Posts Tagged ‘3-D’
“Fly me to the moon”*…
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Do you long to go to space? With space tourism stalled and NASA’s Mars mission years away, you probably won’t be able to get up close and personal with Earth’s neighbors any time soon. But that doesn’t mean you can’t experience them, thanks to two new 360-degree views of Mars and the Moon…
“Take 360-Degree Tours of Mars and the Moon.”
* Frank Sinatra (lyric from Bart Howard’s composition, originally titled “In Other Words”)
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As we sample the cheese, we might send high-flying birthday greetings to Octave Chanute; he was born on this date in 1832. A civil engineer who was a pioneer in wood preservation, primarily as applied in the railroad industry, he is better remembered for his application of these techniques first to box kites, then to the struts in the wings of gliders. Through thousands of letters, he drew geographically-isolated aviation pioneers– including Orville and Wilbur Wright– into an informal international community: he organized sessions of aeronautical papers for the professional engineering societies that he led; attracted fresh talent and new ideas into the field through his lectures; and produced important publications. At his death he was hailed as the father of aviation and the heavier-than-air flying machine.
“He was a wise man who invented beer”*…
In the age of Amazon, when much of the world is but a click away from having any product they can imagine shipped to their doorstep in just two days, beer is stubbornly anachronistic, a globalization holdout that’s subject to the physical locations of breweries, along with the regional patterns of alcohol distributors.
It’s a picture painted well by the team from Floating Sheep, who compiled a million tweets, scanning for words like “beer” and “wine” to plot the alcoholic preferences across the U.S. What they uncovered is essentially the United States of Cheap Beer–a map of the generic, though perfectly tasty, lagers and pilsners that we loyally drink region by region…
Read more at “The Cheap Beers People Drink Across The U.S.”
Special Spring bonus: how adding beer to one’s barbeque slashes the risk of cancer…
* Plato
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As we pour into a canted a glass, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953 that Man in the Dark was released. In November, 1952, United Artists had released an independent production, Bwana Devil— the first full length color film released in English in 3-D. A surprise hit, Bwana Devil spurred the major studios to scramble to field their own 3-D flicks. Man in the Dark, from Columbia, was for to the screen. A film noir thriller starring Edmund O’Brien and Audrey Trotter, the film sank like a stone… leaving House of Wax, from Warner Bros., released two days later, a default claim to be “the first feature produced by a major studio in 3-D.” These three films kicked off the first period of enthusiasm for 3-D films; the second was a year-long period in the 70s. We are, of course, currently in the third.
The Perils of Early Adoption…
On November 26, 1936, three weeks after television transmissions began in England, Mr G.B. Davis of Dulwich (south–east London) paid 99 pounds. 15 shillings– over half the average annual wage of the day, equivalent to almost 4,000 pounds today– for the seventh television set manufactured in the UK, a Marconi “Type 702, number 1-007.” The receiver had a 12-inch screen contained in a walnut and mahogany case, with a mirror in the lid onto which the picture was reflected.
But poor Mr. Davis (presumably along with his fellow early enthusiasts) was able to enjoy his pioneering purchase for only a few hours: three days after he took the plunge, the nearby Crystal Palace and its transmitter burned down. The area could not receive television pictures again until 1946.
But Mr. Davis’ loss is his grandchildren’s gain. Bonham’s is set to auction the set later this month. There are more Stradivarius violins in existence that pre-war TVs, so the auction house expects the set to fetch much more than it’s pre-sale estimate of 5,000 pounds.
Read the full story in The Telegraph.
As we summon memories of Sid Caesar and Soupy Sales, we might recall that it was on this date in 1953 that the first color 3-D feature film premiered– House of Wax. Shot with a two-camera process, and viewed through “stereo” glasses with differently tinted lens, the film grossed a then-impressive $4.3 million. It launched its star, Vincent Price, on a career in the horror genre, and goosed the careers of his supporting players, Phyllis Kirk and Charles Buchinsky (who shortly thereafter changed his name to Charles Bronson). House of Wax kicked off the first period of enthusiasm for 3-D films (the second, a year-long period in the 70s); we are, of course, currently in the third.
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