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Stunning, Classic Computer Console, from 1958?
Predicta Lover writes "It's widely believed that the late-50s Predicta series was the swansong for Philco. After its introduction, RCA's president David Sarnoff is quoted as having said "Philco has reinvented the industry and made TV more exciting again." Somehow, I can't imagine Bill reacting that way to an Apple product launch, at least not publicly. Years later, Philco's phenomenally-designed but questionably-engineered and over-priced TV sets are an icon of modern television design, and are even made in a stunning reproduction form. Maybe Philco would still be in business if they'd thought to shoehorn a contemporary computer into the box and put a high-resolution LCD up top (ahh, I guess that would've been tough...oh, the cruelties of history). At any rate, the researchers and designers at Onomy Labs did just that, 45 years later, and the result is an absolutely lust-worthy piece of computing hardware. Built to eventually house an experimental computer being produced by Sun Labs, the supercharged piece made its debut at their recent Open House held at the Computer History Museum.The Pedestal model that's used here was originally penned by Philco's Catherine Winkler, and is variously described as being inspired by the ideal female form and looking like a gas pump (I am not even going to touch that one). The perpetrators of this project have been mildly vilified by classic TV collectors (fearing imitators) and highly praised by most everyone else...some are calling it the 'best casemod ever'. I don't know about that, but it's definitely a beautiful object."
Bah. I'm underwhelmed. It actually looks pretty ungainly to me with that tall pedestal base (not exactly an ergonomic delight unless you're a giraffe). I'd prefer a mod of the Holiday model if anything, but I'm afraid I'm with the angry Predicta collectors on this one. Must make 'em wince to see Windows 2000 leering out at them when it should be Lucille Ball.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
i remember back in my day we had punch cards all lined up in order and we would see who could feed them through the fastest and we liked it
umm.. pretty but not very practical
Check out the display! It has /. on it!
http://www.onomy.com/blue/images/headshotf.jpg
Slashdot stories appear to be tilting more towards rabid hype of one kind or another recently. The best casemod ever! Really?
Add it to some of the blatant use of Slashdot as a depot for the half-truths and promotion from various vendors, and it seems to me the editors are not being very balanced.
I think this is the first time I didn't want to RTF-Summary. Longest one I've seen ever :)
I'm not reading all that shit! This is /., give me the condensed form and link the rest so I can ignore it and make assinine comments.
The television in my bedroom is branded Philco, yet it couldn't have been purchased more than seven or eight years ago. Yet they went out of business in the middle of last century? What's goin' on here? Cheap Asian knockoffs like those Commodore MP3 players?
thats two words
Anyone seen Terry Gilliam's Brazil? The "monitors," while not quite so stylishly retro, resembled an old Underwood typerwriter with a screen in front of which was mounted a hilariously-oversized rectangular magnifying glass attachment. Brilliant.
I'm not so sure I would want one, or a Philco update, but somewhere between CRT monoliths, plastic flat-screens striving to distinguish themselves, Apple's attempts at novelty and the uber-kewl designs we regularly see in Sci-Fi movies, I'm sure eventually we'll be face to face with something far more interesting.
The classic Predicta TV, if well maintained in working order, still receives video as well as it did when it was new, and will continue to work for many years to come. But if you tear out the guts and put in a computer, you have a box that will be obsolete within months.
The perpetrators of this project have been mildly vilified by classic TV collectors (fearing imitators) ... there are only so many Predictas left, and Philco isn't making any more of them.
Here's an idea: modern Predicta reproductions are available, so why not buy a repro and case-mod it instead of trashing a really neat, really valuable technological artifact from another age?
This is no better than gutting a classic Zenith console radio to make a fishtank. It's lame as hell.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Where is this "MBA Action 2004" game? I want it, but Google turns up nothing.
i wan't to see them do it to the "desktop" syle philco,ya' know the one that basically looked like an old compaq with one of those rounded picture tubes mounted on it? would look much better if you ask me. and you would be able to put it soemwhere where you coudl actully USE it, not on the floor in the living room where it will just be a display piece(i like my mods to be functional TYVM)
Seriously, it's 'orrid! There's a reason designs go out of style.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
"The space-age theme was promoted in ads promising "TV today from the world of tomorrow".
Computer today from the world of the yesterday.
Neat idea.
I pulled it out of a trash can, actually, It needed a flyback transformer, which cost something like 100 bucks at the time. Fortunately, my dad had a close friend that owned a TV repair shop and he was able to use one from a more common TV set (I think it was an RCA). The picture was pretty good. Mine had an analog clock on the right side that could turn the TV on (an alarm TV!). The screen rotated so you culd see it from anywhere in the room. Alas, when my family moved when I was 15, it stayed and likely wound up in a landfill. A truly stunning TV...As a 11 year old I didn't appreciate it fully though.
This is cool, but it seems more like an ad to me.
Clearly an early prototype of the Luxor Jr. iMac here...
That thing must be a black hole for feng shui. You'll need to pay some chinese guy thousands of dollars to remove it from your home.
Is anyone else bored with seeing casemods on slashdot? They're not relevant (or funny) news, they're almost always ugly, and they seem to largely be the province of high school or college-aged kids whose parents have too much money. (The same goes for Alienware and other vanity PC manufacturers, but that's not relevant to my immediate point.)
It just doesn't take much skill or inspiration to look at something and say "I wonder if I could put a computer in there!"
Am I the only one who saw this and immediately thought "Fallout" here? All they need is Pipboy with the thumbs up in a gas attendant uniform on the case and they're set to go. *Sigh*, Fallout.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Somebody has already done one, based on an Underwood typewriter and a Macintosh SE: http://www.ahleman.com/ElectriClerk.html/
I realize that this isn't really a focal point for the piece, but with all the work they put in I can't imagine why they would put that controller with it. If you've ever held one, you know what I mean.
Do you put your monitor on top of your tower case? Of course not, because you don't want your neck to throb with pain for the rest of your life. That thing looks like it's about three feet higher than the desk. Every time you use your computer you feel like you got to a movie late and had to settle for the front row. Wow sign me up for this case, it's a model of practicality and ergonomics.
Just wanted to make sure you knew that at least one person got the reference.
Please pick something better for a hardware hacking icon, that orange 3 to 2 pin electricity adapter thing implies electricity too much.
How about an icon involving a pci card and glue?
And now, for the dark side of Mr. Sarnoff, who did NOT invent the TV set:
http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profi le/farnsworth03.html
Sarnoff and RCA are the scum of the earth; they ruined a guy's life simply to not have to pay him royalties; thankfully, history has for the most part set the record straight for anyone who digs a little.
Pretty sad; Farnsworth never saw a dime and went into deep depression over the whole thing. Farnsworth saw the waste of his invention almost from the get-go; as the Time article says, his son said "I suppose you could say that he felt he had created kind of a monster, a way for people to waste a lot of their lives."
Nothing's changed in 50 years- corporations still bully the "little guy" like this. Back in the 80's, a company my father started had technology stolen from them by NCR (National Cash Register Corporation). Despite a signed NDA, NCR ripped off technology they were demo'd. There was clear evidence NCR had stolen the design, they had the NDA in hand, etc- but NCR managed to drag it out in court for years. I believe the suit was abandoned due to lack of funds, but I don't recall- it was a subject that was not discussed often or pleasantly in our house.
I hope they rot in hell- they helped cripple the company, which was working on some really innovative touch screen technology. Much of the touchscreen technology, now in use by PDAs and whatnot, you can owe to DTI- Digital Techniques Inc- a tiny little Burlington, MA company nobody ever heard of. Probably their most "famous" product was the very early touchscreen system in Super Stop and Shop where you could enter a product name and get a map to where it was in the store; they also did some award winning videodisk based exhibits for the Museum Of Science. They were also bullied out of an air traffic control system project with the FAA...by Raytheon. DTI designed a system that, in the late 80's, would have allowed a controller to manage all his electronics(radios and whatnot) from one small touchscreen system. Decades ahead of its time.
Please help metamoderate.
"What's so damn sacred about the design anyway? Sure, it's a nice-looking TV, but it's obsolete which makes it a prime candidate for re-use as something a little more modern."
Which tells me you don't understand how collectors and collecting works. Obsolete usually doesn't figure into the decision (except as it relates to scarcity). Scarity, and desirability. How many people "desire" what you have? How "rare" is your item? A Star Trek Voyager series cover TV Guide isn't going to be worth much because even if you had a lot of people wanting it? There were thousands printed up, and little time for them to deteriorate. Notice that obsolete doesn't even figure into it (printing still exists). How about a piece from the original Star Trek set? Rare and desirable.
This is possibly the most convoluted summary I've ever seen on /.
Oh let the imagination fly. How about converting one of those old style gas pumps. Replacing the globe with an eye done in metal (copper) and glass. One could house a TV projector in there. Channel display were the old indicators use to be. Obviously remote controlled. The antenna could be hidden in the pump hose. Hmmm...or a portable pop-up TV built into a toaster. Lever makes screen (LCD) go up and down (bonus points if you make it look like a slice of bread). Channel changer is the darker/lighter knob. Remember when TV's were reflected by mirrors? Well now you have an idea for an old footstool.
When I was a child, my parents put their "Penthouse" model in my bedroom when they got a bigger, better TV. That was a long time ago (around 1959).
Nowadays it seems that the trend of wearing the skin of a deceased beloved company like a corporate Ed Gein is increasing in today's post-dot-com business climate.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Vintage Ads
Contest Directions
In this contest your challenge is to take modern products and display them in a vintage light, through advertisements. You can also reverse the challenge and take vintage products and display them in a modern way.
This thing is ass ugly and has that "don't touch me, I came from goodwill and you don't know where I've been" look to it.
I have no idea how anyone can compare this to an iMac. Hell, an average white box PC with a flat panel is about 10x more aesthetically pleasing.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The 15 seconds of fame that the submitter anticipated must have spurred him to try to extend it to 30.
Note to submitters: if you're going to write out a long submission, throw in some good porn at the end. We deserve *something* for suffering through your inability to WRAP IT UP!
Did anyone else seriously think it was going to be an iMac right up until they saw the actualy mod pictures? Even when i was going to click on it i could have sworn it would send me here.
my interociter is way nicer than yours
I had mine shipped all the way from Metaluna.
isn't this posting a little long... I mean do they expect us to read it?
Could have saved some of this article for after you click on it, the topic doesn't appeal to everyone and yet it's taking up a huge bit of front page realestate.
*TheDarb
This sig intentionally left blank.
Even geeks know THAT is NOT lust worthy.
http://www.domai.com/index.html
THIS is lust worthy.
...and are exceedingly tedious.
Have you noticed? All things commonly associated with Apple were actually created in the 60's: iMacs (Predicta), windows (Xerox), and the mouse (Xerox). If we start digging deeper, what will we find next?
article about retro gaming or some shit. no. a guy has made his pc look balls.
You'll find Ferguson ICC9 boards in dozens of different makes of TV in Europe. They are all owned by SGS-Thomson.
Huh? "Ugly" is one word. Are you confusing "word" and "syllable" or something? Are you chinese?
When is a case mod practical, aside from this one.
I remember finding a few of those old Philco's on the curb come trash day and they were nasty beasts. We dragged one home look through it and the shielding wasn't very good, if one of these things, and several were not very stable, fell over you could have a fire in short order. These things undoubtably predated consumer product saftety testing and who knows what kind of radiation they leaked. It didn't become much of an issue until the late 60's
For a case mod, I would only consider one of thse with a 17" or larger LCD display, but it would probably look fairly dorky and the beatuy of LCD displays is they're small enough that you can place them where you need, rather than being fixed to the computer, like laptops.
Casemodding isn't my cuppa, though some do end up looking kinda cool.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have seen the only working Heathkit color TV kit in Europe. It has even been changed to PAL.
Still impressive to see the circular tube with an extra protective glass cover glued to it.
It still worked in the 1990ies even with some blotches of bacteria or funghi eating away the glue of the glass cover.
If that moron destroyed a REAL unit, he should have his fingers cut off for such a obscene act...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Once the FCC"s digital rules take effect, they will render the classic TV's useless..
Sad really, but we gotta have DRM in every home ya know...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://boston.laszlosystems.com/photos/images/2004 -08-03/IMG_0503.JPG
0 04 -08-03/IMG_0511.JPG
http://boston.laszlosystems.com/photos/images/2
This is a console for controlling interceptor fighter jets. It was part of a SAGE (used a lot of vacuum-tubes) computer system.
Note the cigaratte lighter in the upper left of the righthand picture with the joystick.
Someday I'm going to put a computer into this thing.
The adapter goes with many of the other rather quaint icons -- the wheelbarrow for databases (what the?), the dial telephone for communication, the blackboard for education, the megaphone for announcements, and so forth. I think the last time a communication post was about old phones was the time Bell System Memorial got slashdotted (most communication posts aren't about telephones at all!), and the only Blackboard that gets /. coverage is the kind that universities use vigorously when they like malfunctioning technology more than happy, well-educated students. I don't think a database post has ever involved gardening. And the adapters are a hack of sorts -- they can be useful, but in many cases they are unreliable and dangerous.
I worked for a summer with Sarnoff's son. He was a real asshole. We were all student interns at Atari's "research" lab in Sunnyvale. The evening we met him, a group of us (MIT students) were working late. He saw us and called security because he didn't know who we were and was too much of a chicken shit to even say hello.
I live in a rather old flat and I can tell from experience that old things tend to attract bugs. Here we have another example, though these bugs apparently have mutated into something more technologically advanced. Its a sad thing.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
We had a black-n-white Philco when I was a little kid. When my Mom told me to turn off the TV and go to bed, I would insist on waiting for the little white dot to disappear. "Mom, nooo... the little white dot's not gone yet".
By the time I was a teenager, the Philco had be consigned to the basement for well over a decade, no longer used even as an emergency backup set.
I plugged the TV-output of my Commodore-64 into the Philco one day and for a few brief moments the up-and-coming technology of the digital age met the post-war vacuum tube era. The image was distorted. Perhaps some of the old Phil's components were slightly out of value. It still would have been useable though. It was one of those moments that you have to be a true geek to appreciate. If only I could have gone back in time and shown that to the Philco guys.
While I was away at college, the Philco was unceremoniously disposed of by my parents.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
to build a computer that will be in a landfill in 10 years because it is completely obsolete. :(
If they restored the original Predicta as a TV set and sold it to a collector, they could have purchased one of the modern repro cabinets to hack up for a computer case.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
oh wait, this isn't a Mac...
"I nominate this post for the Slashdot hall of fame."
We have a hall of fame? Does that mean that the first geek to have sex will be found there?
The vintage Predicta tube TV was mass produced, and for picture quality it was superceded long ago. And what makes you so sure that a well done casemod can't be a "work of electronic art?" Many geeks can't seem to appreciate how idiosyncratic their standards for art and beauty are. Of course, I suppose that's what makes a person a 'geek.'
this is one of the few insightful comments on this story.
"Probably their most "famous" product was the very early touchscreen system in Super Stop and Shop where you could enter a product name and get a map to where it was in the store" I remember this! When Super Stop & Shop came to my town, we stayed up all night playing nuclear chess & bridge so we could be the first costumers. No reason other than being teens and able to waste the time. We even made a Welcome Stop & Shop banner. Car carrying us blew an axel so we left it in the new parking lot with the banner on it. Using the new fangly touchscreen search for Pez I learned the store carried none. This annoyed me and I've since claimed Stop & Shop is "a lie, a sham, and the devil's work". Sensible? Not at all. Fun? You bet! [The touch screens were awfully cool, even useful. If you didn't need Pez.]
Feeling so good natured I could drool
From the summary:
Somehow, I can't imagine Bill reacting that way to an Apple product launch, at least not publicly.
How is what Bill Gates might or might not say at all relevant to this story in any way, shape, or form?
Sometimes I think Slashdotters spend 90% of their lives just thinking about Bill Gates (I'm sorry--I forgot it's hip now to refer to him as just Bill or Billy).
It's being used for SOMETHING, rather than sitting in a landfill, like MOST Philco TVs probably are. I, for one, am glad it this was done. It looks cool, and keeps the thing out of the landfill.
/usr/games/fortune
You have successfully taken a vintage Fender guitar amp and shoved a digital effects processor inside it. Sheesh!
I want one of those mini usb or wireless keyboards. Anyone know what are the brands in the pictures?
Philco is an undead company, driven out of business long ago and its name owned by one of the Asian contract manufactures. The same is true of the Sylvania, KLH, and Koss "brand names" which I have at home. When I bought the Koss stereo it was shortly after this happened. I should have realized that something was up when the price was so low. When I took it home and noticed there was no ground strip on the receiver I was very disappointed. I was young and naive back then. But now-a-days much of the once high-end equipment is made by the contract manufactures and it is all the same steaming pile anyways.