Slashdot Mirror
The Ampex Sign Is Coming Down (fastcompany.com)
harrymcc writes: If you ever watched anything on videotape, you have Silicon Valley pioneer Ampex -- which invented the technology -- to thank. And for years, the company's vintage sign has stood alongside Highway 101 as a tribute to its historical significance. But Stanford University, which owns the land the sign sits on, is in the process of dismantling it -- an act which Redwood City could have prevented but didn't. I wrote about this dismaying example of cultural shortsightedness at Fast Company.
is a vast overestimate of the sign's importance. It's nothing more than a bloody advertisement, and we need fewer ads in our life, not more.
About 25 years ago, I worked for a radio station as a sound engineer. They used open-reel tape decks as their main recording medium, and we had loads of Ampex 456 reels in use.
Now most tape manufacturers sold their tape on plastic reels. Ampex however used reels with aluminium flanges. Because we were always in a hurry when doing live radio, we engineers had the habit of braking the reels by hand when rewinding them. When doing that on a plastic spool, the worst that could happen was overheated fingers from the friction. On the Ampex reels however you had to beware of the 3 large holes in the flange; if you caught one of those, the aluminium would cut right through your fingers.
People and organizations do important things all the time, much with a long range impact on the world. But for the most part it will go unnoticed and forgotten in history, say for a vague footnote in a research paper, if lucky.
Also if you are studying the history of something you will often find, that it wasn't made in a vacuum, or out of the blue. However it was an idea built upon previous ideas from different people and organizations.
The Ampex sign, is a local landmark. While Ampex may had done some important innovation, I wouldn't deem it historic, worthy of presentation. Landmarks change. The blue barn was just painted red, The sports stadium had changed sponsors. Just because something is well known or had done important things, doesn't mean it needs to be preserved for prosperity.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Optical sensing has advanced greatly but professional camera lens technology has not. If you really look at some of the great images taken by Ansel Adams you see the levels of resolution he used to create his photographic art, digital up until now has paled in comparison.
In the same vein, some of the great recordings done in the in the late 1950 and early 1960 by DGG, Columbia Master Works and Phillips optical audio to film tape you see the same quality of detailed sound that is only starting to become possible now with digital recording.
The combination of great analogue tech that is not stagnant with digital is the way forward. For instance advanced large size reflex ribbon mics with miniature electronics are just starting to happen and become affordable for the pro as are large size high density and sensitivity ccd based cameras that can take large lenses and produce close to what Ansel Adams did. Ansel was certainly not alone and owed a dept to some of the great photographers that showed the way some of whom were American. Here we can clearly see that fine grained analogue photography was starting to make leaps and bounds until the first world war really screwed up things for a while. France, England, Germany started to take the technology and keep it secretly in the military. The same bullshit happened during the second world war and during the cold war. Both advanced miniaturized audio recording technology and miniaturized high resolution camera technology has if anything been held back by war.
The great analogue technologies which ampex helped introduce to the public, essentially during times of peace, are very important and the sign is a reminder of this fact. It should stay or at least not fade into the dust of what we perceive as progress! If the young of today and our antecedents cannot learn from the past then American society is doomed.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
My feelings are: why can't Ampex put their advertising sign on their own building?
Stanford shouldn't be beholden to advertise some private company for them. Surely there are better landmarks around there than a billboard.. As you said, not worthy of historical preservation. Sure, take a photo of it and put it in a film museum, but no need to keep the sign up.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You can't see anything from Alabama - it's been proven by modern science. It's sort of like there not really being a South Dakota. I mean, anyone who's seen North Dakota knows you only need ONE Dakota and they made up the other one. And don't get me started on Indiana.
That is all.
Actually I think that might make for a rather neat attraction; especially given American's historic car culture.
I think it would be pretty neat if someone 1) bought some land in the AZ desert (affordable and the climate will keep the signs for deteriorating) 2) paved 20 or 40 miles of road thru it 3) Acquired historic signage from culturally significant organizations defunct and not 4) Made one of the GPS phone apps that reads out a little historic information about each sign when you get near it for people to download. 5) Charged a little toll to support / profit on the thing for folks that want to drive down it.
Wish I had the capital
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Just what crucial information will be lost in time by the removal of this sign from the side of the 101 freeway? What important historical event are we doomed to repeat because of the removal of a corporate logo that the corporation that owns the mark doesn't even give a shit if it's there or not?
This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, and doesn't deserve to have anything said about it, other than it being a footnote of history - Ampex used to be here, when they did something significant in advancing the state of the art in audio and video recording technology.
Now it's just a hunk of metal that past and present owners can't give a fuck about.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I drive past this sign fairly regularly and always liked the fact that it remained the same as I remember it from when I was a kid in the 1970s driving up 101 with my family. I'll be a little bit sad that a landmark from my younger days is gone, but not heartbroken.
What really makes me sad is the loss of Docktown Marina, on the other side of the freeway, where houseboat residents are being evicted. The Docktown Marina sign is still there, though not for long.
People don't care what other people care about.
People care about what other people care about enough to PAY for.
How much are YOU willing to pay Stanford University to keep the sign up? Do you have ANY IDEA what the cost of land in Silicon Valley is?
The Ampex operation there is gone. The site is now one of the major multi-spcialized-clinic complexes of the Stanford Hospital. (The sleep clinic, where I had my severe sleep apnea diagnosed and treated, is one of them.) What are they expected to do if they need more room to treat more sick people?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way