24 Jun
2007
24 Jun
'07
6:07 p.m.
On Sunday 24 June 2007 19:03, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 24 Jun 2007 at 22:18, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
I happened to wander into a church in Manhattan one time several years back
(probably around 1976 or 1977 I'm guessing) and heard what at first I thought
was the trains running underneath Park Avenue, though that also struck me as
being pretty unlikely. Turned out they were installing a new organ "system",
and what I'd heard was them testing the 32' pedal stops!
There were two consoles, one up front by the altar and one up in the choir
loft, each of which ran signals over a single coaxial cable to a roomful of
equipment that was hidden away well. Sounds were generated by a combination
of pipes for some voices, and electronics for others. And yes, it did use
core memory for storing the presets on each combination piston. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
I used to fit microwave links onto the tops of
tall multi-storey
buildings. The lift controllers I saw tended to run from a small rack
the size of a MicroVAX 3300, up to several wardrobe-size racks full of
relays.
Let's not forget interesting control systems in other devices, such
as jukeboxes (Seeburg used core memory, I believe), scoreboards and
combination actions in pipe organs.