Keyboard Expressiveness

I enjoyed this "Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra" clip of "Tubular Bells" so much that I eventually bought the song. Have a look:



As interesting as it is to see all these organs and synths at work, I'm always struck by how RELIEVED I am when the good old straightforward piano comes in at the end, bringing with it a warmth and depth that the rest of the song lacks. It gives me goosebumps! Even compared to the organs, the piano somehow sounds more EXPRESSIVE.

This has started me wondering: is the piano REALLY more expressive than a Hammond organ or an Omnichord? Is it more capable of conveying emotion than any other keyboard instrument?

That really does seem to be the case in THIS song, but that may have something to do with the relative skill of the player (Natasha Bartolf has obviously spent a lot of time with the piano so she may have more of a "connection" to it than -- perhaps -- Natalie Weiss with the Stylophone). Also, some of the instruments in the video ARE notably limited...that's part of their charm.

So I started thinking about synth virtuosos, the men and women who have spent their lives dickering with synthesizers. Manfred Mann has certainly bemoaned the lack of expressiveness in modern keyboards, but it's hard to compare his synth performances with virtuoso piano because he tends to use monophonic instruments. Bernie Worrell's more extravagant keyboard solos sound a bit farty these days. Thomas Dolby's synths are warmer than most, but still revel in a certain "coldness." Richard Tandy relies more on novelty than anything else.

I haven't looked into this enough. Is there something unique about the piano's ability to "express" the music that comes out of it, far beyond a pitch bend and a mod wheel?

Closing In on the Car Heater

A few years ago I realized that automobiles weren't magically invented with heaters already installed. By coming across random references to motor robes I became aware that car heaters were uncommon until at least 1940, and the earliest reported sighting of a car heater that I could find was in a 1951 Plymouth (thanks, Gary!)

I'm pleased to report that we can narrow the field down even further, thanks to "The Boys' Book of Engines, Motors, and Turbines" by Alfred Morgan. Published in 1946, the book lists "car heaters" among the devices in which a curious suburbanite boy might find an electric motor...and since their inclusion in the list is totally blase, I assume that they were quite common by that time.

Therefore we can safely say that car heaters became standard devices between 1941 and 1945, based entirely on anecdotal evidence and my sort-of-quirky and extremely lucky reading habits. Anybody care to find a patent or a catalogue to back me up?

PS: This book is fabulous. When I started reading it I had no idea of how engines, motors, or turbines worked, and now that I'm halfway through I even know what a camshaft is, how hydroelectric power is harnessed, and that if you try to blow out the fire in your miniature steam engine you'll scatter burning alcohol around the room and "singe your whiskers."

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "It Rolls On" by Morris Bishop

A poem for the uneasy modern, from the November 1, 1930 issue of The New Yorker.

This is the time of wonder, it is written;
Man has undone the ultimate mysteries.
(We turn from the Chrysler Tower to watch a kitten,
Turn to a dead fish from Isocrates;

Drinkers on five-day boats are gladly smitten
Unconscious on the subjugated seas;
Einstein is even more dull than Bulwer-Lytton;
You cannot smoke on the Los Angeles.)

Science no longer knows the verb-form "can't,"
Fresh meat will soon be shipped by radio;
Scholars are harnessing the urgent ant
And making monstrous bastard fruits to grow,
Building machines for things I do not want,
Discovering truths I do not care to know.

You can find out more about Morris Bishop and his elf-loathing here.

"Earth" Review, Plus Bonus John Candy

The New Yorker film reviewer of 1930 ("J.C.M."), after pooh-pooing the trend toward larger-format films (so-called "three-dimensional films" that "fill the whole proscenium"), provides a great review of a movie that has always confused me: "Earth" by Alexander Dovzhenko (translated in this case as "Soil").

To conclude my memoirs on a lofty and dignified note, I should mention "Soil," a new Russian film. The picture is concerned with the favorite dramatic theme of the Soviet artists: the introduction of new methods of farming to the local wheatlands. Of more interest to these unusual people than the awakening of pure love or the dawn of passion is the coming of the tractor. I must say, too, that there are more persons in this town absorbed in this subject than one might suspect. Down there at that little Eighth Street house, where the picture has been shown, the crowd gets very excited, and there is applause, and even now and then a hiss... In "Soil," a silent picture, a caption was thrown on the screen, a comment of the older peasant as the tractor comes over the hilltop. "There is no God," he says at the sight, and this statement was suddenly met with applause by some of the guests. You will be happy to learn that at once the faithful downed the applause with pious hisses. The whole moment was very intense, and it was a great relief to everyone when the picture passed on to some closeups of apples seen from various angles.

I can certainly understand and appreciate most propaganda, but "Earth" left me totally confused. I couldn't figure out if it was a love song to the soil, a warning to farmers, or an outright parody. Maybe it was all three?

You can hardly say the same about "Hey Giorgy!" This was one of several hilarious SCTV spoofs of Russian television.

Giorgy! If he's not helping somebody, he's helping somebody else! Featuring a bevy of Eastern European immigrants waving at John Candy somewhere in North York.

Works Automatically...Won't Burn Toast!

You might remember the spectacular introduction of the Toastmaster back in February of 1929. But holy shit, have you seen the new and improved Toastmaster? These two ladies in fur coats are looking at it right now!


Stop it, ladies! NO WATCHING! Don't watch it! Do something else for a while!

Of the hundreds of thousands who saw the remarkable first model which revolutionized toastmaking in America, not one would have believed it could ever have been improved upon.

Yet--that has been done!

It is even more simple, more amazing, more beautiful!

How has the Toastmaster improved in the last two years? They replaced one of the levers with a "small, new-type indicator," and it comes with "cool-type carrying handles" so you won't burn your pretty-type hands, and it also can't overheat and start your fur coat on fire at the flaming breakfast table! It won't burn your tabletop! It now does two slices at once! It's wonderful!

Ladies and Gentlemen, these ladies and I honestly don't think this toaster can get any better.

Talkie Technology in 1930

By September 27, 1930 the talkies had hit their stride. The technology had advanced to a point where procedures for recording sound were standardized and efficient, but as the wonderful Morris Markey tells us in his New Yorker article entitled "Hit the Switch!", things were still uncertain in the studios.

Markey takes a trip to Stage B "in the Paramount studio at Astoria" to see the filming of a new movie (possibly "Follow the Leader") starring comedian Ed Wynn. He discovers that studios are no longer sound-proofed and cloistered the way they were in the early days of the talkies, but some new equipment has certainly arrived.

There were four cameras. Three of them were the familiar movie cameras, a little bulky with their sound-insulation but recognizable. The fourth was the sound camera. Instead of a lens, it was fitted with a microphone at the end of a very long, very thin telescopic arm. The arm thrust out from the camera like the tentacle of an insect, and the microphone at its end was poised immediately over the spot where the action was to take place--high enough to be invisible to the lenses of the other cameras. As the actors moved about, the arm could be extended or shortened, raised or lowered in an instant so that the sound-collecting microphone always hovered over them.

The sound camera does not carry its own film. It merely carries certain electrical equipment which transmits the sound from the microphone to a telephone wire. The telephone wire carries the speech of the players to the central sound-recording room in the basement.

It's interesting that Markey doesn't know the names for any of this equipment, and so relates to it as though it were simply refurbished from the silent film days. The "boom microphone" is a "sound camera," even though it has nothing whatsoever in common with the other cameras. The cable which carries the sound is a "telephone wire."

He goes on to describe the somewhat magical goings-on inside the basement room where another camera stares at "infinitesimal reeds" which vibrate to the transmitted sound impulses. The light which shines between these vibrating reeds creates the visible sound wave which is recorded onto film for later playback. Was this REALLY how it was done?

He also mentions the "control booth," a little "soundproof room on wheels." Inside sits a man who monitors the recorded sound and controls the volume. This man -- credited as a "sound recordist" and possibly Ernest Zatorsky -- actually stops the entire shoot by walking out and protesting:

"There's a hum," he said, glancing vaguely toward the ceiling and the arc-lamps.

"What kind of hum?" asked the director.

"Something technical," said the young man. "It's an induced hum. I told 'em they'd have to fix it. This stuff sounds lousy."

The director, unable to solve or even understand the problem, walks helplessly off the set. "Like lost sheep, the actors and the helpers drifted out after him and the young man of the booth, nodding with satisfaction, picked up his hat and went home."

"Hergest Ridge" Revisited

I've talked at length about my love for Mike Oldfield's classic albums. The fact that those albums are now being re-released in new 2010 deluxe editions is cause for celebration.

I already had the deluxe edition of "Tubular Bells." The demo material was fascinating and Oldfield's remixed versions were an interesting insight into previously-hidden aspects of the master tapes, but the remastering job of the original mix offered nothing new. I didn't expect it to: it's the mix I've been hearing all my life, of course.

Now his other two classics have been released. I'm most excited about "Ommadawn" -- which I haven't yet received -- and I didn't particularly care about "Hergest Ridge" until a fellow Oldfield fan said it was an album that could ONLY sound better if it were tweaked. Like, it was so poor that ANY treatment could improve it.

Many people consider "Hergest Ridge" to be unfocused, weak, and twee. I've always agreed but I bought the deluxe edition anyway...and HOLY FREAKING COW!

"Hergest Ridge" was released during a petrochemical shortage, so the 1974 vinyl was of notoriously bad quality. Also, Oldfield was unhappy with the final result and he mixed a new quadraphonic version in 1976...this is the version (flattened to stereo) that was eventually released on CD.

So all my life I've been listening to two versions of "Hergest Ridge": one that suffered so much from its crappy vinyl that all subtlety was removed, and another that was never properly for CD and was supposed to be quadraphonic to begin with.

I didn't think that mattered; I thought the album was "blah" from conception to execution, so poor reproduction couldn't make it any worse. I was totally wrong.

Right now I'm listening to the ORIGINAL 1974 stereo mix, finally liberated from poor-quality vinyl AND mastered for CD, and it's like hearing an entirely new album. The annoying reverb-heavy trumpet has become clear and clean and perfectly suited to the rest of the instruments. The acoustic guitar positively GLITTERS. The backup vocals are suddenly audible for the first time in places where I didn't even know they existed; that dreary "overdubbed guitar" section at the end of Part Two has been brought to ecstatic life by the grace of Sally Oldfield and Clodagh Simonds, howling away in the background.

There are so many differences to this mix that I have to keep checking to make sure it isn't one of the new "2010" mixes.

I'm thrilled that I can stand on this blog hilltop -- this ramshackle virtual ridge -- and proclaim that "Hergest Ridge" is genius. I've you've dismissed it, now's the time to give it another listen. If you've spent your life listening to the inferior versions then you will be totally amazed by what you hear.

Whole, Vacuum-Cooked Chicken-in-Glass

For months I have been unsettled by these advertisements for Kingan's Chicken-In-Glass. It's not the idea of a pre-cooked chicken that bothers me, it's the fact that it's in a glass container like a fetal pig or an aborted fetus that makes me a bit squeamish.

But housewives in the '30s obviously didn't feel that way. No doubt they echoed the sentiments of the advertisements themselves:

YOU HAVE complete assurance of getting exactly what you want when you buy KINGAN'S CHICKEN-IN-GLASS. It is packed and cooked in a crystal-clear glass container...You see at a glance its size, its milk-fed plumpness, its inviting cleanliness. Never before has ready-cooked whole chicken been prepared to skillfully, so appetizingly!

They even advise that you "take a season's supply to your summer cottage," which makes me wonder how this stuff kept. Didn't it need to be refridgerated? Did the crystal-clear glass container allow you to see every step of loving putrefaction?

Sorry, when I think about Chicken-in-Glass, that's all I can think about.

Bad Advice from General Electric

A Plane in Every Driveway

Either folks in the early '30s were positively airplane crazy, or the companies that built airplanes wanted to manufacture that impression. Issues of The New Yorker have contained airplane advertisements from the late '20s, but by March 15, 1930, the trickle of plane promotion has become a flood.

Half of the advertisements are devoted to commercial flights, either for vacationers ("Havana") or commuters ("New York to Boston"). The commuter flights were surprisingly cheap ($11 or so) and seemed to involve some level of comfort: in-flight food, heated cabin, the works.

The advertisements for PRIVATE airplanes are far more interesting. It seems you could buy a plane for about $1000, and by folding up the wings you could keep it in an ordinary car garage. The implication, by 1930, really was that you could store and use a plane enough to make the price worthwhile...though they're a bit vague about what you'd actually use the plane FOR. And they tend not to mention picky things like "runways" and "engine maintenance" and "maximum load."

I'm looking at an advertisement for a personal open cockpit biplane from the Travel Air Company. It's the story of a man whose wife -- after landing the plane "on the lower lawn" -- finally talks her father-in-law into "going up." He has the time of his life and is an instant convert to private air travel...but he never says "Wait a minute...what do you guys use this thing for?"

And that IS the question. Why don't we each have an airplane in the garage? I suppose because few of us have "lower lawns" to use as runways, and neither do our workplaces. Maybe most of us are afraid of heights. Or maybe air congestion would be too difficult a problem to solve. Or -- most likely -- the growing passenger capacity of commercial air travel made private planes less essential to most of those who would have bought them.

Today I only know one person with a pilot's license. I'll have to ask him what he plans to use it for. I hope he'll have some insight into the practicality of air travel.

PS: In the same issue of the magazine, the London correspondent laments the sorry state of air travel in England. Apparently the problem was that the airplane insurance was so high that each year's payment equalled the cost of the plane itself.

New 1920s Technology: The Yo-Yo

Not to be sidetracked by the stock market crash, the November 9, 1929 issue of The New Yorker describes a brand new craze.

This backwater hamlet has been very slow to discover Yo-Yo. Cities like Dallas and Birmingham knew about it long ago...

Yo-yo is a small yellow top with a groove in the centre. Around the axis is a string. We could describe it, but it would be simpler for you to buy one... The printed directions that come with it say "you can invent many tricks yourself." (The only decent trick we've invented so far is called "Putting It Away in the Desk.")

The tricks mentioned in the article are "The Strut" and "The Spinner," both performed by a Texas boy named Delma White (who spun it 121,111 consecutive times). They go on to tell the standard (and apparently true) story of the Yo-Yo's American popularity: a Filipino bellboy named Pedro Flores would occasionally entertain guests with it, and then he opened his own factory in 1928.

The Yo-Yo craze in New York was thanks to Mr. Louis Marx of the "Jaymar Specialty Company" (in the '70s this company was still sponsoring Yo-Yo events, but was known as the "Louis Marx Toy Company"). Mr. Marx included the following poem with the first New York Yo-Yos of 1929:

What is the dearest thing on earth
That fills my soul with joy and mirth?
My Yo-Yo.

New Yorkers Agree, It's Startling! New Type Cornet!

Here we thought that 1920s inventors just invented useless stuff like radio, and talking pictures, and automatic toasters. But no! They also invented...the Player Cornet!


Try to tell me that this wouldn't have been annoying at parties. As described in the October 5, 1929 issue of The New Yorker:

Rather clever of those Europeans...now they bring us a new type of cornet that plays from music rolls, but is not an automatic playing instrument...

The music roll selects the correct tones or notes but you control everything else necessary for the playing of a melody with the feeling you want to express.

The blowing into the instrument to produce the volume, movement of the music roll to regulate the tempo are controlled by you. If you can hum or whistle a tune, ten minutes of practice will enable you to play the melody.

It was available at Mayfair Playthings Store for only $12 (with two music rolls included), but for some reason I can't find any online references to this instrument. How the heck did it work? Can I buy one now?

What Makes the Picture Talk?

If you were a moviegoer in 1929 -- and who wasn't? -- then you might have wondered how the "talking pictures" worked. Fortunately Western Electric put this somewhat pushy advertisement in the August 3, 1929 issue of The New Yorker. Click on the picture for the full gorgeous schematic, including the stylized "horns" which look more artsy than functional.



This advertisement graphically shows the reluctant transition from the Western Electric-developed Vitaphone (sound on disk) technology to the superior Movietone (sound on film). Though not actually developed by Western Electric, the company was anxious to cash in SOMEHOW on the new techonology that was making the Vitaphone obsolete...so they sold these Sound Picture systems to make use of both methods, and then promoted the heck out of their own contributions ("Sound pictures came out of the telephone.")

Smart folks.

The Mysterious Number Row

Have you ever looked at the copyright page of a book and noticed a row of numbers at the bottom? It usually looks something like this:

23 25 27 29 30 28 26 24

I took that particular set from my copy of "The Great Gatsby." It's pretty and all, but...what the heck do those numbers MEAN?

I've pondered this question since I was a child, and you'd think that in the age of Google and Wikipedia you'd be able to find the answer, but you have to know what those numbers are CALLED before you can SEARCH for them. Amazingly I've discovered that they aren't called anything. They're just a "number row."

One of the local Old Goats finally let me in on the number row secret: those numbers reveal the current edition of the book; in the case of the above example, my copy of "The Great Gatsby" is the 23rd edition printed by that particular publishing company: the lowest digit in the row is the edition number.

You might wonder why the copyright page doesn't just say "Edition 23," or why the numbers alternate and are centered, or why different books use different conventions; some are left- or right-justified, some include the year of the edition (eg. "06 07 08 09 10 5 4 3 2 1"), and some dispense with the system altogether. To understand this you need to understand why they're there in the first place.

The reason for the number row is because books are re-printed from a set of plates. When you re-use a set of plates to print a new edition of a book -- because the last one sold out -- you don't want to recreate the copyright page so it just says "Edition 23." That would require a new plate for a relatively trivial change.

Far cheaper is to simply obscure the numbers on the plates for the editions you've already printed. The plate is originally set with all the numbers from one to ten (or ten to twenty if you've surpassed ten printings, etc.), and the printer simply covers up the lower edition numbers when the book is being printed. Next time it's printed, the printer will cover up the next number.

Obscure! Bizarre! But it makes sense!

As for why different companies use different conventions for displaying the numbers, that is entirely due to the whims of the companies themselves, and it's because all the methods have different pros and cons. If they left-justify the numbers and print them from one to ten, it looks a little strange to have higher edition numbers floating off to the right. If they center them and alternate them (as in the example above), the number row always appears more-or-less centered on the page as the numbers are removed, but it's confusing to read. Some companies think it's best to have the numbers ascend from left to right (because it's the Western reading direction), while others prefer to ascend from right to left (more difficult to parse, but looks nicer).

If you'd like to learn more, check out this post and the accompanying comments. This information will never save your life, but maybe you've always wanted to know.

Dr. Couney's Babies at Coney Island

File this one under "Did you know...WHAT, he DID?"

From 1903 to 1943, Dr. Martin Arthur Couney had a very unusual show at Coney Island: an incubator full of human babies. Dr. Couney would take in premature babies, incubate them in public, and charge money for people to come and watch.

According to the July 6, 1929 issue of The New Yorker, here's how it all started. Previous to Couney's incubator, nobody had figured out how to keep premature babies warm while still providing them with clean air. In Breslau, Silesia, Couney built a tall chimney which could suck in dust-free air from above the rooftops. It worked!

An American exposition was travelling through Europe then...and the manager persuaded him to come to this country to exhibit his invention as a sideshow. He first set up in Omaha, Nebraska. Eventually Fred Thompson, the old showman who started Luna Park, brought him to Coney Island. That was in 1903. He has been there since and saved about six thousand lives.

This location had a surprising benefit.

One lady, expectant, took a ride on a roller-coaster, had her baby prematurely, and was not more than a block away from an incubator. Pretty handy!

How could Couney afford to do this? The way EVERY sideshow performer did.

The gate receipts have always been adequate, and the twenty-five cents which the public pays supports the institution, gives Dr. Couney a profit, and enables him to employ two physicians and eleven nurses and provide free board and lodging for his little red beginners.

I wonder if the nurses wore spangly outfits and, for an encore, juggled the babies.

Some final information that you may find interesting.

Every three hours the babies are taken out and fed. They get only human milk, from wet nurses, and occasionally a drop of whiskey...

The babies are always grateful, but sometimes the parents aren't. One father, seeing his tiny son attracting boardwalk crowds, demanded that he be given a percentage of the gate.

The Double-SLICE..Double-SIDE..Double-QUICK TOASTER

As of June 15, 1929, Edicraft has discovered how to keep marriages intact!

MR. HORACE SNOOPY PEEK, late of the Prohibition Enforcement Squad has been doing a bit of research.

According to Mr. Peek's charts and graphs, most marriages are wrecked at the breakfast table. "Cold, burned or slow-to-make toast causes young husbands to look up telephone numbers," reads his report. "Only in homes equipped with the Edicraft Speed Automatic Toaster does marriage remain stable."

And can you wonder? Even the most inexperienced of brides can turn out crisp, golden, hot on both sides toast with an Edicraft while making snappy conversation that will keep hubby's morning paper unopened--yes, unnoticed.

Slip two slices of bread in the Edicraft, turn on the switch, and a few moments later you are gently interrupted with two temptingly browned toast nuggets, done to a turn on both sides. No watching, no chance of burning, all you have to do is reach for them in a bored, well-bred manner.

There's no word on how the "inexperienced" brides could keep their husbands distracted for the REST of the day -- toast for dinner? toast in bed? -- but I suppose this was a good start.

PS: If the pages of The New Yorker are any indication, the Edicraft and the Toastmaster were battling for supremacy in 1929. Who will finally win? I'll keep reading, and when I find out I'll let you know.

Sound Pictures!

This "great new art" used by Paramount, Warner Brothers, Hal Roach, Columbia Pictures, Christie, Universal, United Artists, Harold Lloyd, Fox Movietone, and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, as pioneered by the world's leading makers of telephones, switchboards, cable, trans-Atlantic telephone equipment, telephoto machines, and public address systems?

Yes, it's "Sound Pictures" ("The Voice of Action") provided by Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric. They were responsible for the Vitaphone and the Movietone, and they practically shove the reader into a cinema seat with their final paragraph.

The success of Sound Pictures is history now. Continuing progress is certain. Make sure of enjoying it. Go to the theatres showing these great producers' pictures with the sound equipment recognized as the world's standard.

(The New Yorker, June 8, 1929...a particularly good issue, by the way).

Forbidden Welding

The June 8, 1929 New Yorker tells us that when engineer Gilbert D. Fish gave a lecture on welding for architects and builders, only eight people showed up.

This wasn't because welding was boring and commonplace...far from it! Amazingly enough, welding was considered a radical idea at the time, and it wasn't until the mid-'30s that it became a respectable way to hold a building together. What did they use beforehand?

Yes, that's right, rivets. Stories about New York in the '20s often mention the horrendous noise of construction, and a lot of that was due to the process of riveting.

Once they got the welding process refined it became the preferred method for keeping most pieces of metal together, but The New Yorker mentions some potential drawbacks.

One, which impressed us more than it does Mr. Fish, is the disappearance of the romantic game of throwing and catching rivets--more fun to watch even than excavating. It would be replaced, however, by a sort of fireworks display.

Even more surprising:

Another handicap is that the present building code in New York City doesn't allow welded buildings.

I like to learn new things. Here I thought that welding was the 20th century's preferred method of building everything except boats and bridges...but New York City didn't even ALLOW you to weld a skyscraper in the '20s. Neat!

A Gruesome General Electric Mystery

It's difficult, when viewing this advertisement for the General Electric All-Steel Refrigerator, to avoid noticing what the mother and child have yet to see: their youngest daughter is lying dead on the floor. She obviously got trapped inside the fridge over night, and was only released when they removed the tiny red coat from storage.

A gruesome mystery from the June 1, 1929 New Yorker.

From the Dot Matrix Digitizer to the Thunderscan: '80s Technological Kludge

Hey kids! Put down your DNA-sampling iPhones and listen up. This is how it used to be.

During the mid-80s, scanner technology was just entering our consumer consciousness. We knew that lucky businessmen had something called "Fax Machines," but those of us at home were totally unable to get photographs of lingerie models into our 8-bit computers (without tracing them on a transparency, sticking the transparency to the television set, and then drawing under it with a joystick-driven "fun with art" program).

But all this changed during April 1985, when Antic Magazine published instructions for..."The Dot Matrix Digitizer."

Here's the basic (and totally ass-backward) idea: you remove the printhead from your dot matrix printer and replace it with a homemade light pen. Instead of putting blank paper in your printer, you roll in the picture you want to digitize...say, this picture of handsome devil Sam Tramiel.


Then you ran a program which fooled your printer into thinking it was actually printing something, meanwhile retrieving the information from the light pen which was now creeping back and forth over the picture in your printer. Sixty minutes later you got this!


That's right! Not only could you cheaply digitize pictures of Sam Tramiel in the comfort of your own home, but you could ALSO make him look like Gene Shalit!

When I first read this article I thought "Wow, what a ridiculous Kludge...I bet nobody ever did it except the staff at Antic Magazine!" Then I learned about the "Thunderscan," a product for the first generation Macintosh which did exactly the same thing.

We truly live in a world full of inventive and crazy people. It's a good thing the inventors of this technique never decided to "Go Galt!"