Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Pneumatic Audio Amplifier

This is topic Pneumatic Audio Amplifier in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 12-12-2002, 11:29 AM:

This site has some of the strangest things I've ever seen.

Museum of RetroTechnology

They have an audio amplifier that uses compressed air, pictures of 2-wheeled cars balanced by gyroscopes, some strange steam locomotives, and even some 18th century "combat cutlery".

I'd love to hear what that air-powered amplifier sounds like!

I think many of you will find this to be a very interesting website.

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 12-12-2002, 04:19 PM:

If you like that, you might want to check out the Dead Media Project. They have a lot of stuff on sound reproduction and pnuematic tubes. It's mostly collected notes by its members on various dead media (not many pictures), but there are a lot of odd-ball inventions there. (Bruce Sterling wrote some of the contributions.) The notes can be searched through:

http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/index.html

They have short notes on some common film topics, such as Cinerama and IMAX, but they also have blurbs on more obscure ones, such as Thomascolor, Polyvision, the Zoopraxiscope, Keystone projectors, and others.

Or, if you aren't interested in film, look up the cat piano, American Missile Mail, or vinyl video.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-13-2002, 04:15 AM:

"Navy submarine U.S.S. Barbero fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida." [Eek!]

I like the Retro Technologies Museum, but I was looking in vain for the SA-10 [Wink]

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 12-24-2002, 12:58 AM:

Kevin Brownlow's phenomenal book about some aspects of the silent film era, _The Parade's Gone By_ has a recounting by an engineer who developed early sound films for theaters before useful electrical amplifiers by incorporating pneumatic amplifiers. IIRC, that was one of the systems which were to record the audio first, then the actors would be filmed as they lip-synced to the audio. A number of animated films like Fleischer's Popeye & Betty Boop cartoons in the sound era followed the same procedure!

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 12-24-2002, 05:03 AM:

A number of scenes in "Chicken Run" were also synced to the dialogue which had been recorded before.