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Digital Audio Recording

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/sloan/DAR/dar_index.html

Excerpt:

The use of digital encoding in telecommunications and the other advances in DSP (digital signal processing), such as in speech synthesis, led to the use of DSP in recording. In 1972 Nippon Columbia began to digitally master recordings, and in the same year the BBC began using pulse code modulation for high-quality sound distribution in radio and television and in its studios began using an 8-track digital audio recorder with error correction. By 1975, it was demonstrated that DSP could improve old recordings (in the first case, by engineer Tom Stockham, historical recordings of Enrico Caruso), and digital audio tapes began to be widely adopted by audio engineers. Music synthesizers incorporating digital recording also began to proliferate. But then the technology took an interesting turn.

Annotation:

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has established this site to record the history of digital methods of sound recording and playing, the technology behind compact discs and digital audio tape. A brief historical essay prefaces the site, and a timeline beginning in the late 1950s and running up to the present day details the milestones in the technology. An extensive bibliography of digital recording accompanies the essay and timeline, as does an international list of educational institutions involved with the original (and continuing) research in the field. In addition, there are links on the site to other histories of the compact disc, CD-ROM and recording technology in general. The distinguishing feature of this site is its interest in collecting (via input forms) the personal recollections of those who worked on the research and development of digital audio recording and its associated technologies. Visiting engineers are asked to submit photographs, audio clips and other memorabilia to the site for its historical archive.

Institution of Civil Engineers (U.K.)

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.ice.org.uk/homepage/index.asp

Author:

The Institution of Civil Engineers

Excerpt:

ICE seeks to advance the knowledge, practice and business of civil engineering, to promote the breadth and value of the civil engineer's global contribution to sustainable, economic growth, and ethical standards, and to include in membership all those involved in the profession.

Annotation:

Website for the United Kingdom's Institution of Civil Engineers, a charity devoted to promoting civil engineering. Researchers will be interested in the documents made available in their virtual library, which archives all ICE papers to 1836. These are accessible with a subscription or on a pay per view basis. A catalog of the Institution's library holdings and is also available, as are a number of free ICE documents. The site also contains links to a number of associated societies.

Blackout History Project

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://blackout.gmu.edu

Author:

Center for New Media History

Excerpt:

In early November of 1965, at the height of the cold war, 30 million people living in the most densely populated region of the United States experienced a cascading power failure which blacked out almost the entire Northeast in less than fifteen minutes. Rising to the occasion, New Yorkers assisted each other in a spirit of cooperation and community uncharacteristic of ordinary city life. Twelve years later, in the summer of 1977, the New York metropolitan region experienced another massive power outage, but this time the popular response was quite different. Devastating riots and looting engulfed the poorer sections of the city, inflicting enormous economic damage at a time when New York City was already on its knees.

Annotation:

This comprehensive site focuses on the history of the 1965 blackout in the Northeastern United States and the 1977 blackout in New York City. These two landmark events in the history of technology and the cultural history of America are recounted in a number of ways: through interviews, excerpts from various media, a timeline of events, recent historical writing, and, most compellingly, a growing database of first-hand recollections entered by visitors to the site. These recollections cover both the behind-the-scenes experiences of those who worked for the utility companies and the people who lived through the events. The site is therefore an excellent example of how to create an oral history archive on the Web, as well as a good source for understanding the tremendous social, cultural and technological impact the blackouts had on the people who lived through them.

MouseSite

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite

Excerpt:

WELCOME to the MouseSite, a resource for exploring the history of human computer interaction beginning with the pioneering work of Douglas Engelbart and his colleagues at Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s.
As a graduate student in electrical engineering at UC Berkeley after World War II Doug Engelbart began to imagine ways in which all sorts of information could be displayed on the screens of cathode ray tubes like the ones he had used as a radar technician during the war, and he dreamed of "flying" through a variety of information spaces.

Annotation:

This wide-ranging site explores the history of many of the technologies that form the basis of modern personal computing. Many of these advances came from the pioneering work of Douglas C. Englebart and his colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park, California in the 1960s. Using primary sources from Englebart and others this site recounts the story of an innovative decade. The computer mouse, the notion of "windows" and the graphical interface associated with them.

Automatic Speech Synthesis & Recognition

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/sloan/ASSR/assr_index.html

Excerpt:

Mechanical devices to achieve speech synthesis were conceived of in the realm of fiction, and first devised in the early 19th century. The invention of the telephone in the late 19th century, and the subsequent efforts to reduce the bandwidth requirements of transmitting voice, led back to the idea. In the 1930s, the telephone engineers at Bell Labs developed the famous Voder, a speech synthesizer that was unveiled to the public to great fanfare at the 1939 World’s Fair, but that required a skilled human operator.
Fully automatic speech synthesis came in the early 1960s, with the invention of new automatic coding schemes, such as Adaptive Predictive Coding (APC). With those new techniques in hand, the Bell Labs engineers again turned their attention to speech synthesis. By the late 1960s they had developed a system for internal use in the telephone system, a machine that read wiring instructions to Western Electric telephone wirers, who could then keep eyes and hands on their work. Further progress led to the introduction, in 1976, of the Kurzweil Reading Machine which for the first time allowed the blind to "read" plain text as opposed to Braille. By 1978, the technology was so well established and inexpensive to produce that it could be introduced in a toy, Texas Instruments’ Speak-and-Spell. Thus, the development of this important technology from inception until fruition took about 15 years, involved practitioners from various disciplines, most of whom are still alive, and had a far-reaching impact on other technologies and, through them, society as a whole.

Annotation:

This site was established to record the history of artificial voice machines, software and research. Most notably, the site contains numerous oral history accounts by engineers and programmers who developed this field in the second half of the twentieth century, and it is looking to add more of these recollections online. A timeline provides an outline of the major advances in automatic speech synthesis and recognition, and visitors are asked to add their historical notes, photographs and audio clips from early voice technologies. The site maintains an extensive list of links to institutes of higher education and companies that have been at the forefront of artificial speech research and development. Short biographical outlines of important figures are also available, as are citations to seminal papers and reviews from this area of electrical engineering and computer science.

History of Atmospheric General Circulation Models

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.aip.org/history/sloan/gcm/intro.html

Author:

Center for the History of Physics

Excerpt:

This Web site offers a brief history of atmospheric general circulation models from the 1940s to the early 1990s. It is also a forum for expanding our knowledge and understanding of that history, by collecting documentation and welcoming commentary. The site focuses on the following aspects of general circulation modeling:
Key scientific changes
Institutions (modeling groups)
Historical relationships among models and modeling groups
Political context: emergence of global atmospheric issues (greenhouse effect)

Annotation:

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has produced and maintained this site, examining the history of how physicists, meteorologists and other scientists have worked to create models of the Earth's atmosphere in an effort to understand large-scale circulation patterns and predict future weather events. The site's five historical essays trace modeling from the early 1920s through to the present day, and include references to printed material on the subject. There is an innovative "family tree" showing the development and interrelationships between various modeling theories and methods. Physicists and others who participated in the research and use of these models and their associated technologies are asked to email the AIP with their memories of the evolution of this field. It is also possible to send in other archival material, such as photographs and data, relating to the history of atmospheric general circulation models. A Sloan Foundation project.

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.collphyphil.org/

Author:

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Excerpt:

The College is a not-for-profit educational and cultural institution dedicated to examining the medical sciences and their place in society in order to enhance the understanding of medicine and the roles of physicians in history and in contemporary life.

Annotation:

Website maintained by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, an organization began in 1787 to provide education about and improve public health. Contains general information about the College Gallery and the Mutter Museum. Several former exhibits are reproduced online, such as "Emerging Infectious Diseases: Ancient Scourge and Modern Menace" and "When the Patient is the President." A database cataloging their historical OB-GYN instrument collection makes available images and descriptions of over 1,200 tools. The College's library catalog is also online. A link to Philadelphia-related health information is provided as well.

Galen II - Archives and Special Collections

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/sc/

Author:

University of California San Francisco

Excerpt:

Archives and Special Collections at the Kalmanovitz Library preserves and maintains unique materials to support research and teaching in the history of the health sciences for faculty and students across all campus disciplines.
The Library also maintains a collection of published secondary sources in the history of the health sciences, available on the 5th floor for browsing and circulation

Annotation:

Partial listing of the archival holdings of the University of California San Francisco. Some material available online, particularly of note: the AIDS history Project, the Biotechnology Archives, and the Tobacco Control Archive. Also contains links to other UC archives and sites related to the history of the health sciences.

Historical Center for the Health Sciences

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.med.umich.edu/medschool/chm/

Author:

University of Michigan

Excerpt:

The Center for the History of Medicine was founded in 1990 and is a unit of the University of Michigan Medical School. The Center’s mission is to conduct original research on the history of medicine; promote dialogue on issues related to health and society in university, medical, and lay communities; and to preserve and make accessible materials related to the history of medicine, biomedical research, public health, nursing, and medical and hospital administration.

Annotation:

The website for the University of Michigan's Center for the History of Medicine contains several areas of potential interest to researchers. An exhibit on polio contains a narrative about the disease and Dr. Thomas Francis' work against it, as well as many photographs and a bibliography. A listing of the university's historical medical films is available. There is also an interactive timeline regarding the history of the UM Medical School, and several links to related sites.

Australian Science Archives Project

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 11/08/2007 - 20:19.

URL:

http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/

Author:

University of Melbourne - Department of History

Excerpt:

On 3 May 1999 the Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre of the University of Melbourne was formed to sustain the academic, heritage and research activities of the Australian Science Archives Project.

Annotation:

Archive of Australian scientific and corporate material. Contains biographies of over 3,000 Australian scientists as well as listings of documents available for order and a Cabinet of Curiosities-an interpretive creation about Australia's scientific history. Not updated since 1999.