Author Archives: Charlotte Connelly, Content Developer for Information Age

Artists impression of the GPS Satellite model

Science Museum enters the Information Age

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Charlotte Connelly is a Content Developer for Information Age, a new communications technology gallery opening in September 2014.

Last night the Science Museum announced exciting details about a new £16m communications gallery, Information Age, which will open in September 2014.

Artist’s impression of the Cable Network exploring electric telegraph.

Artist’s impression of the Cable Network exploring electric telegraph. Image credit: Science Museum / Universal Design Studio

The gallery will be a celebration of information and communication technologies. We’re already working on cutting edge interactive displays and participatory experiences that will reveal the stories behind how our lives have been transformed by communication innovations over the last 200 years.

Hundreds of unique objects from the Science Museum’s collections will go on display, many of which have never been seen before. They will include the BBC’s first radio transmitter 2LO, the BESM-6, the only Russian supercomputer in a museum collection in the West, and a full sized communications satellite.

Laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858 proved to be a tricky challenge to overcome. (Source: Science Museum / SSPL)

In Information Age we tell some of the dramatic stories behind the growth of the worldwide telegraph network in the 19th century and the influence of mobile phones on our lives today. Visitors can uncover stories about the birth of British broadcasting and learn about pioneering achievements in the development of the telephone. The role of satellites in global communications and the birth of the World Wide Web will also be explored in the new gallery.

Not only are we working hard behind the scenes of the Museum, we’ve also been working with lots of other organisations to develop the gallery. For our mobile phone display, we have a great selection of objects collected in Cameroon – look out for a blog post all about that coming soon! We’ve been working with Cameroonian communities in both Cameroon and the UK to decide how these stories are displayed.

We’ve also interviewed women who worked on the manual telephone exchange at Enfield in North London. Their stories have been selected by young women from the same area to be included in the gallery.

Our Curator of Communication, John Liffen, looking at a section of the Enfield exchange when it was installed in the Enfield Museum (Source: Hilary Geoghegan)

Watch this space to discover more about Information Age as the team will be writing regular blog posts about their work on the gallery to keep you up to date. Add your comments below to tell us what you would like to find out about.

Music by Muzak

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This article was written by Ellie West-Thomas, An Electronic Music Volunteer.

As Christmas draws closer, how many of you have found yourselves in a shopping centre listening to the dulcet sounds of an instrumental version of ‘The Girl from Ipanema’?

‘Department Store by Grace Golden’ ( © The National Archives / Science & Society Picture Library )

Whether we notice it or not, music is always around us. Music by Muzak is a company who scientifically produced to create background music for shopping centres, offices and even lifts. It has been scientifically proven that music effects you and whatever you are doing, however continuous music would very quickly lose its effectiveness as the mind pushed it further back in to the sub-conscious. The solution with Muzak is that a Muzak programme is never repeated, it is designed to be heard not listened to.

The history of Muzak in the UK started in September 1959 but its potential was born in the minds of two English scientists in 1934 who themselves have been influenced by the use made of music by the ancient Egyptians in increasing the efficiency of their labour force while building the Pyramids.  

Music by Muzak Promotional Folder (Credit: Ellie West-Thomas)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This music service is designed to increase sales and employee productivity, attract the right customers, impact dwell time, create a competitive advantage, differentiate your brand and build loyalty. Muzak is specially orchestrated and recorded for the time, the place and the activity. To be of constructive use, music must give a pleasant emotional stimulus without demanding attention. The scientists behind Muzak believe that the average worker goes through a cycle of efficiency each day. The time when the worker is most efficient is in the morning and after lunch. Muzak’s functional music programmes are designed so that when the worker is at their least efficient it should bring them back up to a good level of efficiency. To represent this discovery we are currently acquiring the ‘Muzak Promotional Folder’.

The science is true in essence, for example when you have a louder, heavier piece of music on in the car then you tend to drive a bit faster compared to someone who is listening to softer music like a classical piece. 

Now have a think about what kind of music you would want to listen to in such an environment, different people may want to hear different things whilst doing certain tasks. So if you were Muzak adding to your extensive archive library what music would you have and what for?

Circuit Bending Podcast Part Two

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 Phew..! Finally the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the resolution to last week’s incredibly dramatic cliff-hanger ending! Here’s the second part of our interview with electronic musician, circuit bender and all-round nice guy Andy Wheddon:

Click here to listen to the podcast. 

Guest blog post from Robert Sommerlad, a musician and Science Museum research assistant.

Circuit Bending Podcast

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 Guest blog post from Robert Sommerlad, a musician and Science Museum research assistant.

One of the museum’s many wonderful volunteers recently took a trip to Brighton  in order to find out more about an object featured in our Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music exhibition. In an exhibition filled with many bizarre objects and unlikely musical instruments, the circuit bent Speak & Spell toy is certainly one of the most unusual and interesting items.

This brightly coloured jumble of knobs, switches and buttons was created by Andy Wheddon, an electronic musician, record label owner and member of the group of electronic music experts that helped curate the exhibition. He kindly agree to be interviewed about the instrument for the latest Science Museum podcast. Find out more about the modified Speak & Spell, it’s unusual origins and what it can tell us about electronic music and the work of Daphne Oram in the podcast below!

 Click here to listen to the podcast

Part-two of the interview will be posted here soon.

Andy's Modified Speak & Spell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Oramics Podcast!

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Today we have a treat for fans of our Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic  exhibition; a lovely little behind the scenes podcast about the Oramics machine! A B-Side to the main exhibition, if you will.

Nick Street‘s documentary about the creation of the exhibition features many fascinating interviews with contemporary electronic musicians, colleagues of Daphne Oram, and the curators and conservators behind the exhibition. Bonus material from Nick’s interviews was used to create this podcast, which features Science Museum Conservator Dennis Kelles-Krause offering his take on the Oramics machine.

Click here to listen to the podcast

Guest blog post from Robert Sommerlad, a musician and Science Museum research assistant.

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Patchwerk

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This article was written by Rob Sommerlad, Volunteer Research Assistant for Electronic Music.

Build-it-yourself Digital Oscillator module, 1985 ( Science Museum, London )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most interesting objects in our Oramics to Electronica exhibition is a home-built synthesiser module. This incredible object (donated by the museum’s very own Tim Boon!) clearly shares a heritage with the ingenious D.I.Y instruments created by ground-breaking electronic fiddlers, solderers and tweakers such as Daphne Oram. However, the object is also extremely significant because it shows that home-made electronic music existed long before Fruity Loops software came along in 1998.

A similar painstakingly crafted and incredibly complex home-built synthesiser recently went on display at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s museum. Dr. Joseph Paradiso’s analogue synthesiser, which he has described as “probably the world’s largest homemade modular synthesiser”, was created over more than ten years using “information from manufacturers’ data sheets and hobbyist magazines”, scrounged spare parts and hacked keyboards. For years the instrument took over Paradiso’s living room, replacing couches and coffee tables with wires, processors, knobs and complex logic modules.

However, Paradiso’s synthesiser has now taken on a new virtual life: the synthesiser is attached to an online interface that enables you to control it in real-time from anywhere in the world. Thanks to the programme Patchwerk, Paradiso’s synthesiser can be controlled and modified from your internet browser, with the results streamed back to you and everyone else around the world that is logged in to the site and listening to the live stream.

The project offers an extremely fun and interesting way to engage with what is otherwise one of the more intimidating and less user-friendly types of electronic instruments - analogue synthesisers. What’s more, the instrument is an unusual merger of two of the most significant developments in the democratisation of electronic music: home-made synthesisers and computer-based emulators and virtual interfaces. Home-made synthesisers took electronic music out of professional studios and into the hands of amateur experimenters such as Messrs Boon and Paradiso by eliminating the need for costly physical equipment. Paradiso’ synthesiser, and the use of Patchwerk takes this a step further, combining a virtual and a physical interface in order to make a brilliant (if extreme) example of a hobbyist D.I.Y synthesiser available to anyone with access to the Internet!

Try the instrument out here, or watch Robert de Niro-lookalike Paradiso explain his synthesiser in more detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Guest blog post from Robert Sommerlad, a musician and volunteer Science Museum research assistant.

The decline of WorldSpace

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Last month I went to a conference marking 50 years of the UK in space. Some of the speakers reminded us many of us use space daily without even thinking about it when we watch satellite television or get directions from our GPS.

A snapshot from last month’s conference (Credit: Alex Costa)

I recently took delivery of a new object for the collection that also uses space – a satellite radio made for WorldSpace. The WorldSpace company was founded in 1990 and used geostationary satellites to broadcast to Asia and Africa. At one point they had 170,000 paid up listeners.

This WorldSpace WSSR-11 satellite radio broadcast receiver we recently added to the Museum’s collection (Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

The company also maintained a not-for-profit arm, using 5% of the satellite’s bandwidth to broadcast programs giving advice on HIV and AIDS, agriculture or providing information for women. It was tricky to make these programs localised enough to be really useful. For example, WorldSpace broadcast some Somali language programmes for use in classrooms in one region of one country, but anyone in Africa could tune in.

Satellite radio also faces technical challenges; I spoke to an engineer who explained that the signal is easily interrupted by concrete, glass, trees and even smoke.

“I had a guy in Ethiopia write me every day that his signal was lost at roughly 10am, 1pm, and 4pm daily. We couldn’t figure it out… It turned out the antenna was in a courtyard, and people took their smoke break in front of the antenna – effectively cutting the signal until they finished their break.”

Aerial masts are a common feature of the landscape in Africa now. This picture was taken in Buea, Cameroon in March 2012 (Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

Unfortunately WorldSpace was unsustainable as a business and went into liquidation in 2008. It might be surprising that a business with 170,000 customers would struggle, but communications technology has changed rapidly since the service started. Back then mobile phones were only just getting going in developed countries, and satellite radio seemed to be a really good way forward. Now, however, mobile phones have completely changed telecommunications in Africa and Asia, and satellite technology is expensive and hard to localise.

The Closure of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

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This artice was written by Ellie West-Thomas, Research Assistant for Electronic Music  

Fourteen years ago the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who created innovative music and techniques that made it one of the most significant influences on electronic music today, closed its doors for the last time. Maida Vale Studios, the home to the workshop, was a place once filled by people brimming with ideas that changed the course of Electronic Music.

The Workshop was set up to satisfy the growing demand in the late 1950s for “radiophonic” sounds from a group of producers and studio managers at the BBC, including Daphne Oram.

For some time there had been much interest in producing innovative music and sounds to go with the pioneering programming of the era. Much of The Radiophonic Workshop’s early work was in effects for radio, in particular experimental drama and “radiophonic poems”.

New sounds were created using recordings of everyday sounds such as voices, bells or even gravel as the raw materials for “radiophonic” manipulations. In these manipulations, audio tape could be played back at different speeds (altering a sound’s pitch), reversed, cut and joined, or processed using reverb or equalisation.

Sounds being made at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Science Museum)

Perhaps the most significant recording in Radiophonic Workshop history came in 1963 when they were approached by composer Ron Grainer to record a theme tune for an upcoming BBC television series called Doctor Who. Presented with the task of “realising” Grainer’s score, complete with its descriptions of “sweeps”, “swoops”, “wind clouds” and “wind bubbles”, it has become one of television’s most recognisable themes. Delia Derbyshire created it by using a plucked string, 12 oscillators and a lot of tape manipulation.

The sound of the TARDIS materialising and dematerialising was made in an even less conventional way. It was created by running keys along the rusty bass strings of a broken piano, with the recording slowed down to make an even lower sound. It may not sound like it but look back at some old Who and see if you can hear those keys. Why not try it yourself – grab your house keys and take them to some rusty strings of a piano.

On display in The Oramics to Electronica Exhibition are some of the objects used by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to create sounds. Here is an example.

A Lampshade used by Delia Derbyshire (Credit: Science Museum)

This lamp shade was used by Delia Derbyshire as a sound source for ‘Blue Veils & Golden Sands’ in 1967.

For a more contemporary performance, here’s a link to Coldcut who performed classic compositions at the Electric Proms in 2008, in an evening which was devoted to the Workshop . 

 

Lily Pavey’s Musikriter

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This article was written by Ellie West-Thomas, Research Assistant for Electronic Music.

Whilst exploring the Science Museum’s Stores at Blythe House, I came across something rather unusual. Being classically trained in music and music theory I have had to write a score and use musical notations on many occasions, but I never knew that a typewriter could be used to write sheet music.

The Musicgraph or Musikriter, was invented by Lily Pavey, patented in 1961 and completed in 1963. Pavey was the first inventor to receive National Assistance to enable her to continue working on this project.

It is a typewriter that when you strike the key, as on any normal typewriter, it sounds a note of music and prints the note in the proper place on music paper. The machine could write vertically as well as horizontally, meaning that anyone could fundamentally teach themselves the basics of music theory.           

Lily Pavey knew that other people had tried to perfect a musical typewriter but failed, however she was not a trained engineer. She studied music and mathematics and the mechanisms of the typewriter and electronics. She figured out how to give vertical elevation with moving the paper and how to create 8000 combinations with 46 keys.

The typewriter Lily Pavey tinkered with to make her prototype (Science Museum, Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

She hoped that more and more composers would be more encouraged to set down their new inspirations and ideas instead of following what had already been written.

It then was put in to production and called the Imperial Pavey Musigraph.

She developed the Musicgraph in to a device called the Spherigraph. Not only was it able to add words to music but it could be used for complicated maths, chemistry symbols and even ballet choreography notation.

The production model Pavey Musigraph (Science Museum, Credit: Charlotte Connelly)

Bell’s heart on the line

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Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 (Science Museum / Science and Society)

The 14th of February 1876 is a very significant date in the history of the telephone. On that day both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed papers with the US Patent Office for a working telephone. Following a dispute Bell’s patent was granted and published on the 7th of March 1876. Recently some historians have suggested that the dispute may have been resolved so quickly because Bell found a way to incorporate some of Gray’s ideas into his patent applications – but what could have driven Bell to such deception?

Only three months earlier Bell had been forced to make a difficult decision; should he choose to marry the love of his life, or continue work on his telephone? Bell’s day job was teaching deaf people to speak, and his interest in the production of sounds had stimulated an interest in electrical science. He had been researching a ‘harmonic telegraph’ and, since June 1875, investigating the telephone after an accidental discovery that enabled him to transmit and receive sounds. The father of Mabel Hubbard, one of Bell’s students, became interested in Bell’s harmonic telegraph and offered financial support which Bell accepted while also remaining committed to his teaching. Meanwhile Bell was becoming aware that his feelings for Mabel were turning from a teacher and pupil relationship towards those of love for her.

An exact replica of Bell's first telephone made in June 1875 by the same maker, Charles Wiliams Jr. of Boston (Science Museum)

Bell’s decision came in November 1875 when Mabel’s father, Gardiner Hubbard, asked Bell to give up teaching and other researches and devote all his time to the telegraph. If he did so, Hubbard would provide his living expenses enabling Bell to marry. Bell was too proud to accept a handout and rejected the offer, writing:

You are Mabel’s father and I will not urge you to give – nor will I accept it if offered – any pecuniary assistance other than that we agreed upon before my affection for Mabel was known … I shall certainly not relinquish my profession until I find something more profitable (which shall be difficult) nor until I have qualified others to work in the same field.

Fortunately for Bell the Hubbard family accepted the situation and allowed Mabel to make up her own mind. Two days later she and Bell became engaged.

Although Bell had not been prepared to accept Gardiner Hubbard’s money, he took the hint and looked again at the harmonic telegraph. Alongside this work he also continued research into the telephone against Gardiner Hubbard’s wishes, for he was convinced he could make it work. His work on the telephone gained some urgency when he became aware that he had a competitor in Elisha Gray, and furthermore because he still did not have enough money to marry Mabel. Bell’s submission of his patent papers on the 14 February, the same day as Gray submitted his, shows how close the race was. If Bell did indeed make illicit additions to his papers, perhaps it is because he was driven by his desire to marry Mabel Hubbard, which he finally did in July 1877.

Replica of Bell's 'Centennial' telephone transmitter of 1876 (Science Museum)