Penny Dreadful, Edison Cylinders

[knightgrace]

I have had a breakthrough in the understanding of where precisely the idea of Duotronics came from.

The insight came, from of all places the television series 'Penny Dreadful '. As the early episodes show the progression of the first season, we are shown, Edison Cylinders. And, more importantly, 'hear' them play. I say "hear" because I don't know if they actually used the early Edison technology. Edison Cylinders were composed of very hard wax, so as to last a while. If you ever hear one being played back, it is very scratchy in playback.

This scratchiness lasted till the 1950s till High Fidelity Sterophonic Record Players came out. Its still there of course, but very greatly reduced.

Sterophonic systems used two sets of microphones to achieve a realistic level of performance reproduction. Stage right, and stage left.

The next part of the problem is to achieve with a digital system, analog performance, with regard to operational standards. In the real world, this was achieved through the development of specialized computer chips , beginning with analog, later digital signal processors.

What they did, was to take an analog signal and convert it to a digital format. But! The Second Law of thermal dynamics rears its head hear. It is called 'pixelation '. Meaning that a 16 bit digital signal processor will be scratchy. So will a 32 bit one, and so on.

The idea, is to eliminate scratchiness.

This is Duotronics.

Why? Think of the technological change from the Edison Cylinders to High Fidelity Sterophonic Systems.

...

Exactly.

 

[Dukhat]

‘Duotronics’ was just a made-up word coined for fictional computer systems in TOS. It has nothing to do with record players in a drama series made in 2014. You are severely reaching for connections that aren’t there. Especially since the TOS writers did not have the ability to time travel to 2014 to get their ideas.

 

[DSG2k]

‘Duotronics’ was just a made-up word coined for fictional computer systems in TOS.

This. We have no idea what it does, how it works, or what the "duo" even means. We also don't actually know anything significant about isolinear technology, optolithic data rods, bio-neural circuitry, et cetera.

That said, much as I was tempted to make a wisecracking reply earlier, I refrained. Conjecture can be fun, after all, and if this cat has some conjectural idea that somehow makes sense to him and him alone, then whatever.

But, in fairness:

It has nothing to do with record players in a drama series made in 2014. You are severely reaching for connections that aren’t there. Especially since the TOS writers did not have the ability to time travel to 2014 to get their ideas.

There was never any suggestion of any such connection. The goofy-name show reference was simply telling the path to how he arrived at his conjectural assessment.

 

[knightgrace]

You haven't considered the time span of of when Gene Roddenberry et el was born, nor his father.

For that we have to go into cultural changes due to actual technology.

Furthermore, Edison Cylinders had a new lease on life in the 1950s as magnetic drums. Which evolved into magnetic disks...

The point being that any competent adult would notice these things and be influenced by them.

Computers definitely existed in the 1960s, and were in the process of becoming an ever greater 'thing'.

The big question back then is how far exactly could they go??

And how long would it take??? Moores Law, was barely quantified. So any attempt in the real world to extrapolate more than a few years down the line, was more than trivial.

For example: Arthur C. Clarke in the novelization of 2001 A Space Odyssey, has the HAL 9000 computer being of his definition of the third generation of computers. The First Generation was Vacuum Tubes, the Second was Transistors.

The fourth Generation was to be the HAL 10000...(2010 Odyssey 2)

But even Doctor Clarke couldn't see, what his fourth generation - meant.

Just read 2061 Odyssey 3, and the last one 3001.

 

[Dukhat]

What does any of that rambling diatribe have to do with your imagined link between a made-up word in a ‘60’s TV show and a record player from a 2014 TV show?

 

[DSG2k]

(The can-shaped objects behind the player are Edison cylinders, for those unaware. I own one. Only later did groove-and-needle sound recreation tech involve a flat plate shape.)

 

[knightgrace]

Information storage is Information storage. The quality of information storage is important here.

Very important.

What I am doing is reasoning by analogy, combining historical trends in real world technology, as well as well known examples of people's thoughts, as evidenced by their writing.

Which is available, for anyone to read.

To bring it back around to Star Trek, in particular the episode 'The Changeling ', as launched, Nomad was capable of Independent Logic - other words, self programming. Whether or not it actually spoke is unclear. But I think that it could about its operational Status. Duotronic computers definitely speak, but can't carry on a conversation. Multitronic systems can to a limited extent.

 

[Dukhat]

If you say so. Frankly, it sounds like you are reaching to satisfy your own personal hypothesis about a link between two completely different things whose connection is tenuous at best. But you do you.

 

[knightgrace]

So you think that Nomad was perfect?

 

[Dukhat]

I really have no idea what you’re on about.

 

[XCV330]

I have had a breakthrough in the understanding of where precisely the idea of Duotronics came from.

The insight came, from of all places the television series 'Penny Dreadful '. As the early episodes show the progression of the first season, we are shown, Edison Cylinders. And, more importantly, 'hear' them play. I say "hear" because I don't know if they actually used the early Edison technology. Edison Cylinders were composed of very hard wax, so as to last a while. If you ever hear one being played back, it is very scratchy in playback.

This scratchiness lasted till the 1950s till High Fidelity Sterophonic Record Players came out. Its still there of course, but very greatly reduced.

Sterophonic systems used two sets of microphones to achieve a realistic level of performance reproduction. Stage right, and stage left.

The next part of the problem is to achieve with a digital system, analog performance, with regard to operational standards. In the real world, this was achieved through the development of specialized computer chips , beginning with analog, later digital signal processors.

What they did, was to take an analog signal and convert it to a digital format. But! The Second Law of thermal dynamics rears its head hear. It is called 'pixelation '. Meaning that a 16 bit digital signal processor will be scratchy. So will a 32 bit one, and so on.

The idea, is to eliminate scratchiness.

This is Duotronics.

Why? Think of the technological change from the Edison Cylinders to High Fidelity Sterophonic Systems.

...

Exactly.

phonograph cylinders work entirely different from the way records work. They made indentations. The earliest of them used foil, rather than wax. You can actually see a few videos on youtube on how the tin foil phonographs "Worked" showing the indentations. The initial wax cylinders weren't initially very hard wax. They could not survive many replays and are also subject to rot. Edison hadn't really assumed music playback would be the killer app. He was thinking more like transcription recordings.

The hard-wax black and blue ones came later with the Amphenol and Amphenol Blue. The main problem with the cylinders wasn't sound quality: they weren't any worse than the initial plate records and in some ways were better, especially towards the end of play. But they had much more restrictive time limits. It was initially much harder to reproduce them en-masse but they were getting better with that by the time production ended. Edison moved over to plate records but didn't give up on indentation vs horizontal scratching. In an odd turnabout, RCA revisited the idea in it's failed CED disks in the 80s.

Any recording from the 1890's-1920's is going to have scratchy playback. That didn't improve until Sound on Film and Magnetic Tape.

Also I have no freaking idea what any of this is about.

 

[knightgrace]

Let's invert it, then.

What was wrong with Nomad? Not the Tan Ru upgrade, but the original Nomad?

Or looking at it still another way could a Nomad type Independent Logic Computer control the Enterprise???

If not, why not????

 

[FredH]

What was wrong with Nomad was he crashed.

It’s really not clear what thought is being expressed here.

 

[knightgrace]

How soon after launch?

 

[DSG2k]

What I am doing is reasoning by analogy, combining historical trends in real world technology,

'{...} and applying it to understanding or illuminating the technology of Star Trek.'

As a concept, by itself, this is perfectly fine. Grand, even. The resistance you are encountering is due to two main reasons.

1. In the process, you're making claims about Star Trek technology which are unsupported. Example:

Duotronic computers definitely speak, but can't carry on a conversation. Multitronic systems can to a limited extent.

There is no evidence for duotronics being incapable of conversation, and specific examples of duotronic systems being only too capable thereof ("computed, dear").

Voice interaction techniques are a choice. Even our primitive electronic systems can pull off conversational tones today. (And I'll tell you, I don't like it, and typically try to get them to respond more like Starfleet systems, not because I am a tremendous dork but because it makes me uncomfortable for a Chinese Room to pretend to be a sapient person.)

For another example, you make an assertion about duotronics being in some way related to analog versus digital, or whatever exactly you were trying to argue. However, this is absurd, because literally nothing is known about duotronics.

See also your recent thread about Franz Joseph and warp drive in which numerous unsupported Trek tech assertions are made.

Conjecture about Trek tech is fine, but you treat yours as fact. Even that might be defensible if you had built up to that point by explaining the conclusion about Trek tech that you're then using as a premise, but you don't tend to do that.

This brings us to the other reason you're encountering resistance:

2. You're vague as all hell.

Here's a post you haven't written on love and faster than light travel:

"One and one equal two, except in love where it can literally equal more.

Warp nacelles can only operate in pairs.

Think about it.

Boom, exactly.

This is called gestalt."

It sounds neat and like there might be some deeper thought there. It even has a whiff of 1960s Roddenberry to it, having a universe that works on pairing, FTL as reproduction allowing species to spawn elsewhere, blah-blah yadda-yadda-yadda, but there really isn't anything of the sort present. One could be forgiven for dismissing it as a mere word salad, because that's literally what it was when I made it.

That is how your threads come across. The style is somewhat provocative insofar as it seems there might be something there, but, with apologies, I haven't seen where any of the threads or messages you've written in this fashion deserve that style. There never seems to be any "there" there.

As such, these messages are also going to tend to annoy people because they come across as some sort of smarter-than-thou trolling with little more than evasion as a response to any genuine questions.

Hope this helps.

 

[knightgrace]

All computer systems so far built can be shown as being 'Turing Complete '. This means that it can be shown that it is equivalent to a 'Universal Turing Machine '. A fictional computer system that Turing used to that some problems can not be solved in the lifetime of the universe. That is the 'Truth or Falsity' of a given statement cannot be shown in the time frame of the universe.

This is the "Gold Standard " of proof that a new design is general purpose.

Then you have the problem the within the episode 'The Ultimate Computer ', that Kirk and company were surprised that Daystrom was carrying on an actual conversation with the Multitronic M-5 system, as opposed to the more usual nature of dialog with Duotronic systems.
Then you have the Duotronic system as depicted in the episode 'Tomorrow is Yesterday ', there is no proof that this was depicting an actual conversation. There was a qualitative difference between the Multitronic M-5 and the Duotronic system aboard the Enterprise.
Now keep in mind that the Multitronic M-5, was the size of an office desk. Versus the statement that the main Duotronic Computer Core, was supposed to take up the center of decks seven an eight. I go with Franz Joseph's size, that was sixty feet in diameter, or about 18.3 meters in diameter.
If you like I can bring in one of the Star Trek Logs, by Allen Dean Forster which depicts the main computer temporarily be used to simulate, a crude holographic sword fighter, where it is stated that by "using the entire ship's computer, that one could actually imitate an actual human being ( caution: that quote is far more vague do to it being from my memory rather than the actual written story, because I don't have a copy of that story available)
The point being that a Multitronic M-5 was capable of running a Star Ship, with a crew of twenty, while a standard Duotronic core required a full up crew of four hundred and thirty persons.
Which raises other questions, such as why they switched from a crew of 203, to a crew of 430...
To me this shows two immediate possibilities, the first is that as time went on, Starfleet loaded down the Ship's core, with enough extra work, that it was required to have extra personnel to monitor the core.
The second possibility is that Duotronics didn't live up to the hype. To put it another way, there were indicators that showed "gaps " in the requirements of operations. In other words the crews onboard several different Starships had to hot the ground running due to technical failure. This implies that across multiple ships that made use of the new system (Duotronic) that problems showed up, that while annoying at best meant that a true high level hacker had to be present to correct any problems.
Such occurred with the IBM 360, which is where IBM made its reputation, in corrections.

As to my comment about when Nomad crashed, if Nomad had actually crashed at reasonable interplanetary speeds it would have been vaporized instantly. So why did it survive? Keep in mind that whoever launched it originally was monitoring constantly. So it exact location would have been known. So what is required is an understanding of digital flight controls for real time action - action is implied due to the statements on Jackson Roykirk's attempt to come up with an independent logic capable machine, that could run, in real time the early twenty-first century ideas on how to seek out life in the universe. So my question, still applies... is a Nomad type computer capable of operating a Constitution class starship?
My answer is 'No', due to the fact that most likely it had for its own control a minicomputer, not a mainframe, nor a supercomputer of the 1960s vintage. Keep in mind that the most advanced computer of the mid 1960s, was the Control Data Corporation CDC 6600 to the CDC 6700. The Control Data Corporation CDC 6600 came out in 1964. The next generation from Control Data Corporation, was CDC 7600, all of these designed for the Control Data Corporation by Dr. Seymour Cray, who in terms of the real world was the closest equivalent to Dr. Richard Daystrom of Star Trek fame.

We have no evidence of the level of invention in Star Trek that has been seen in the real world. What we have is Nomad. We don't know what existed in terms of pre Duotronic computers, nor how Daystrom sold the new system.
What we have is a history in the real world of a device that had man
Teething problems, finally going from a metal needle to a sapphire tipped needle, to a Dimond tipped needle. A metal needle would last about one hour, before needing to be replaced. A sapphire needle about fifty hours before needing to be replaced, and a diamond needle about 2,500 hours before needing to be replaced.
The scratchiness that I have referred to represents the in adequate responsiveness of previous Independent Logic Computers. This lack of responsiveness means that, in essence people died.
Why?
Because the long term test is whether people survive to return home.