Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Beeps and boops
Super-random chain of thought on space-agey-ness.....
A couple years ago I thoroughly debunked the notion that Sputnik "woke up" American education.
Now I'm wondering if Sputnik started anything at all. Space-age gadgetry and space-age styling were common at least two years before Sputnik. Look at the '57 Lincoln or '57 Mercury or any household stuff of the mid-50s. Starbursts, planets, orbits, rockets, computers. The Merc had a gadget called Seat-O-Matic with a dial that you could program to your chosen seat position in three dimensions, then 'recall' with a single setting. I suspect it was done with Strowger relays, but nevertheless it was the first computerish gadget seen by ordinary consumers. [Bear in mind that Detroit engineered cars at least two years in advance, so those '57 cars were designed in '55.]
What started this chain of thought was the 'interval signal' used by the Money-Talk radio station that I halfway listen to. It's a series of satellite-style beeps and boops that pops in to fill dead air when local announcers aren't quick on the draw. But it's not just any old beeps and boops; it's the Monitor Beacon, stolen from the old NBC radio Monitor program which aired from 1955 to 1975. Those beeps and boops came to be an audio icon for satellites and Sputniks, but they were on NBC before the space age.
So. Sputnik didn't wake up our education system and didn't start anything. It merely verified and amplified a trend that was well under way.
¶ 12:01 PM 
