Optical Timeline by Tony Oursler

1 Iris is thought to be derived from the Red Symyaz leads the fallen angels. (c. 287212 b.c.) is said to Greek word for speaker or messenger. According to Enoch, they came to earth have used a large magnifying lens or Seth, the Egyptian god most associated of their own free will at Mount Hermon, burning-glass, which focused the suns Fifth century b.c. Chinese philosopher with evil, is depicted in many guises: descending like stars. This description rays, to set fire to Roman ships off Mo Ti, in the first description of the gives rise to the name Lucifer, “giver of Syracuse. camera obscura, refers to the pinhole as a pig, a tall, double-headed figure light.” “collection place” and “locked treasure with a snout, and a serpent. Sometimes And now there is no longer any “I have seen Satan fall like lightning room.” he is black, a positive color for the difficulty in understanding the images in from heaven.” (Luke 10:1820) Egyptians, symbolic of the deep tones of mirrors and in all smooth and bright Platos Cave depicts the dilemma of fertile river deposits; at other times he is surfaces. The fires from within and from the uneducated in a graphic tableau of red, a negative color reflected by the without communicate about the smooth light and shadow. The shackled masses parched sands that encroach upon the surface, and from one image which is are kept in shadow, unable to move crops. Jeffrey Burton Russell suggests variously refracted. All which phenom- their heads. All they can see is the wall that “it is possible that the redness of ena necessarily arise by reason of the fire of the cave in front of them. As a result Seth helped make red the second most or the light about the eye combining of being locked into physical sense common color, after black, of the with the fire or ray of light about the perception, they are doomed to view Christian Devil.” smooth bright surfaces. Or if the mirror only shadows of truth on the wall of the be turned vertically, the face appears cave. In Platos metaphor, an unseen fire upside down and the upper part of the behind the shackled illuminates a rays are driven downwards, and the Balinese Shadow Puppet marionette or puppet show taking place lower upwards. (Plato [427-347 b.c.], above and behind their heads; the Timaeus. Translation by B. Jowett, The Green puppets movements represent the inter- Dialogues of Plato [Oxford, 1875]). actions of true contemplation, visible to In the Book of Revelations it is stated, 384322 B.C. 384322 the masses only as indecipherable Aristotle writes De Meteorologica. His “There is a need for shrewdness here: if shadows projected on the cold stone treatise devotes a substantial amount of anyone is clever enough he may before them. space to a penetrating discussion on the interpret the number of the beast: it is causes of the rainbow, luminous halos, the number of a man, the number is Homer equates the rainbow/Iris with a northern lights. This section may in fact 666.” One theory of the numbers serpent, a sentiment shared in African be taken as the first truly systematic puzzling origin has anti-Roman groups mythology, in which the colors material- theory of the rainbow that has come giving letters numerical significance so ize as a giant consuming snake attacking down to us. that coded messages could be passed the unsuspecting. In the tribal myths Egyptian God Seth During an eclipse Aristotle notices among themselves. By obscure calcula- of South America we find the rainbow many images of a crescent sun on the tion the number 666 has the letter value personified in evil figures, and in Eastern The Devils Arc ground below a tree. He later discovers of Nero, who ruled 5468 A.D. Nero is Europe the colored light sometimes A person who crosses or passes directly that whatever the shape of the aperture, known to have enjoyed peering through sucks up water and children. below will change sex. jagged or smooth, the images projected a rudimentary lens crafted of the are the same. The riddle is known as gemstone emerald, which has the The prophet Zoroaster of Persia First reference to the persistence of Aristotles Problem. property of enlargement. This is one of describes a character similar to the vision: “This [perception of motion] is the first records of the use of a lens. ~300 B.C. ~300 Christian Devil. He teaches that Ahura to be explained in the following way: Euclid publishes Optics, in which he Ibn al-Haytham (a.k.a. ), a tenth- Mazda, the god of light, is in battle with that when the first image passes off and isolates the concept of a beam of light, century Arabian scholar, publishes the evil Angra Mainyu. A dualist, the second is afterwards produced in suggests the eye sends out visual rays to Optics, which is the basis of Europes Zoroaster believes the world is divided another position, the former is seen to the object that the viewer wishes to see. knowledge on the subject until the between dark and light. have changed its gesture.” (Titus sixteenth century. In it he describes the Lucretius Carus [9855 b.c.]). camera obscura. He also expands on the

2 1200 optical understanding of the Greeks, Alhazen, who was no fool, wrote his that viewers of an eclipse use a hole in invented a new type of press. 1452 Sep explaining that light spreads out in all Treatise on Aspects: the wise naturalist their roof and a board as projection 30, The 1st book was published, directions from an object. In addition he who would learn about the rainbow screen to avoid blindness from staring Johannes Guttenberg’s Bible. describes the linearity of light through must consult this book and must also directly at the sun. the use of three candles and one pinhole, possess notions of geometry to under- Formula for a Homunculus proving that we see objects by viewing stand the demonstrations in this treatise. It should be noted that a colorless lunar light reflected from them. He will then be able to find the causes rainbow is widely considered to be an ill “Place human semen in a glass vial and and the potency of glasses which possess omen. nourish with blood for forty days and Shen Kua (103195), Chinese astrono- marvelous qualities: the smallest things, forty nights, keeping it at the tempera- mer, mathematician, and poet, expresses the most minute lettering, tiny grains of In the thirteenth century, Arnaud de ture of a horses belly: and from it will be the first moral equivalent of the inherent sand, are seen so big and thick that they Villeneuve, showman and magician, a genius, a nymph, or a giant” qualities of the camera obscura. He can be exactly distinguished and even utilized the camera obscura to stage (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus makes an analogy between the camera counted from afar, which seems incred- presentations somewhere between Bombastus von Hohenheim [1493- obscuras image inversion and the nature ible to one who has not seen them or shadow play and cinema: players 1541]). of mans vision, which can be so polluted does not know the causes thereof. performed warlike or murderous 1558 as to see right as wrong. Others burn and consume things episodes outside in the bright sunlight, Giovanni Battista della Porta publishes placed before them if the rays of the sun while inside the audience was shocked details of construction and use of the Christians link the colors of the rainbow which strike them are cunningly made to and delighted by sound effects linked to camera obscura in the widely distributed to the seven sacraments. converge… . the dramatic gestures of the projected and popular Magiae naturalis: Others cause different images to images. The fact that the audience First of all you must close the windows The Comic Devil appears in popular appear, straight, oblique or reversed. So would stay inside and watch such a in the room; you will make a round hole medieval dramas. His role is slapstick- that mirrors according to how they are mediated event when they could have the size of ones little finger and opposite screaming oaths, making obscene arranged, can show two objects instead gone outside and viewed the event you will stretch pieces of white sheets or gestures, and executing pratfalls. Like of three, eight instead of four (Jean de directly points to a victory of the virtual white cloths or paper; and the result will Hell, the character was an inversion of Meun, Roman de la Rose). image over reality. The disembodiment be that all things which outside are norms of the day. of the moving image and its removal illuminated by the sun you will see “Vision is of three kinds: direct in those from the recognizable physical laws that inside, you will see mthose walking in Robert Grosseteste (c. 11751253) who are perfect, refracted in those who bind the body of the viewer imbue the the streets with their heads downwards, translates the works of Alhazen to Latin. are imperfect, and reflected in evildoers image with a magical quality at once as if at the antipodes, and the things on and those who ignore Gods command- distant and intimate. the right will appear on the left and all ments” (Roger Bacon [121492]). things over and the further they are French astronomer Guillaume de Saint- Albrecht Drer (14711528) illustrated from the hole the larger they will appear. Cloud suggests in an almanac of 1290 two drawing aids: one involving a grid I will not conceal at last a thing that is through which to view images, and full of wonder and mirth, because I am another using a ground glass pane to faln upon this discourse, that by night an trace images from life. image may seem to hang in the chamber. In a tempestuous night anything may be Buddhists associate the colors of the represented hanging in the middle of the rainbow with the seven regions of the chamber, that will terrify beholders. Fit earth and the seven planets. the image before the hole that you desire to make seem hanging in the air 1450 First book printed with movable metal in another chamber, that is dark; let type. Johannes Gutenberg printed a there be many torches lighted around bible with movable type in Mainz. He about. In the middle of the dark perfected interchangeable type that chamber place a white sheet, or some Alhazen’s idea of the formaton of the haloc. could be cast in large quantities and solid thing that may receive the image

3 sent in; for the spectators will not see first description of a telephoto lens. As “I will suppose therefore that not God, on one side facing another hole on the the sheet, will see the image hanging in imperial mathematician, Kepler used a who is supremely good and the source of opposite side. Inside is another box or the middle of the air, very clear, not portable tent camera obscura to survey truth, but rather some malicious demon frame covered with translucent paper. without fear or terror, especially if the Upper Austria of the utmost power and cunning, has The draughtsman within is able to see artificer be ingenious. . . . you may see employed all his energies in order to an image on two sides of the little paper- hunting, battles of enemies and other deceive me” (Ren Descartes [1638-40], walled room. delusions, and animals that are really so, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641). Kircher describes persistence of vision, or made by art of wood or some other likening the change of color in an after- matter. You must frame the little “All Knowledge is light and all proceeds image to the glow of a phosphorous children in them, as we used to bring from the First, Infinite Light Who is stone when placed in darkness after them in when comedies are acted; and God” (Athanasius Kircher [160180]). exposure to light. you must counterfeit stags, boars, 1647 1646 rhinoceros… . Anonymous engraving, The Soul Of Man, 1629 Athanasius Kircher, a German professor Johannes Hevelius, an astronomer, Later he discovers that by adding a of philosophy, mathematics, and designs a lathe that can produce large- 1610 lens to the enlarged hole, images can be Achilles Landenbucher, a watchmaker, Oriental languages at a Jesuit college in scale telescope lenses. sharpened. devises musical instruments that play Rome, publishes Ars magna lucis et 1666 themselves. umbrae. It includes the earliest known Sir Isaac Newton studies the phenomena illustrations of magic lantern slides and of colors, laying the groundwork for the “For since God has given each of us a the first descriptions of lantern shows modern physical theory of color. To light to distinguish truth from falsehood, and other devices such as dioptrics, begin, he creates a camera obscura with I should not have thought myself lenses of pantoscopes, and telescopes, in a triangular glass prism at its “entrance,” obliged to rest content with the opinions “which little known powers of light and which he ground himself, focusing and of others for a single moment if I had shadow are put to diverse uses.” Two refracting the suns rays through the dark not intended in due course to examine lenses can be put together to create a room onto the opposite wall. There it is them using my judgment; and I could microscope, “which will amplify a fly “a very pleasing divertissement [diver- not have avoided having scruples about into a camel.” sion] to view the vivid colors” of the Giovanni Battista della Porta, 1558 following these opinions, if I had not Kircher also describes a portable spectrum. These experiments culminate hoped to take every opportunity to camera obscura with two apertures and in his letter of February 6, 1672 to the 1585 Tulio Caesare Aranzi focuses sunlight discover better ones, in case there were an inner cube. The outer box has a hole Royal Society of London, which outlines through a flask of water and projects it any” (Ren Descartes, Discourse on the into the nasal cavity. He is the first Method of Rightly Conducting Ones Reason person known to use a light source for and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences. an endoscopic procedure. First published anonymously in 1637).

1604 The astronomer Johannes Kepler writes Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, in which light and the physiology of the eye are explored in depth. He coins the term camera obscura, which had been known variously as conclave obscurum, cubiculum tenebricosum, and camera clausa. By using this device he is able to measure the diameters of the sun and . He also demonstrates how the focal distance of a lens can be reduced by interposing a negative concave lens; this may be the Giovanni da Fontana, 1620 Newton’s investigation of light refraction through a camra obscura and prism.

4 his discovery of the properties of light Etienne de Silhouette (170967), French display, when the circuit is closed, proves rays. Newton also notes that the relative controller general of finances, cuts out that electricity is felt throughout the color or perceived color of objects is profiles of his contemporaries in black entire circuit and that electricity travels determined by the quality of the light paper. very quickly. striking the object. For example, an 1717 1749 apple tends to reflect red in a full Richard Bradly describes the kaleido- Horace Walpole, a young British spectrum of light. As Newton points out, scope in a work on garden design. socialite, begins to convert his home, it is useless to think of an apple as red, Strawberry Hill, into “a little Gothic 1720 for “any body may be made to appear Louis-Bertrand Castel invents the castle.” The interior is to become a any color” by controlling the reflected clavecin oculaire or optical harpsichord. repository of everything antique; when light. Newton is also the first person in The keys trigger not only sound but also he cant find an object he desires, he history to unlock the riddle of the a corresponding color produced by employs artisans to build a replica for rainbow when he applies his understand- transparent colored gels. him. His random collection of oddities ing of refraction to the water droplets in from throughout the ages, such as a 1725-27 the air. James Graham establishes the Temple of Roman tomb with the bones of a child Health in London. He invites childless within, are aesthetically arranged. The 1675 Jean Picard, the French astronomer, is couples to indulge in sexual intercourse towers and stained glass are not in walking home late one night from the in his celestial or magneticoelectro bed themselves designed to evoke fear; the Robertson’s redesign of Archimedes legendary Burning Paris Observatory, swinging his barom- within a therapeutic electric field created setting is meant to stimulate visitors to Glass for the French Government eter by his side. To his great surprise, the by Hauksbees Influence Machine. feel a bygone era when our predecessors glass tube emanates a faint glow; the believed dwellings to be haunted. This By the 1790s he shifts his exploration more he shakes it the more it glows: “the 1738 Jacques de Vaucanson amazes the world influential building may be seen as the from the occult to the science of optics glow of life.” by exhibiting in Paris a number of origin of a resurgence of Gothic and the and, finally, to a new theatrical form. In automata, including a life-size Flute camp/pop cultural interpretation of the 1794 Robertson founds the Fantasmago- 1706 Francis Hauksbee, an English student of Player and the celebrated Duck, which is past that is so prevalent today in theme ria, an influential sound and light show Sir Isaac Newton, invents a machine that reported to flutter its wings, swim in parks, architecture, and media. in Paris, which makes use of his own produces “the glow of life” at will. water, eat, drink, and, finally, pass the graphic designs and innovations in the 1763 Hauksbees Influence Machine consists food as amorphous matter. Edward Gaspard Robertson, showman- magic lantern projection system. He of a hand-cranked device that spins a scientist-occultist, is born in Lige. In his combines performers, props, and sound 1745 glass vacuum globe, half full of air. The Pieter van Musschenbroek invents the memoirs Robertson writes of his effects produced by the Musical Glass mysterious luminosity can be produced Leyden jar, a storage container for a fascination with “Father Kircher” and of (and a robotic trumpet player) and by touching the surface of the glass as it continuous flow of relatively large the early motivations that he shared: projects moving images on clouds of spins; also produced is a crackling sound amounts of electricity, considered the “Who has not believed in the Devil and smoke and layers of gauze curtains. In that reminds the inventor of lightning first battery. Previously, experimental werewolves in his early years? I admit the area of slide projection, he intro- scientists were forced to rely on frankly that I believed in the Devil, in duces the idea of painting images on an unpredictable, spontaneous electrical raising the dead, in enchantments. . . opaque black background rather than on phenomena such as static electricity or Since the Devil refused to communicate clear glassso the images seem to float attracting lightning to a metal pole, for to me the science of creating prodigies, I free in the air. His theater, a “vast example. would apply myself to creating Devils, abandoned chapel” dressed up with and I would have only to wave my wand, elaborate “Gothic” decor, is the first 1746 Nollet conducts electricity from a to create all the infernal cortege to be permanent auditorium (he performs the Leyden jar through the bodies of seen in the light. My habitation became Fantasmagoria for six years) for pro- Carthusian monks holding iron wire. true Pandemonium.” jected audio-visual shows. So convincing The monks form a circle 5,400 feet in are his illusions that “gentlemen drew circumference. The simultaneously their swords, ladies fainted.” He insists Hauksbee’s Influencing Machine shocked contortions that the monks that his aim is not to deceive the public

5 891814 1809 but to arm them against irrational Humphry invents the first electric represent the twenty-six letters of the superstition. His themes are culled from light - the first arc lamp. alphabet, the ten numerals, and all popular lore, historic and religious: The punctuation marks. The Morse code Apparition of the Bleeding Nun, Chinese Joseph Nicphore Niepce achieves his foreshadows the on/off nature of binary Tamtam, The Death of Lord Littleton, and first photographic images with a camera codea series of zeros and onesused in Preparation for the Sabbath. obscura. modern computers.

1817 1833 What is the normal state of a room? Michael Faraday investigates electrical One could say that a dark room is a discharges of gases using vacuum tubes more natural and normative state than a in which a current is passed from a nega- 1800 Humphry Davy, English electro- lighted room. As with the cave before it, tive electrode to a positive electrode, chemist, is the first to observe the light the room is enclosed and inherently cut producing a glow on the inner surface of produced by the discharge of electric off from natural light. Windows can be the opposite end of the tube. current between two carbon electrodes. employed to let light and air into a 1834 The arc light is produced. room, but daylight is limited by the William George Horner patents an cycles of the sun. At night artificial light image-animation device, the daedelum, 1801 Illustration of Robertson’s Phantasmagoria Frenchmen, J.M. Jacquard invents the is needed to illuminate the chamber. “Wheel of the Devil.” Later, around from his Memores Jacquard Loom. The open fire gave way to more 1864, French inventor Pierre Desvignes controlled forms of light: oil lamps, refines the device for the home market 1766 1802 Jean-Jacques Rousseau coins the word Thomas Holcrofts play, A Tale of candles, and finally, in cities, systemati- under the name zoetrope, “wheel of melodrama to describe a drama in which Mystery: A Melodrama, is innovative in its cally supplied gas. life.” words and music, instead of proceeding use of music and calls for intensifying together, are heard in succession, and in dramatic moments by the sonic expres- Swedish Baron Jns Jakob Simon von Stampfer invents the which spoken phrases are to some sion of “discontent and alarm,” “chatter- isolates the element selenium. stroboscope, a device using variable- degree announced and prepared for by ing contention,” and “pain and disorder.” speed, extremely bright flashing light to 841825 1824 musical phrases. Over the next forty years, stage music Englishmen, Joseph Aspdin patents create the optical effect of capturing evolves into a modular system of Portland Cement, the modern building motion in a series of frozen images. 1773 Jean Pierre and Henri-Louis Droz repeatable phrases known as melos, each material. 811842 1841 produce The Scrivener, a robotic writing identified with a different emotion. Frederick de Moleyn first uses vacuum figure who dips his pen into an inkwell Peter Mark Roget of thesaurus fame for electric light bulbs. 1806 and writes a limited number of words. Bozzini employs an aluminum tube to demonstrates the persistence of vision visualize the genitourinary tract. The with his Thaumatrope. Bain elaborates on Edmond 1784 Friedrich Anton Mesmer, an Austrian tube, illuminated by candle light, has ’s research into the electrome- physician, is legally forbidden to practice fitted mirrors to reflect images. Bozzini’s William Sturgeon invented the electro- chanical effects of light and proposes the in France. His treatments involve groups invention, “a magic lantern in the magnet. idea of scanning an image so that it can of patients conducting the current human body,” is ridiculed at the time. be divided into small, transmittable 1831 known as animal magnetism through Joseph Henrys single-wire telegraph is parts. According to his theory, electrified chambers, huge vats, or metaphorical introduced. metal letters could be scanned by a “batteries” of mysterious solutions. The pendulum and duplicated on chemical 1832 treatments, accompanied by shouts, Charles Wheatstone invents a nonpho- paper at the other end of the telegraph hysterical laughter, and music, end in tographic “stereoscopic viewing device.” wire by a synchronized pendulum. mattress-lined rooms for the patients 1843 decompressions. Electric currents can travel rapidly along Rogues Gallery: The first index of wires of infinite length. Samuel Morse photographed criminals is organized by interrupts the current and shapes it into the police of Brussels. Magic Lantern combinations of dots and dashes to

6 891880 1879 Fox Talbot makes first instantaneous American folklore the legend encom- frame of ones life and retains the image General Electric introduces the first photographs using electric spark passes the possibility that sick, dying, or until decomposition of the body. The Edison carbon filament electric light illumination. dead people leave images of themselves forensic implications of the theory are bulb. on glass surfaces in the building of their explored by surgically removing the Telecommunications confinement. The subjects are criminals, retinas of murder victims and examining The first articles written about early victims, and sometimes Jesus Christ. them under a microscope. models of television are published in 1844 Samuel Morse sends the first message by Folklorist Barbara Allen suggests that Nature, English Mechanic, and Scientific 1872 electric telegraph from the Supreme popular misunderstanding of the new Joseph May, a worker at Telegraph American. Court in Washington d.c. to Baltimore. technology such as the photographic Construction and Maintenance Co., 1881 Miss Elsworth, the daughter of the plate spawned such lore, and with the tests transatlantic transmissions using Rudge and Friese-Greene use a lantern commisioner of patents, composes the introduction of flexible film, the glass rods made of selenium as resistors. He with a scissors shutter to animate message: “What hath God wrought.” plate legends decline. finds the resistance to be inexplicably consecutive images of a man removing variable; his lab desk is near a window, his own head. 1858 1864 Heinrich Geissler, a German glass Lewis Morris Rutherford pioneers astro- and he notices that when a ray of blower and maker of scientific instru- photography. sunlight strikes the test rods, current Brit Shelford Bidwell transmits silhou- ments, creates the Geissler tube. A flows freely through it, while in the dark ettes using both selenium and a scanning vacuum is created in a glass container Pigeons are used to carry microphoto- the electricity crawls. The companys system. He dubs the device the “scan- sealed with electrodes at either end. graphed messages across enemy lines. head electrician, Willoughby Smith, ning phototelegraph.” Electrons moving through the tube are later takes credit for the discovery. visible as patterns of light, varying 1865 Gregor Mendel, “father of genetics” an Recognizing the implications of the phe- Artificial lighting during theatrical according to the shape of the tube or the Austrian monk, publishes his findings on nomenon, he follows up with extensive performances causes audience discom- type of gas introduced into the vacuum. the laws of inheritance based on experimentation and soon proposes fort; viewers are subjected to extremes of This invention will lead to the discovery experiments, begun in 1857, with pea “visual telegraphy.” He states at the temperature (the ceiling goes from 60 to in 1890 of cathode rays, a basic principle plants. His studies are ignored untill time, “Seleniums sensibility to light is 100 degrees) and suffer headaches due to of video technology. 1900, well after his death in 1884. extraordinary . . . a mere Lucifer match the fact that gaslight consumes large being sufficient to effect its conductive amounts of oxygen, while its exhaust 1868 1859 1859 Establishing an important prin- Sincere Acting: “This womans nature powers.” includes ammonia, carbon dioxide, and ciple for the future of electronics, the was one in which all . . . experience sulfur. In Berlin the effects of gaslight 1876 German mathematician and physicist immediately passed into drama, and she Alexander Graham , trained in on luxurious public decor and architec- Julius Plcker discovers that cathode rays acted her own emotions. . . . It would speech therapy for deaf people, patents ture are noted: “The gas flames began (electrons) are deflected by a magnetic not be true to say that she felt less the telephone. “The telephone operates their destructive work . . . blackening the field. because of this double consciousness” by translating vocal sounds into a ceilings. . . . most surfaces turned yellow (George Eliot, describing Princess fluctuating electric current, which passes . . . and the oil paintings almost disap- Alexandre Edmond Becquerel, a Halm-Eberstien in Daniel Deronda through a wire and is converted peared or were darkened by smoke.” member of the noted family of French [1868]). into vocal sounds by a receiver at the 1884 physicists, uses a Geissler discharge tube other end of the wire” (Christos J. P. Etienne-Jules Marey develops the 1869 filled with fluorescent material to create Edward Everett Hale’s “The Brick Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami chronophotography device, which looks the first fluorescent lamp. Moon” is published in Atlantic Monthly. Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the very much like a machine gun. He Hale describes an artificial moon, or Internet: A Chronology [1999]). successfully exposes a number of 1860 Oliver Wendell Holmes invents popular satellite, that he thought could be used photographic images in quick succes- 1878 stereoscope viewer. as a military post. Eadweard Muybridge publishes The sion, thus capturing exact details of Horse in Motion. motion that have never before been 1870 (1860-80) Photographic lightning is Dr. Vernois of the Society of Legal seen. One of his first motion studies is of believed to be a flash of lightning that Medicine of Paris publishes his theory of Dennis Redmond develops “electric a flying bird, which he then presents on creates the image of a person on an the optigramme. He believes that at the telescope” to produce moving images. an electric zeotrope. Marey, a scientist, is ordinary windowpane or mirror. In point of death, the retina freezes the last interested in using his devices only for

7 861888 1886 1893 1892 speeding things up or down to study German physicist Heinrich R. Hertz First commercial transparent roll film Arsne dArsonval studies the psychologi- locomotion. He shies away from the produces radio waves. makes possible the development of the cal effect of electrical current on replication of real time, stating that the movie camera. humans. absurdity of such an undertaking “would On February 27 Eadweard Muybridge 1890 be attended by all the uncertainties that meets Thomas Edison and suggests the German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun Thomas Edison patents the kinetoscope. embarrass the observation of the actual combination of the respective invention- invents the Braun tube, an adaptation of movement.” sthe zopraxiscope and the phonograph. a Lenard cathode ray tube, which is the Red Shift forerunner of the TV picture tube. George Eastman markets the Kodak, a The systematic increase of the wave- roll-film camera capable of taking 100 Heinrich R. Hertz develops electromag- length of all light received from a separate pictures without reloading. netic radiation. celestial object is observed in all Eastman provides developing and segments of the spectrum to shift toward printing facilities: “You press the button, the higher or red end. This is mostly we do the rest.” Amateur photographers caused by the Doppler effect on the come into being. light of the heavenly body as it travels across vast distances of space. Frederick Eugene Ives files patent for 1895 Etienne- Jules Marey, photographic gun taking color photographs. German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen discovers X-rays; slide makers German scientist Paul Gottlieb Nipkow Dr. Roth and Professor Reuss of Vienna publish long lists from which to choose patents an image-scanning machine use bent glass rods to illuminate body interesting and macabre examples made up of a spinning disk placed cavities. ranging from coins in a purse to a bullet between a scene and a selenium element. lodged in a cranium. Nipkow argues that if the disk is turned Hollerith’s Tabulator and Sorter fast enough, it can show a moving George Mlis works as a magician/artist picture. The U. S. government undertakes the at the Robert-Houdin Theater, which census of 1890, two thousand clerks are regularly combines lantern shows with hired to run Herman Holerith’s performances. On April 4 Mlis shows his mechanized tabulating system. This first film at the theater, along with marks the birth of the now-ubiquitous Edisons kinetoscope films. Also on the office-machine as well as IBM (Interna- bill are boxing kangaroos, serpentine tional Business Machines). Clerks dancers, seascapes, and white silhouettes translate each citizen’s age, sex, and on black. He founds first production ethnicity into a pattern of holes punched company, Star Film, which produces 500 on a card; Holerith’s electromechanical films from 1896 to 1912; fewer than 90 machine totals the information. Each survive. Mlis himself plays the Devil in a machine processes one thousand cards number of his own films. 1889 A. Pumphery (U.K.) invents and markets an hour. The census takes two and a half the cycloidotrope or Invisible Drawing years. (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, Hilary On December 28, in front of the Grand Master, a machine that will “trace an Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, Caf in Paris, thirty people watch infinite variety of geometric designs” History of the Internet: A Chronology Auguste and Louis Lumires Workers upon smoked or darkened glass slides [1999]). Leaving the Lumire Factory, as the for the magic lantern. By turning a hand Lumires and Edison demonstrate crank, one produces a rudimentary motion picture cameras and projectors. animation of white or tinted lines on the screen. Cycloidotrope

8 Alfred Maul, an engineer in Dresden, level Germany, sends cameras up in rockets. 3. Higher yet white vacuum level (note phosphorescence of glass) 1907 English inventor A. A. Campbell- 4. Highest Crookes vacuum level Swinton and Russian Rosing (note yellow-green phosphores- independently suggest using a cathode- cence of glass from cathode-ray/X-ray ray tube, instead of the Nipkow disc, to formed inside tube) reproduce a television picture on a 1912 phosphorous-coated screen. The vacuum Alfred Maul sends a gyroscope-stabilized tube can both amplify electrical signals camera up to two thousand feet. It Lumiere Bros. First manufactured camera and act as a switch for routing electrical returns to earth in a parachute. 1921 pulses through a circuit. At fourteen, Philo T. Farnsworth devises 1896 1913 Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi 1913 Gene maps show chromosomes electronic television scanning. He tells 1909 invents a system that allows electric “Phantom Rides,” films shot from the containing linear arranged genes his friends and teachers about it. waves to relay Morse Code messages. front of a boat or train, are distributed. 1915 Audiences find the simulated motion 1915 What is that sound? Where is that First radio network established by German Karl Braun invents the intriguing and disorienting. voice coming from? I dont see anybody, AT&T. cathode-ray tube. yet I clearly hear a voice speaking to me. GE introduces the Mazda trademark on It is not inside my head. Could it be American Charles F. Jenkins engineers a 1900 Max Planck introduces the quantum Edison light bulbs. God or the Devil? No, it is from inside mechanical television system based on theory in physics. the machine. Ray Kellogg invents the the Nipkow disk. electric moving-coil speaker. First mass-marketed camera, the John Baird sells his soap business, moves Brownie, is released. A case of paranoia. Freud analyzes a for health reasons from London to the young woman who is convinced that seaside town of Hastings. There he 1901 Marconi transmits the first transatlantic someone is following, watching, and shares a flat with his boyhood friend radio signalsthe Morse code signal for photographing her. She has detected this Guy “Mephy” Robertson, nicknamed for SSSSSS. surveillance by hearing clicking or his seeming resemblance to Mephis- knocking sounds that she believes to be topheles. In this pastoral setting he 1902 Otto von Bronk applies for German Electric Extraction of Poisions the shutter of the camera taking her decides to try to construct a television. patent on color television. picture. Freud analyzes the aural The worlds first working television was 1910 Portable (home) high-frequency hallucinations as originating within the to “grow to fill my bedroom,” which he electrotherapy devices are marketed as womans body, and the clicks to be an shared with Mephy: “It became a health aids. These machines send aural displacement of the throb of her nightmare cobweb of. . . junk. . . . At last electrical charges through shaped excited clitoris. to my great joy I was able to show the vacuum tubes filled with various gases to shadow of a little cross transmitted over 1920 send rays into the body. The tubes are Abrams, M.D., invents a “radion- a few feet.” Some of the objects used in held against the skin or eyes or inserted ics” system, which uses the crystals of the invention: cardboard cross, wires, into the nose, mouth, ear, urethra, dried blood from a patient to perform as old hat box, electric batteries, bicycle vagina, or anus. The violet or ultraviolet do the crystal detectors of homemade lamp lenses, used tea chest, sealing wax, Melies as Satan in The Devil And the Statue, 1902 ray machines are said to cure everything radio and transmit the patients disease. glue, scissors, lamp bulbs, darning from pain to cancer. The following is a needles, neon lamp, Nipkow disk, 1904 Alfred Korn announces facsimile chart of the possible discharges at Ernst Belin works on and introduces wireless valves, transformers, selenium telegraphy. various vacuums: wireless transmission of photographs. cells, and electric motors. 1. normal red vacuum level 2. Slightly higher violet vacuum

9 doctor, receives a fresh eye wrapped in a a location on Crescent Boulevard, contacted by Thomas Edison’s spirit by cotton wool, and returns to his lab in the Camden, New Jersey. way of the medium, Mary Olson. Spirit attic at 22 Frith Street, London. There directs Wright and his partner, Gardner, he dissects the eye with a razor, and 1934 Philo T. Farnsworth publicly demon- to the blueprints of the machine for con- unable to put it to use, throws it into a strates electronic television. tacting the dead that Edison had local canal. supposedly been working on at the time of his death. They faithfully construct 1927 On September 7 Farnsworth transmits a this device, which consists of a sound straight line, the first image ever to be box, a microphone, and a loud speaker, transmitted electronically. under Edisons supervision. Baird’s Nipkow disk, 1922 General Electric invents the modern 1942-43 1942-43 btl works under direction of A. 1923 Vladimir Zworykin applies for patents flashbulb. B. Clar (who later led R&D activities of for a television picture tube. NSA from 1954-5) to develop vocoder Bell Laboratories performs the first that emphasizes the preservation of 1925 On October 30, John Baird transmits his mechanical television transmission in voice quality via twelve-channel system. first decipherable moving picture: the the United States. This system becomes known as sigsaly head of a dummy. Philo T. Farnsworth (Secure Digital Voice Communications). Warner Bros., faced with bankruptcy, btl invents the fundamentals and Dinshah P. Ghadiali is jailed for fraud. launches sound film, (The Jazz Singer). Electron microscope developed in transmission of digital, encrypted voice. He is founder of a nationwide cult in the Germany. United States that uses his Spectro- Radio changes from a two-way commu- The British Foreign Service’s Depart- 1936 chrome. His machine, based on a nication device to a one-way broadcast- Alan Turing conceives of a punch card ment of Communications constructs theatrical spotlight, generates and ing device thanks to commercial system that can do more than add. The Colossus, the first fully operational, fully focuses colored light to heal people. interests and their representatives in theoretical Turing Machine mechani- electronic computing device. A powerful Congress (Radio Act of 1927). cally scans a virtually endless tape that is cryptoanalysis tool, Colasses operates in 1926 USA Radio Act declares public owner- punched with coded instructions or binary, reads incoming data from 1928 ship of the airwaves. Panchromatic film that registers all light digital sequences of zeros and ones. punched tape, and is controlled by in the visible spectrum is developed. So Turing proves that you can translate all hundreds of vacuum tubes that serve as Purple is infrared film that is designed to pick sorts of complex problems into these switches. (Christos J. P. Moschovitis, up light that is below red on the strings of simple elemental operations. Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Theresa Television is conceived with the advent spectrum, light that is invisible to the M. Senft, History of the Internet: A of photoconductivity and the further unaided human eye, or even an object in Bell Telephone Co. (btl) starts explor- Chronology [1999]). refinement of the photoelectric cell. The no light, just from the heat the object ing a technique to transform voice notion of translating or coding the gives off. signals into digital data, which can then 1945 Arthur C. Clark proposes a 1945 bright and dark areas of images into a be reconstructed (or synthesized) into geosynchronous satellite. 1929 corresponding electrical signal and On July 17 Dr. Robert Goddard, the intelligible voice, the “vocoder” (short decoding it back into an image at American rocketry pioneer, launches the for voice coder). The research is Engineer John Bardeen, with Walter another location is within reach. Baird, first liquid-fueled rocket equipped with developed by the National Security Brittain and William Shockley, attempts unable to build a photocell that works, is a camera. Agency (nsa). to apply semiconductors to electronics. aware that the light sensitivity of the Semiconductors, such as silicon, are 1933 1937 human eye resides in the purple fluid The first patent for the Drive-In Chester Carlson invents xerography. materials whose conductivity can be found in the retina called visual purple. Theater (United States Patent# deliberately or predictably altered using He decides to experiment with a real 1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. 1941 FCC authorizes commercial TV in the electricity. human eye. He goes to Charing Cross With an investment of $30,000, Richard United States. J. Gilbert Wright, a Ophthalmic Hospital, is taken for a Hollingshead opened the first drive-in at researcher at General Electric, is

10 931954 1953 Vannevar Bush describes Memex, the York. mechanism and amplifier (to replace 1953 DNA structure is resolved to be a first personal computer (in theory), in vacuum tubes). “The first transistor, the double helix by James D. Watson and the Atlantic Monthly. The article later Whiteside Parsons, a devotee of Aleister point-contact transistor, stands ten Francis Crick reappears in the widely distributed Life Crowleys magick and a brilliant scientist centimeters high--contains a semicon- magazine. Memex is a desk that contains at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in ducting crystal of germanium, which 1954 Alan Turing eats half of an apple large amounts of information com- Pasadena, CA, attempts to create a serves as the amplifier, connected to 3 dipped in cyanide and dies. pressed onto microfilm. The user sits at homunculus, literally an artificially wire probes. A current entering one the desk, swiftly accessing information conceived person occupied by a preter- probe is amplified when it passes Clarence Kelly Johnson, designer for by operating a board of levers and human spirit. Among the oldest of through the crystal and out through Lockheed Aircraft, designs the Utility-2 buttons. The desired information alchemical legends, Crowleys Moon- another probe.” (Christos J. P. Moscho- (U-2) Jet and privately dubs it “The appears on translucent screens propped child suggests that a homunculus could vitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Angel.” The Hyon Corporation develops on the desktop. (Christos J. P. Moschovi- be created when both parents were Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: the “B-camera” for the U-2. Its revolu- tis, Hilary Poole, Tami Schuyler, Crowleyan initiates who performed the A Chronology [1999]). tionary mylar film and lens (conceived Theresa M. Senft, History of the Internet: required sex magick rituals. The embryo by Dr. James Baker of Harvard) can 1948 A Chronology [1999]). created by their congress would act as a 1948 Ampex Corporation markets first photogragh the entire U. S. in just “butterfly net” to capture the appropri- commercial video tape recorder. twelve flights and can resolve a 2 × 2 ft. eniac (Electronic Numerical Integrator ate spirit. The resultant child would be object from a thirteen-mile altitude. and Computer) is unveiled in a base- human in the commonplace biological A device called the Cathode-Ray Tube ment room at the University of Pennsyl- sense but for all pragmatic occult Amusement Device was patented in the Lawrence Curtiss, an undergraduate vania. It covers 650 square feet and purposes would function as a homuncu- United States by Thomas T. Goldsmith physics student, invents a process by contains 300 neon lights, 10,000 vacuum lus. After the appropriate chants, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. It described which fine glass fibers can be coherently tubes; 220 fans are required. The intonations, and gestures, Parsons and using eight vacuum tubes to simulate a bundled in order to convey an entire massive computer can carry out 5,000 Marjorie Cameron commence sex missile firing at a target and contains image: the Fiberscope. operations per second. magick congress in the presence of L. knobs to adjust the curve and speed of Ron Hubbard, who describes the activity the missile. 1956 1956 Emmett Norman Leith develops John von Neuman publishes a report on taking place on the astral plane. the data processing system that allows 1950 edvac (Electronic Discrete Variable 1950 First U.S. cable television system holography to work. Holography is the Automatic Computer). Von Neuman Tragically, on June 20, 1952, Parsons is appears. recording and reconstruction of a outlines “stored-program-computing” blown apart by an explosion in his wavefront. The reconstructed hologram 1952 for the first time: the computer’s storage garage. Bloody body parts are visible in 1952 Alan Turing is convicted for wavefront is identical to that which device houses the program’s instructions the rubble. Today Parsons is credited indecency (participating in homosexual issued from the object. along with the imput data. Thus, more with aiding in the creation of solid activity) and is sentenced to take large 1957 memory is available. Von Neumann also rocket fuel, which is commonly used in doses of estrogen. 1957 Sputnik, first satellite, launched by coins the now-universal computing space exploration. A crater on the moon the Soviet Union [Union of Soviet terms: memory, input and output, is named after him, honoring his oxo, a graphical version of tic-tac-toe, Socialist Republics]. The satellite, a organs, and gates. (Christos J. P. achievements in this field. (Bill Landis, was created by A.S. Douglas, at the metallic object the size of a beach , Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of University of Cambridge, in order to rotates around the earth for three Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the Kenneth Anger [New York: Harper demonstrate his thesis on human- months and then fallsit burns up when it Internet: A Chronolgy [1999]). Collins, 1995]). computer interaction. It was developed hits the atmosphere. on the EDSAC computer, which uses a 1947 Introduction of the atomic bomb at 1947 Dennis Gabor describes principles cathode ray tube displaying memory 1958 1958 Color is synthesized from a Hiroshima, Japan. of holography. contents as a visual display. The player monochrome television set in the first competes against the computer (which “flicker color” broadcast. 1946 1946 CBS demonstrates color TV to Walter Brattain and John Bardeen of incorporates basic Artificial Intelligence) journalists and the FCC in the Tappan Bell Telephone Laboratories devise the using a rotary dial. Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a childrens show, Zee Inn at Nyack-on-the-Hudson, New transistor, an electronic switching begins color television broadcast.

11 1959 Pope Pius XII declares Saint Clare of 1959 Robert Noyce of Fairchild ized network (telephone system), several Ted Nelson introduces the terms Assisi the patron saint of television. Semiconducutor and Jack Kilby of Texas interconnected main centers are linked hypertext and hyperlink, thematic links Instruments simultaneously design the like a net, each location connected only between documents, to refer to the Researchers at Bell Telephone Laborato- integrated circuit, later known as the to its immediate neighbors; messages structure of a theoretical computerized ries invent the modem, short for microchip. The transistor is miniatur- have multiple pathways by which to information system called Xanadu that modulator-demodulator. The device ized into a tiny pattern etched onto a reach their destinations and can always would be organized associatively, not converts data from the computer format slice of silicon, becoming the integrated be rerouted. sequentially. (digital) to the telephone-line format circuit. This development makes it 2) The system chops up the (analog) and back again. Modems make possible to create much smaller versions message and sends each piece by a 1963 1963 The first video game is created by computer networks possible. (Christos J. of electronic devices, eventually different route. engineers at Sanders Associates, a New P. Moschovitis, Hilary Poole, Tami including the microprocessor and Hampshire-based defense contractor. 1963 Schuyler, Theresa M. Senft, History of the personal computer. 1963 The American National Standards Ralph Baer conceives the design. He Internet: A Chronology [1999]). Institute renders the ascii character recalls: “I’m ... thinking about what you 1960 1960 First ruby laser built by Theodore table as the standard character represen- can do with a TV set other than tuning Maiman. tation system for the computer industry. in channels you don’t want.” The first Computers use the binary system, in toy Baer and Bill Harrison make consists which numbers are represented by of a lever that players pump furiously to sequences of ones and zeros, to store, change the color of a box on a television process, and exchange information. screen from red to blue. The first games Programmers use other characters. A are all two-person games in which translation process is required. ascii players control every object on the assigns a particular binary number to screen. each character of the alphabet (A = 1000001). NASA launches five Lunar Orbiter satellites. Together they photograph the 1965 1965 Early Bird (Intelsat I), the first entire moon. The Dataphone, the first commercial modem, telecommunications satellite, is 1967 designed by Bell Labs First successful hologram produced. launched; live video feeds from all over 1967 Sony introduces the Portapak, first the world begin. portable video recording system. 911962 1961 1961 First manned space flight. Larry Roberts, a young computer Ralph Baer continued development, and 1962 Computer engineer Paul Baran, in scientist at Lincoln Laboratory in in 1968 a prototype was completed that the paper “On Distributed Communica- Boston, creates the first long-distance could run several different games such as tion Networks,” describes what later computer connection, a rudimentary table tennis and target shooting. becomes known as packet switching, in telephone link between his computer which digital data are sent over a and one in Santa Monica, California. 1958 1958 William Higinbothom created a distributed network in small units and game at Brookhaven National Labora- reassembled into a whole message at the Psychologist Tom Marill proposes that tory in New York using an oscilliscope receiving end. The network is designed ARPA fund a long-distance computer and analog computer. Tennis for Two to improve the security of strategic between MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory’s was played with two box-shaped control- weapons communications systems that TX-2 computer and System Develop- lers, both equipped with a knob for are vulnerable to nuclear attack. The ment Corporation’s Q-32 in CA. The trajectory and a button for hitting the new systems would function even if link allows the machines to send ball. some of its subcomponents were messages to one another. The device destroyed: that connects the computers to phone 1) Instead of a common decentral- lines works badly, but it works.

12 1969 1973 1969 On July 20 1969 Neil 1973 Magnavox’s home-video console The Atari 2600 (originally the Atari recorder with a Panasonic A-2 video became the first person to walk on the Odssey sells for $100 with 20 games VCS) It was the first successful car- camera. The image of a man, Pierre K, moon. 11 mission is transmitted including Tennis, Volleyball, Shooting tridge-based console; had a library of appeared on the TV screen for a and broadcast live from the moon. Gallery and Cat and Mouse. hundreds of games including such duration of 4/50ths of a second. “Using classics as Space Invaders, Adventure and high-tech communication the dead are Glenn McKay creates psychedelic light Pitfall now transmitting information to our shows for rock bands that combine the scientists in pictures, text, and voice via live manipulation of pigmented liquids television screens, computers, and and film projection systems. telephones. Technology allows people without bodies to communicate” (Jules ARPANET prototype of the Internet is and Maggy Harsch-Fischbach of initiated. Nolan Bushnell created the world’s first CETL). video-game juggernaut with Atari in 1972. SMTE (Society of Motion Picture and CETL suggests that there is a parallel Television Engineers) recommends the communications lab in the sprit world: Brad Fortner and others developed as an use of the color bar for registration of Timestream Space Lab. The facilities educational flight simulator. color on TV. are located in the third plane of the astral world on a planet named Marduk. 1974 U. S. Air Force Development Test Apple introduces home computer; the The Sprit-side technicians state; “We Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, company logo depicts a rainbow-colored have a body like yours. It consists of begins developing the weapon system to apple with one bite taken out of it. finer matter and vibration than your be popularly known as the Smart Bomb. dense, coarse physical bodies. There is The bomb is guided by a television no sickness here. Missing limbs regener- A sketch of the original ARPA net structure as outlined Electro Optical TV via Mid-course ate. Bodies that are disfigured on Earth by Larry Roberts guidance Beacon Data Link during the become perfect. We live in comfortably day, and an Imaging Infrared Seeker via furnished houses. We soak up noise, Beacon Data Link during the night. Live such as hiss between radio stations, and images from a camera in the bomb are Apple Computer Logo turn it into artificial voices.” sent to a remote operator, who uses 1987 them to guide the bomb to a target. Sony demonstrates first consumer 1987 FBI creates Carnivore, a clandes- camcorder. tine system for sifting through e-mail on 1975 Allan McLeod Cormack and Godfrey It is now estimated that by the time a the Internet. Carnivore software runs a 9018 931986 1983 1981 1980 Newbold Hounsfield brought about the person reaches eighteen years of age, he 1980-85 Scitex, Hell, and Crosfield packet sifting program, which notes all use computerized axial tomography or she has, on average, attended school introduce computer-imaging systems. messages inside the ISP network by (CAT or CT scanning), detailed for 10, 800 hours and watched television orgin and destination. Thus the FBI can anatomic images of the brain become for 20,000 hours. 1981 MTV begins broadcasting. extract and read messages of interest. available. They win the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1983 Kary Banks Mullis discovers the their work. This work leads to develop- polymerase chain reaction enabling the ment of radioligands, single photon easy amplification of DNA emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission Atari’s Pong, a home-console version of the coin-operated 1986 On October 4, the Transcommuni- tomography (PET). video game. cation Study Circle of Luxembourg (CETL) receives its first video image of its spirit partners. Jules and Maggy Harsch-Fischbach record it on a VHS

13 1995 1999 1995: An ATM camera records a Ryder games, faulty screens and lights that 1999 Live slow motion. Lene Vester- truck outside Oklahoma Citys federal flicker, sun shining through a row of gaard Hau slows down a light pulse from office building just before the blast that trees viewed from a passing car, looking 300 million meters per second to 17 kills 167 people. That image helps police out of a train window, sunshine on water, meters per second by passing it through track down bomber Timothy McVeigh. stroboscopic lights, and geometric a cloud of laser-tuned sodium atoms shapes or patterns. chilled to less than 50 nanokelvins. Opti- 1996 1996 Jennicam. A 23-year-old exhibi- cal properties of materials can be altered tionist launches a Web site featuring MUDs (Multi- User Dungeons) with this process, she states; “Its really real-time video of her mundane daily Internet gaming expand, Id software’s opened up a lot of new exciting things activities. She develops a large following. 1996 game “Quake”pioneered play over that you can start doing.” the Internet in first person shooters: Cookie: a piece of information gener- FPS games. MMORPGs ( Massively New York Civil Liberties Union ated by a Web server about the users Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), volunteers walk the streets of Manhattan preferences are secretly stored in the such as Ultima Online and EverQuest in search of every video surveillance users computer. Cookies are swapped freed users from the limited number of camera, public or private, which records back and forth between the Web servers simultaneous players in other games and people in public spaces. Volunteers and the users computer without the brought the MUD concept of persistent produce a comprehensive map of all Hijacking the Net’ front cover of Newsweek, users consent or knowledge. As a result worlds to graphical multiplayer games 2,397 surveillance cameras. Febuary 2000 personal information of all sorts can be transmitted to Web servers. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto III. An open- voyeurdorm.com, a “reality based” Web 1988 1988 Red-eye reduction is used in ended 3-D crime drama from the third- site goes online. “Six students live in a cameras. person perspective, breaks traditional house with 40 webcams. For $34 a dependence on linear play. month, you can watch their daily A human genetic map is produced showing the chromosomal locations of markers from more than 30,000 human genes. Alec Jeffreys introduces DNA Dildo Cam advertised on web-site fingerprinting as method of identifica- Dildo Cam is a ubiquitous feature of tion. pornographic Web sites. Short videos, usually available by subscription only, 1991 1991 Gulf War news coverage is highly allow the viewer literal access, via video, controlled by the U.S. government. into the vaginas and rectums of porn Video footage from cameras in the tips stars. of the GBU-15 smart bombs, which 1997 features views of their rapid decent to 1997 Six hundred Japanese children and their target, is released to the media. a few adults are rushed to emergency Weapon video is either electro-optical rooms after watching the television (TV camera) or infrared and is gener- program Pocket Monster (Pokmon). ated in the nose of the weapon. The The flashing red eyes of the cartoon laser guidance system can bring the monster cause some viewers to fall into bomb within four yards of the target. convulsions. One person in 200 suffers from epilepsy, and of those, 5 percent CU-SeeMe, a live video streaming have photic seizures, which may be program for the Internet, is developed at provoked by frequencies of 5 to 30 Cornell University. The program allows flashes per second. Other triggers may anyone to broadcast in cyberspace. be: TV and computer screens, video

14 2001 2003 activities: smoking, sleeping, urinating, 2001 It was reported that scientists had bathing. The rules: no sex, but mastur- detected high-energy neutrinos for the bation is okay; no drugs, but booze is 1st time in the Antarctic Muon and allowed; absolutely no moving the neutrino Detector Array (Amanda). cameras away from you; no skipping out on the daily chat sessions; no boyfriends Guilty Knowledge, lie-detection test after 11 p.m.; and most importantly, no based on technology developed by leaving the house without consent, Daniel Langleben at the University of 2003 Image from the revolutionary T- except for the two nights a week each Pennsylvania uses f.M.R.I. machines to ray camera, sees through fog, clothing resident has off” (Mark Boal, “Behind compare the brain activity of liars and (notice the concealed gun in this image) the Cams at Voyeurdom: Surveillance Endoscope, pill camera truth tellers. and into deep space. The camera detects Sorority” [The Village Voice, August 4, terahertz waves that straddle the border 1999]). Ensormatics, a leading manufacturer of European Commission’s Joint Research between radio and optical emissions. surveillance cameras that built its $1 Centre used Adaptive Brain Interface, Two variants were adopted for the 1997 billion international business on anti- the system they developed to interpret A US company launched Mexican sales IEEE 802.11 standard on wireless shoplifting technology, estimates that 62 the signals from a plastic cap put on the of microchips that can be implanted communications: 802.11a for the percent of middle- and high schools will user’s head with attached electrodes that under a person’s skin and used to 5.8GHz band and 802.11b for the implement some form of electronic picked electromagnetic signals from the confirm health history and identity. 2.4GHz band. The technology was soon security by 2002. brain. The user, Cathal O’Philbin, a 40- named Wi-Fi. year-old paraplegic, was instructed to Super Black Fluorescent Green Jellyfish/Monkey think about a rotating cube, moving his National Physical Lab in Britain develop First person shooters, a popular form of Embryo is created in a lab. Scientist left arm (which is paralyzed) and NPL Super Black, a nickel-phosphorus computer game and MUDs (Multi- User Gerald Schatten of the Oregon Primate relaxing mentally in between. These compound that absorbs 99.65% of all Dungeons) Internet gaming spreads. Research Center at Oregon Health three distinct patterns were used to visible light. Black paint absorbs about MMORPGs ( Massively Multiplayer Sciences University introduces jellyfish control the cursor on the screen. After 97.5% of visible light. Online Roleplaying Games), such as genes into the developing embryos of several hours Mr. O’Philbin trained the Ultima Online and EverQuest make use Rhesus monkeys. The gene encodes system to recognize his mental states of the complex linking of the Internet. instructions for a protein that gives the and managed to type “Arsenal Football jellyfish a green glow. When fluorescent Club” using his brain alone. 2000 2000 Sikorsky helicopter company light is shined on the embryos “more It was reported that scientists in constructs a remote controlled, pilotless than a third of embryos fluoresced.” Chicago had connected a lamprey eel’s helicopter drone called the Cypher. It Although the genes are not found in the brain to microprocessors to steer a looks like a flying saucer and uses monkeys after birth, scientists say it is robotic device toward light. commercially available people-tracking just a matter of time before the proce- software to find human targets in urban dure will work for primates, including Delft Univ. of Tech. in the Netherlands riot situations. humans. The technique also works with reported the creation of nanotechnology mice. Ryuzo Yanagimachi and his transistors built from a single molecule. GeneChip Professor Paul Swain invents the colleagues at the University of Hawaii This is the first chip to contain all the endoscope, a camera in a pill or capsule mix the same jellyfish gene with mouse Max Planck Inst. for Biochemistry in 50,000 known human genes and 11 mm by 30 mm, it includes a tiny light sperm, injected the sperm into mouse Germany had affixed snail neurons to variants. It is a research tool from the source and transmitter. It radios images eggs and created embryos. After the transistor chips and demonstrated Affymetrix company for identifying and from inside the body to a portable birth of the mice, Yanagimachi detects a communication. isolating each gene. recorder strapped to the patients waist. green glow in the tails of the mice under The pill camera is eventually excreted. a fluorescent light. Lucent’s Bell Labs reported the develop- ment of a tiny new transistor made of a simple cluster of organized molecules.

15 2005 image is the deepest image of the 2005 HP researchers introduced licenses to speed border crossings. universe ever taken with visible light groundbreaking nanotechnology that Border agents will electronically retrieve looking back in time more than 13 could replace traditional transistors on identification and citizenship informa- billion years. computer chips. tion from people as they drive up to

2006 crossings between Washington and 2006 Invisible? Analyses predicted that Canada. it should be possible to ferry electro- magnetic waves around an object to hide NYC Police Department is creating Infrared Fever Screening System it. All that was needed was a properly Manhattan Security Initiative a web of Invented in response to the SARS scare, designed shell of “metamaterial,” an surviellance cameras around lower this device can scan a person and detect assemblage of tiny metallic rods and c- manhattan. temperature from a distance, producing shaped rings. a color-coded thermograph. Located in public spaces such as airports, hotels, An ordinary microscope cannot resolve hospitals it can help prevent the spread features smaller than about 200 nanome- of disease. ters of visible light used to illuminate an object. For years, physicists and engi- neers have devised schemes to get around the “diffraction limit”. Stimu- Scientists said they had created a new lated emission depletion (STED) is used form of matter, called a fermionic by researchers assembled an image with condensate. It is the sixth known form of a resolution of tens of nanometers. matter, after gases, solids, liquids, plasma and a -Einstein condensate.

New light transmitting concrete has the Keyhole Inc. program Earth Viewer pro- strength of the traditional material and duced a geospatial virtual image of the is embedded with an array of glass fibers globe. A mapping of the whole surface of that conduct light. Invetntor Áron the earth is available on the Internet site Losonczi states; “Shadows on the lighter Google Earth. side will appear with sharp outlines on 2007 The video game industry has the darker one.” grown to become a $10 billion industry, it now rivals the motion picture industry 2004 2004 The whole solar system is as the most profitable entertainment photographed by the Voyager. industry in the world.

Hubble Space Telescope is launched; Checkpoint Systems Inc. said it will this eye in the sky has become the most provide Reno GmbH with RFID (radio important instrument in the history of frequency identification) tags and store astronomy. Hubble Ultra Deep Field or tagging systems. Reno GmbH plans to HUDF is the most sensitive space image embed wireless chips in shoes sold at ever made: 800 exposures taken over the hundreds of stores across the continent. course of 400 orbits around the earth with a total exposure time of 15.8 days. The FDA approved a clinical trial by Washington State will implement a This data was collected over September Cyberkinetics on implants in humans for voluntary program to implant radio- 3, 2003 and January 16, 2004. This a brain-computer interface. frequency ID (RFID) chips in driver’s

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