Here’s a neat image of a record and a stylus at 1000x magnification. It’s pretty incredible to see the etched grooves on the record up close and how they interact with the needle. I’ve always known how record players worked, but seeing the process magnified like this is way cool.
The photos come from Microscopic Images on Twitter.
Someone’s created a Tumblr of famous record albums that have been “pixelated” and turned into 40"x40” Lego grids. They’re quite nice.
These Lego albums are so well—one might say perfectly—executed that I find myself wondering about the color choices available to Lego users—these covers appear to use every color in the Pantone universe. I suppose if you’re using Lego Digital Designer, you can use these colors.
Which begs the question: Are these actual Lego constructions or were they made in Lego Digital Designer? And if they were made in Lego Digital Designer, does that make them any less real?
The albums pictured here are so well known that I’m not going to bother identifying them—the Tumblr itself ranges more widely across the musical spectrum.
Who knew that some noises could eventually become as extinct as the passenger pigeon? Depending on your age, you or your kids or grandchildren may have only heard some of the following sounds in old movies, if at all.
The formerly familiar swooosh as the caller rotated the dial clockwise to the "finger stop" and then the click-click-click as the dial returned counter-clockwise to the start position is now a novelty application that you can install on your iPhones for nostalgic yuks. Adolescents waiting in line nearby will wonder what the heck that sound is, while we older fogies will know you're poking fun at us and our ancient ways.
Manual typewriters had an entire subset of unique sounds that made them immediately identifiable...at one time. The keys clacked loudly as they struck the paper, the carriage lifted up with a distinct clunk when the shift key was employed, and then there was the ping of the bell warning you that you were nearing the end of the line. That meant you had to lift your left hand from the keyboard and swipe at the carriage return lever, which caused a sort of ziiiiip noise as you pushed the carriage back to the starting position.
Record changers allowed you to stack a selection of albums of 45s (seven-inch singles, not guns!) for your longer-term listening pleasure. Each record would make a soft slap sound as it dropped onto the turntable, a series of clicks followed as the remaining records adjusted into place and the tone arm swung over and lowered the needle into the outer grooves of the record. You'd hear the slightest scritch noise as the stylus settled just so into the vinyl and then (finally!) the music began.
One of the jobs of the classroom A/V squad captain was to run the film projector on movie days. The rapid tick-tick-tick of the sprockets really was that loud and usually accompanied by shouts of "Turn it up!" and, of course, "Focus!"
11. BROKEN RECORD
