Posts Tagged communication
It’s cold at the Ford-Wyoming Drive-In Theatre. The first shockingly dry-crisp days of autumn in the Midwest were overdue this year, trailing an already belated Indian summer. While the arrival of cool weather in Dearborn, Michigan, was inevitable, most of us have not yet adjusted to the sudden snap. Virgil, the manager in charge of the theatre, is standing high on a ladder, repairing the roof of the streamlined ticket booth. He waves a gloved hand and climbs down. We are both bundled up against the cold in all manner of hunter green, plaid, and wool.
Drive-in theatres like the one I’m standing in peaked in popularity during the post-WWII era. In the late 1950s there were 4,000 throughout the United States. Today, approximately 350 remain, and the Ford-Wyoming is the last example in southeast Michigan. The first patent for a drive-in theater was awarded to Richard M. Hollingshead in 1933. He worked out the details in his New Jersey driveway, by putting a projector on the hood of his car and nailing a sheet onto a tree for a screen. To simulate bad weather, he hooked up his lawn sprinkler. The family stereo came out of the house for an impromptu sound system. Hollingshead sat in his car, to test drive the show. He liked what he saw.
Virgil ushers me toward the corrugated metal opening through which vehicles enter the theatre. Once through, I’m in a wide expanse punctuated by randomly-leaning speaker posts, my eyes stinging from the wind gusting uninterrupted across the empty space. Most patrons choose to tune into their movie’s sound via their car FM radio, but strangely, when the theatre owners tried to decommission the ranks of poles with their perched and weathered speakers, there was something akin to a mutiny: whether deployed in the car or not, the grey speakers had become an essential part of the drive-in landscape.
The Ford-Wyoming drive-in was built by Charlie Schafer, opening for business in May 1950. He and his family grew a veritable movie house empire in the Metro-Detroit area under the umbrella of Wayne Amusements, but the Ford-Wyoming is the only evidence of the legacy that remains. When it was first built, there was only one screen—the backside of the immense Streamline Moderne structure that sits at the front of the property. One screen with accommodation for 750 cars grew to nine screens and a 3,000-car capacity, and the theatre began to make the claim of being “the largest drive-in in the world.” Today the theatre has downsized to five screens, showing double-features from dusk until dawn. As of 2013, at 92 years of age, Shafer remains an active manager, working from home, disinclined to retire.
Right now, the emptiness of the Ford Wyoming—no cars, blank screens, dead silence—is amplified by our presence, two figures buffeted by the wind. I look down and see a discarded pine tree car deodorizer lying in the sandy gravel. Virgil and I are headed toward the one place that drive-in patrons never get to go – the projection booth. Like most theatres, the Ford-Wyoming is converting their projectors to digital, and this is the reason I am here. The previous morning, I had received a call with a certain sense of urgency. The last of the 35mm machinery was headed for the dumpster, and I made an appointment to take a look to see if there were any items that might be added to the museum’s collection. We climb steep industrial iron stairs, up to the booth, and I wonder how the projectionists don’t trip down them in the dark carrying flashlights and film cans. Virgil tells me that he used to get the occasional flustered phone call from late-night projectionists: “I dropped the film reel down the stairs and it unraveled.”
“All this stuff is just going to get scrapped in the dumpster. Anything you see here… it’s up for the taking. The boss just wants it gone,” Virgil tells me. He pauses and asks: “Have you ever worked in film?” “A little, when I was in college,” I tell him. He nods and walks over to the shoulder high stack of table-sized film platters, where a few reels of forgotten 35mm film are wound around the circular cores. These mechanisms hold up to four hours of footage, making the projectionist’s life easier with fewer changeovers of reels. “We have some old intermission commercials wound on here that are ours.” “What’s on them?” “Oh, you know… Dancing hotdogs and popcorn, that kind of stuff. They’re pretty scratched up. We’ve been using the same ones out here for decades. I think we’ve only changed it over once.” This is very exciting. I tell him, “If you’re willing to part with one of those reels, I’d argue to the death that it has a home in our collections.”
Intermission films belong to a film category known as “snipes,” collections of generic promotional material used to advertise theater services. Perhaps the most famous of these films is the Dave Fleisher animated Let’s All Go to the Lobby, produced in 1957 by Chicago’s interstitial trailer company, Filmack Studios. A “clock shell” is a basic countdown reel sold to theatre owners, which creative projectionists could use to make a custom animated clock unique to their theatre. By tape-splicing together sections from the generic clock shell with blackout film, music interludes, generic food advertisements, policies, and short cartoons (all of which again, pointed towards the snack bar), a mix-and-match intermission film was created.
The film reel that Virgil is about to give to me is one such clock shell, beginning with the Hungry Martian, and followed by a unique version of Refreshment Time. The reel was produced by the animation department at the National Screen Service, a company that began in 1920 as a movie trailer production outfit, and in 1940 became the monopoly for poster distribution. The NSS also made intermission films, but suffered competition from companies like Filmack and Pike Studios, who specialized in the genre. The animation on the two snipes here is rumored to be by Jay Ward, animator of Rocky & Bullwinkle and designer of the Cap’n Crunch logo.
The concession stands and snack bars of drive-in theatres provided ready-made food that could be gathered quickly and returned to the car before the next feature began. Roadside America author John Margolies tells us this was a time when: “Watching and eating became, and still are, ritualistically and irrevocably intertwined.” Onscreen, the drive to sell snack items and drinks to patrons was decidedly transparent. Animated anthropomorphic dancing, trick-wrangling food things, psychedelic abstractions of wild shapes and colors, and other oddities have continued to be a nostalgic oddity. The Ford-Wyoming remains a site where dancing hotdogs stay limber.
While Virgil searches for an empty reel to feed the intermission film onto, we talk a little more about his life at the theatre. He has worked for Shafer since 1976, and used to manage the Ford-Wyoming 6-9 Theatre. When those screens were demolished in 2010, he relocated across the street to the 1-5 Theatre. Virgil started working as a projectionist in 1986 because “there was no one else wanted to do it.” When asked about the bizarre schedule related to working at an all-night movie theatre, he explained that he arrives at 8pm, and ends his shift at 3am. After a short rest, he returns at 7am to test equipment and do building maintenance until the early afternoon. Apparently, he doesn’t get much sleep. The Ford-Wyoming has a history of dedicated employees, and Berean is one of them.
Passing the reel to me, Virgil seems eager to get back to work. Before I go, he asks if I’m good with computers. “Good enough to get what I need to done,” I joke. He strides over to the new digital projector and swipes his finger around on the touch-screen. It glows awake with cold and even LED light, a docket of possibilities for film arrangements appear on the screen like entries on a recipe card. The screen acts as a digital slot system to swipe in and orchestrate trailers, advertisements and messages. I look at the text and scan it for hints of familiarity. I can’t help but wonder if drive-in theatres still project the “Anti-Love Bug” and “No Necking” messages for teenagers acting out their part in the archetype of the “passion pit.” Tonight, this projector will show a double-feature of horror films. Behind me, there are two more projectors, pointing out through windows, towards two more screens. I realize I’m standing in a film house Panopticon, next to a dusty brown La-Z Boy recliner that commands the space from the center.
I look up to see Virgil waving something in his hand that looks like an external computer hard-drive. “So you just take this thing, it sucks it up into the slot, extracts the files, and away it goes! They told me I could make everything work from a laptop… I could just stay at home if I felt like it!” Looking at the files arranged on the touch screen, I wander to thoughts about the demise of 35mm film stock. Film enthusiasts who did not grow up with digital foresaw this harbinger when Kodak ceased production of 35mm slide film. Struggling to resist giving in to the comforting hum of those sleep-inducing machines was the bane of many college level art survey courses, my own included. And sitting at the back of a movie theatre, you could enjoy the physicality of the sounds: the whir of the film flying through the projector, the metallic rhythmic clacking when the sprockets let the end leader fly. The reasons for converting to digital are many, and I’m sure Virgil would agree. But at the risk of sounding like a Luddite: the dust floating through the blinding arc lamp of a true film projector just settles differently.
Kristen Gallerneaux is Curator of Communication & Information Technology at The Henry Ford.
Sources
* With thanks to interstitial film expert, Walter Forsberg.
food, communication, technology, Dearborn, Michigan, cars, popular culture, movies, by Kristen Gallerneaux
Located outside of the Benson Ford Research Center's reading room the past few weeks has been a case of birthday telegrams sent to Henry Ford on his birthday over the years. We asked Jake Hildebrandt, reading room assistant, a few questions about the telegrams in anticipation of Henry's birthday.
Why did people send telegrams versus other forms of communication?
Speed was definitely the main draw to telegrams. Telephones were widespread by the time of these telegrams, but like today it was a lot easier to get a written communiqué to a VIP than a phone call. Telegrams cost a great deal more and in many cases took more effort to send than a letter or card through the post, so there was an element of importance and respect in that way.
How many Henry Ford birthday cards do we currently have in collections?
We have only a few dozen actual Ford's birthday "cards" in our collection, but hundreds of telegrams. Many of the cards are intricate and complicated, with layers of lace and metallic foil and such. Really beautiful things that are a world away from the printed stock we send today.
What is your favorite birthday card received by Henry Ford?
I couldn't choose a favorite, but there is a really neat scrapbook-type album of novelty cards that Ray Dahlinger put together for Henry Ford. The cards themselves are really fun, and the book shows an interestingly playful side to the two men.
Where can we look at more birthday cards?
Most of Mr. Ford's birthday cards can be viewed by anyone in the reading room of the BFRC!
Interview and photos by Krista Oldham, former Marketing and PR Intern at The Henry Ford.
Dearborn, Michigan, correspondence, telegraphy, Henry Ford, communication, by Krista Oldham
My name is Danielle and I am currently a museum studies graduate student interested in becoming a museum registrar. I spent this summer at The Henry Ford, working in the department of Historical Resources to digitize the museum’s typewriter collection.
As an intern in the Registrar’s office, I had the opportunity to work with the museum’s extensive typewriter collection, which consists of over 100 typewriters. The typewriters range from a Sholes & Glidden, invented in the 1870s, to a Typatune musical typewriter (above). The collection also includes typewriter accessories, such as stands and cleaning kits, as well as trade catalogs produced by typewriter manufacturers and photographs of typewriters found in offices and workspaces. Continue Reading
21st century, 2010s, communication, research, digitization, conservation, collections care, by Danielle Bowman, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
What's in a name? Sometimes a little confusion...
Hollis Baird (1905-1990) was an inventor, entrepreneur, and, eventually, engineering teacher. Born along the Maine/New Brunswick border, by the mid-1920s Baird had made his way to Boston. He was active in the exciting field of television—in the 1920s and ‘30s. We usually associate television with the prosperous years after World War II, but inventors had been attempting to send pictures over radio waves for many decades. One of the few surviving Baird televisions is in the collections of The Henry Ford.
Mechanical television is based on the premise that a spinning disk can scan an image to be sent by radio, which can then be received by another spinning disk synchronized to the first. Hollis Baird produced televisions as the Baird Receiver Company from 1925-8, after which he founded a company with A.M. Morgan and Butler Perry called the Shortwave and Television Laboratory. Shortwave and Television sold radios and mechanical televisions and, beginning in April 1929, operated Boston’s second experimental television station, W1WX (later known as W1XAV,) which transmitted 60-line mechanical television images, including a speech by Boston’s mayor in 1931.
The television (39.554.1) is a Shortwave and Television Laboratory Model 26/36, sold as a kit or as a finished set. This was the viewer; it would have been connected to a radio receiver. That’s a 3” screen, for watching narrow-band television programming.
Historian of television and The Henry Ford volunteer Tom Genova operates a television history website, where he has put up a wonderful Shortwave and Television Laboratory brochure from 1930 called The Romance and Reality of Television. The brochure clearly explains how mechanical television works and seems aimed at a broader audience than the radio amateurs who usually bought early televisions.
After Shortwave and Television Laboratory dissolved operations in 1935, Baird and his colleagues founded a new company called General Television Corporation. During this time Baird also taught radio telegraphy at a school in Boston. After General Television, too, was shuttered in 1941, Hollis Baird moved on to a career as an educator. He taught electrical engineering and physics at Northeastern University’s Lincoln Institute, starting in 1942 as part of the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training program. He retired in 1976 after a long career as professor and administrator.
Baird had the fortune—or misfortune—of sharing his last name with John Logie Baird, one of the inventors of mechanical television. The colorful Scottish inventor and entrepreneur (early products included soap and socks for trench warfare) demonstrated television at London’s Selfridge’s department store in 1925 and had convinced the BBC to produce television programming through the 20s and 30s.
On this side of the Atlantic, Hollis Baird, who was no relation, took pains in Baird Receiver Company advertising to say that his products were not, in fact, made by the other Baird. The fact that he needed to put disclaimers in his advertisements indicates that this was a common problem, one that Hollis Baird probably didn’t mind if it led to better sales. But the name confusion has meant that Hollis Baird’s name has been mostly occluded by John Logie Baird’s. Even experts were confused: when this television was last on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum, the label identified it as a John Logie Baird TV. Luckily, this Baird television is such a compelling object that it rewards further research—uncovering the story of an American inventor in a field that no longer exists.
Thanks to Michelle Romero at the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections for research assistance.
Suzanne Fischer is former Associate Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford. She typed this post on an 1880s index typewriter and sent it to the blog editor via telex.
When the typewriter is a player piano.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, modern office culture was taking off and work was speeding up. To stay competitive, businesses needed to pick up the pace.
Office equipment manufacturers developed machines to allow clerical work to go faster. Automatic typewriters, just like player pianos, used punched rolls of paper — in this case, to speed up clerical work by producing multiple form letters at once.
Automatic typewriters generally worked as follows: A letter was written on one typewriter, the perforator, which encoded the letter onto a punched paper roll. The punch roll was fed into a reader typewriter, which reproduced the original. An operator would be standing by to fill in specific information (such as name and date) and to remove finished letters.
This Auto-Typist pneumatic automatic typewriter was manufactured by a Chicago player piano company in the1930s and used a player piano pneumatic mechanism to make offices more efficient.
Each key of the specially-prepared Underwood typewriter is hooked up to a small bellows. The encoded paper roll is fed into the Auto-Typist, and each punch on the paper roll directs specific bellows to move. The Auto-Typist allowed small business owners, like the Chicago doctor who probably used this machine, to quickly produce personalized form letters.
Auto-Typists continued to be manufactured even after World War II and into the era of business computing. In the 1960s, an insurance company automated their policy-writing department with Auto-Typists hooked up to IBM electrics.
Suzanne Fischer is former Associate Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford.
20th century, 1930s, technology, correspondence, communication, by Suzanne Fischer
On August 11, 1909, as his ship struggled off Cape Hatteras, telegraph operator Theodore Haubner had an urgent choice to make: How should he call for help?
Haubner worked the key on the commercial steamship S.S. Arapahoe. His ship had just broken her propeller shaft and was drifting off the North Carolina coast.
For years, ships in trouble had used the telegraph code “CQD,” which means “calling all stations—distress.” But a new code for distress had recently been agreed upon: “SOS.” Would anyone recognize it?
Deciding to split the difference, Haubner signaled SOS as well as CQD—and his ship was picked up just twelve hours later.
Haubner had sent the world’s first SOS signal. He later donated his headphones and telegraph key to The Henry Ford, where they are now on exhibit in our Driving America exhibit.
Wireless telegraphy, perfected only a decade earlier by inventor and entrepreneur Guglielmo Marconi, used radio waves to connect ships with one another as well as with stations on land. In 1904, CQD was adopted by Marconi Company wireless telegraph operators as their emergency signal.
But an international industry would need an internationally standardized emergency signal. At the second International Radiotelegraphic Convention in Berlin, in 1906, participants agreed on SOS as the international distress signal. They chose SOS not because it was an abbreviation for any particular distress call (it does not stand for “save our ship,” as many have thought), but because it was easy to send and receive - three dots, three dashes, three dots. When the Arapahoe was drifting, the signal was just coming into use.
So why are these telegraph artifacts in an exhibit on cars?
When Haubner sent that first SOS in 1909, American culture was adjusting to a feeling of new, wider horizons. Wireless telegraphy was one of many technological marvels making their way into culture and, more slowly, into everyday life. Another of those marvels was the automobile.
Driving America puts cars into the context of these new visions of the future - this optimism that new technology, standardized across the world, could do anything.
Saving a ship was only the beginning.
Suzanne Fischer is the Associate Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford. She typed this post on an 1880s index typewriter and sent it to the blog editor via telex.
North Carolina, telegraphy, technology, Henry Ford Museum, Driving America, communication, by Suzanne Fischer, 20th century, 1900s
Steve Jobs, Apple’s visionary co-founder, passed away yesterday, and the web is filled with an astounding outpouring of respect and gratitude for his work. It’s a testament to the impact personal technology – mass-produced consumer products – can have on people’s lives.
At The Henry Ford, we document not only the work of innovators, but the ways people use technology in their everyday lives. We collect artifacts that by their physicality and tangibility, their heft and their look, connect visitors to history and the lives of the people who used them. The Apple products in our collection – including an Apple IIe, a Lisa, a Macintosh, an iMac, an iPod and an iPhone – were used by ordinary people to write, teach, do business, play games, listen to music and connect to each other. Jobs’ product genius was in making those activities easy, transparent and fun – and in making the products highly desirable.
In the early 1980s, with Jobs at Apple’s helm, the company popularized the mouse and “graphic user interface” – the cheerful icons and desktop and folder metaphors that we still use in everyday computing. These innovations made computing accessible to everybody, not only people who could code. Over at our OnInnovation site, Steve Wozniak, Apple’s brilliant engineer co-founder, talks about how making computing fun and easy was the company’s goal from the beginning.
Jobs famously described the company as located at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. He infused a respect for creativity, intelligence and design into the company’s products – integrating color graphics quite early, for instance, and making one of his own passions, music, the key to a new kind of product, the digital music player.
The products Apple made under Jobs were never cheap. They were aspirational consumer goods that promised to make your life better, to make you a cool nonconformist, to make you “think different.” Did they? Maybe and maybe not, but Jobs’ legacy reminds us that our tools can change not only the way we live our lives, but the way we think about ourselves.
Suzanne Fischer is former Curator of Technology at The Henry Ford.
20th century, 21st century, 2010s, technology, music, in memoriam, computers, communication, by Suzanne Fischer
