System.out.println(“Good evening!”);
We hope you all are enjoying the cooler weather this week! We are having a more relaxed week at the lab after Halloween, so there is nothing major to announce on our end.
Demo of the Week
We have two demos this week!
The Grape iMac G3 will be running Microsoft Office applications from the year 2001,
and the Strawberry iMac SE will be running the video game Nanosaur.
Drop by the lab to mess around with either of these applications!
Object of the Week
Our object this week is the TR-005 Television!
Every decade or so a new technological breakthrough will come up, one that often fascinates our collective imagination. The year 1961 launched one of these collective dreams, one in which humanity could break through the outermost layers of our stratosphere and have human bodies (as well as dogs and monkeys), whimsically facing the lack of our planet’s gravitational pull. That was the one of the very first milestones in the space race, which culminated in the Apollo 11 moon landing in July of 1969.
Human fascination with space rocket technology then filled our collective imagination and spread out to consumer goods as the aesthetics of Space Age futurism were designed into household appliances, architecture, and cars in order to create the impression of technological advancement. Panasonic was one of the many companies that took advantage of this aesthetic.
In 1966, Panasonic launched the TR-005, also known as the Orbitel. A five-inch CRT screen encased by two silver plastic hemispheres, the Orbitel was designed to look Space Age, resembling an astronaut helmet or an alien spaceship. It was built using cutting edge “solid state” technology, which meant that its futuristic case was filled with circuit boards instead of the more, at the time, common nixie/vacuum tubes. In its ads, Panasonic would boast that the TV would not need to be “warmed up” before a bright, greyscale, clear image would form on its CRT screen.
While not currently located in our lab, you can still view this dreamy television set sitting proudly in one of our display cabinets at the ATEC building.
Movie Screening of the Month
Our upcoming screening will be on December 7th at 7pm. The film we will be screening has yet to be decided, but closer to the date we will let you know what we will be watching.
Lab Hours and Room Number
We are located in ATEC 1.705, right next to ATEC’s welcome center. Our open lab hours are:
Tuesday: 10:00am-5:00pm
Wednesday: 2:00pm-6:00pm
Thursday: 10:00am-4:00pm
Thank you for reading our newsletter! We hope to see you soon and wish you a stress-free week.
Sincerely,
The Media Archeology Lab
The University of Texas at Dallas
