing street urchin a shilling and retire to the smoking room to enjoy the correspondence from you, Dear Readers. Most often, we grammar- and punctuation-correct each, then slip them into the walls as insulation. However, every once in a while we receive a note which we feel compelled to share. Today’s correspondence is from M______ of Scranton, PA, who writes:

Dear Sirs,
Why haven’t you ever written about [the vintage and antique typewriter site] Machines of Loving Grace? It would seem to be a natural fit for inclusion in your publication.

Regards, & Etc. [sic]

Rest assured that Machines of Loving Grace has not eluded our detection. The fact that is has not yet been featured in these pages is simple: it is a site owned and maintained by one of our editors. To write about it could be construed as Shamless Self-Promotion, and that–as we were so often reminded by the hymnal-wielding women who raised us– is something one Does Not Do.

Another reason is that we prefer to features pages of Quality. And from what we have seen of Machines of Loving Grace, it is sorely lacking in typographic and design skills, is far too verbal where it oughtn’t be, and not verbal enough where it should be.

Therefore, kind sir, please understand why we shall refrain from posting about Machines of Loving Grace, or its companion ocean liner postcards site.

Kind regards,
The Management

While Gizmodo is salivating over the new VoodooPC Envy m:515 laptop, we cannot help but notice that it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Ghia-designed Smith-Corona Super-C typewriter.

Whilst perusing our scrapbook, we came across this photo of a highly stylized M5 assault weapon as related by Mr Bruce Sterling via Mr Wm. Gibson (who obtained it we know not where). We must assume that its ammunition is equally elegant. Remember when being shot by one of these to grasp your chest and tumble from a balcony.

An aquaintence of ours recently retired from the electronics repair business has approximately 2,500 vacuum tubes stored in his garage. We suspect that he will no doubt be investing heavily in Goldster Audio, which has recently debuted its Concertina tube-based amplifier and speaker set. Ah, the warm cathode glow and ozone aroma of toasted glass! The perfect accompanyment to your colorless, oderless iPod.

When presented with a wholly new medium to experiment with–in this case, the wonderful miniscule phonograph player known as an iPod–what better than to thrust the most ancient form of the medium upon it? The fine folks at WFMU have long made available dusty cylinder and disk recordings over the air with The Antique Phonograph Music Program and Thomas Edison’s Attic. Now that the WFMU cadre have expanded into the realm of so-called “ipodding”, you can pull these very rare recordings down to your very own microphonograph–er, iPod–and enjoy them at your whim.

Eclectisaurus is the business nom de plume of Leslie Zysman, who sells all manner of antique and vintage items through eBay and on her site. Though many of her best items are long lost to capitalism, she has blessedly preserved pictures of all of her past wares, going to far as to set aside portions of her site as nicely-photographed radio and typewriter museums. Perhaps best of all, she has set up an audio stream so one can listen to bygone jazz and big band music whilst browsing.

Once again, bOINGbOING has contributed to the betterment of mankind by pointing the way to The postcards of the Keown-Boyd Family. One Mr. Sent of London has procured a wonderous assembly of one family’s postcard correspondence from the years 1898 to 1922, and is sharing them with the world via his “fotoblog”.

Though we are unfamiliar with these so-called “fotoblogs” (or why the word should be spelt so poorly), we thank Mr. Sent for utilizing the moderne to preserve these lovely artifacts.