Tag: 99%Invisible

Sig Saly and modern tech

Posted on by philipdodson

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So I have just been listening to my favourite podcast, 99% Invisible by Roman Mars, this week it was all about the vocoder.

So this guy called Homer Dudley (not Simpson, doh!) and his invention the vocoder. He built a special one called the Voderette especially for 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. The machine was a giant speech synthesiser, which basically distorted voices and made silly noises.

But there was a serious technology behind it, which was to prove invaluable in encrypting wartime messages for the Allies. The technology helped to create the massive machines called Sig Saly.

So machines the size of whole rooms, with very temperamental electronics were used to send real-time messages between wartime Allied leaders that the Germans could not decode, and in fact were not even aware of.

The technology required two identical records to be played simultaneously at either end of the conversation, so one in Washington and one in London. They were effectively one off security keys. When the conversation had finished, they both had to be destroyed.

This was real groundbreaking tech, leading edge for its time.

After the war, much later in the 70’s and 80’s this tech was used in synthesised music (Kraftwerk), used for voice synthesisers for people like Stephen Hawkins and is used to encrypt and compress all manner of stuff in our digital world.

The thing is a good deal of what we take for granted was pioneered many years ago, in an age that we see as almost stone age in comparison to our super teched up digitalised smartphone world.

Today, sticking a better camera in your phone gets many frothing at the mouth with excitement and wonder. But the real tech star was Homer Dudley back in the 1930’s.

Much of what we take for granted in so many ways, is, in fact, the result of 100’s and 1,000’s of years of trial and error. Whatever you are looking to create, it takes a lot experimenting sometimes to get there.

Be patient and be a pioneer, not a polisher of something that already exists.

Being weird and a phone booth in the desert

Posted on by philipdodson

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Today I listened to the latest episode on my favourite podcast 99% Invisible hosted by Roman Mars. The episode was titled ‘Mojave Phone Booth’.

It was the story of guy called Godfrey Daniels who on the way back from a trip read about this phone booth in the middle of nowhere in the desert. This was late 90’s so long before the connected world of smartphones.

So fascinated, he began dialling the number every day to see if anyone would answer as he was not sure he even believed it existed. Well after a month someone answered and indeed verified that it was a real phone booth in the middle of the Mojave desert.

Godfrey eventually found the location and set off to visit the phone booth, which was down some dusty track off the main road.

This was the late 90’s and the internet was starting to catch on and he created a website for the phone booth. To his complete surprise it became a hit and soon not only were people phoning the number from all over the world but visiting it too.

In fact, the number of visitors leads to the phone booth eventually being removed in 2000.

The point of this is. In the world of mass everything, it is often, even more so than in the late 90’s, the weird that attracts people.

A computer engineer can make a phone booth in the middle of the desert a global attraction. He had to be determined and follow his passion for discovering it and then tell others. That is what we have to do with our weird ideas, be determined to succeed and with passion, share them with the world.

Now with the over-saturation of the internet with mass, the only way to stand out and be different is to bring your unique and weird ideas to life.

Mass is not only dull but it’s melting away.