9 ms·

Raw footage inside Sears with Atari 800 and 2600 (1982) [video]

165 points by kloch 4y ago

coder4life 4y ago
This links to the 4 minute 4 second mark when they show them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edTzDPwPTt4&t=244s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edTzDPwPTt4&t=244s
thyrox 4y ago
> This video comes from btm0815ma whose channel was tragically shut down and who had uploaded more news and historical footage than anyone else on YouTube. That's sad. But looks like Good guy internet archive saved some of their videos(1) though so not everything was destroyed forever. (1) https://archive.org/details/btm0815ma https://archive.org/details/btm0815ma
- userbinator 4y ago
  If it was due to copyright reasons, then archive.org is definitely a good place to store the material, and it would be good to upload there intead; indeed, maybe he has already started to do so.
  - mongol 4y ago
    How come it is a good location? Does archive.org allow copyrighted material?
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Yes. They are excepted from violation as a chartered library. It shouldn't be abused but that is what allows them to archive material under active copyright.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  Apparently many of the channel's uploads are from the 'ABC News Archives',[0] so they might not be entirely lost. Maybe prod IA to see if its tv news project can ingest it officially, or already have. BTW a quick scrape (raw HTML, missing any JS-loaded stuff) of archived btm0815ma channel pages[1] finds some more videos that were saved "naturally" in the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/wayback-fakeurl.archive.org/yt/<ID> Qcdo0oENjCc 60 Minutes (CBS) - 1994-04-24 SEqbaaxsEqI NBC Nightly News - 2003-11-19 mHHacMAFZxc Viewpoint (ABC) - 1994-07-22 NXQvrVQw1Uw What About Tomorrow? on computers (1973) RZB1zY6yKDc Democratic Convention (1968) - 8 - Day 3 gEGCPC3GfC4 CBS Evening News open - 1994-11-09 V7UcBk2A_58 CBS News - Video games (1995) T0yWcB5f1Qs CBS News - TV Nielsen ratings (1984) LnDZi85n-Ac CBS News - Claymation (1986) o7ujCaLV8SA CBS News - various Apollo 11 reports - 1969-07 HF1k6HnJrTU CBS Evening News - 1980-08-05 B5-WkCUlXe4 The Video History of Our Times - 1940 Sabw_n3EYC4 The Video History of Our Times - 1945 U8dknEvXw40 The Video History of Our Times - 1946 813sTJDv0cc The Video History of Our Times - 1941 fuskHqS8QRk 60 Minutes (CBS) - "Underground Railroad" - 1988-10-16 ZExs5rFpIkg 60 Minutes (CBS) - "The Prince of Penny Stocks" (1988) 4GtTNe6N3ds 60 Minutes (CBS) - George Burns - 1988-11-06 MQOBNTMwqTE 60 Minutes (CBS) - Home Shopping Club - 1988-12-18 9itrdPnp3l4 World News (ABC) - 2009-11-05 Jf3kACc68bk NBC Nightly News - 2011-03-15 hHp0565IdKs NBC Nightly News - 2011-03-14 jMmZKafb6no American Parade (CBS) - The Contra War (1984) o11zhy-43yE CBS Evening News (Western) - 1979-09-04 d21Z8oXybig CBS Reports: Robert F. Kennedy (1967) slUnV2RabfI 60 Minutes (CBS) - "Secrets and Lies" (1997) OS0QNJ0Xbaw Nintendo of America headquarters (1990) UrTS_lmPQ1k CBS Evening News - 2011-03-12 ITtQigDn0FU CBS News - 2003-03-19 - 11:35 p.m. - 2 of 3 r0xsJFREmOU Carter's final hours in the White House (1981) x_t-iKeWdRI Steve Jobs in 1991 SkNnWxDKxh4 CBS - 1990-07-26 - report on Roseanne Barr GWgL5W0b6k0 Dan Rather signs off with "Courage" - September 1986 zsa72D8Kegc Public Broadcast Laboratory: The Whole World Is Watching (1968) 0 https://twitter.com/shabanianaram/status/1490172899868565505 https://twitter.com/shabanianaram/status/1490172899868565505 1 https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=youtube.com/channel/UCVTQ7Jdm8_6L3RxH3_EAGMQ%2A https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=youtube.com/chann... That's quite an interesting documentary on HCI, including maths pedagogy with turtle robot graphics from the Logo Project at MIT. There's no trace of the series elsewhere on the web... “The computer symbolizes both the promise and problems we face in our complex, man-machine world. Its misuse by large institutions irritates us. Its misuse by government could threaten us. But its potential for extending our ability to communicate and our knowledge of ourselves is enormous. If it is made relatively easy for anyone to use, the chances are far greater that it will be used on the side of man. “No longer can we ask, ‘What can we do?’ But rather, ‘How can what we do give us a better world?’ In future programs in this series, we'll look into research that just might point to solutions for our cities, our healthcare, and our education. We'll discover that there is hope, but there are no quick, easy answers to the question we ask: What about tomorrow? This is Jules Bergman.”
cesaref 4y ago
Not only that, but also a Vectrex! The technology was so impressive in the early 80s in arcade games that used it, my first experience of proper 3d graphics effects (e.g. battlezone and star wars). I'm not sure how the colour support worked on the star wars machine thinking about it...
- kzrdude 4y ago
  This slow mo video of a vector graphics arcade machine recently introduced me to this technology - I was a bit too young to actually be there in person, so never realized that this kind of CRT (?) drawing technology even existed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ
- bitwize 4y ago
  My guess is the same way color raster CRTs work: there's an aperture grille or shadow mask and three electron guns, and the grille masks off the beam of each gun except for where it's supposed to hit its corresponding color phosphors. Color mixing is performed by tracing over the same vector lines with more than one gun. If you look carefully at a Star Wars arcade machine, you can see the shadow mask in the vector lines. You cannot see this on, say, an Asteroids machine or a Vectrex; on those, the lines are smooth and sharper than a draftsman's straightedge. Everyone should experience an original Asteroids, or failing that something like the Vectrex, at least once in their lives. It's indescribably different from emulation; the long-decay phosphor and direct CPU control over brightness means that shots and explosions glitter in the dark in a way not even MAME can replicate.
  - cbm-vic-20 4y ago
    Another anecdote about the original Asteroids machines- the dynamic brightness of the vector displays added a great effect: the asteroids themselves were sort of grayish lines with very sharp, crisp edges, but shots fired from alien spaceships were searingly bright, and would and up also exciting the phoshor around the shot itself, lending a bit of a halo effect.
  - joezydeco 4y ago
_the_inflator 4y ago
Coincidentally 1982, the year Tron hit the cinemas! Fantastic footage. Sewing machines were all the rage I guess. ;)
- mellavora 4y ago
  > Sewing machines were all the rage I guess. ;) The Simplicity Pattern Company has been selling sewing pattern guides since 1927. In the early 1970s it was one of the "Nifty Fifties": > The Nifty Fifty were a group of premier growth stocks, such as Xerox, IBM, Polaroid, and Coca-Cola, that became institutional darlings in the early 1970s. All of these stocks had proven growth records, continual increases in dividends (virtually none had cut its dividend since World War II), and high market capitalization. > The Nifty Fifty were often called one-decision stocks: buy and never sell. Because their prospects were so bright, many analysts claimed that the only direction they could go was up. Since they had made so many rich, few if any investors could fault a money manager for buying them. At the time, many investors did not seem to find 50, 80 or even 100 times earnings at all an unreasonable price to pay for the world’s preeminent growth companies. http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/valuing-growth-stocks-revisiting-the-nifty-fifty.pdf http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/valuing-gr...
- wishfish 4y ago
  To bring it back to the Atari 800, I remember magazines like Compute and Antic having breathless headlines about how Atari and Commodore played some big part in making the movie. As the new owner of an 800 in 1982, I was quite excited by this. Thinking my Atari could render a lightcycle! Turns out, it was minor sound effect work done on the Ataris. That wasn't quite as exciting.
guidedlight 4y ago
I can’t actually see the 2600 in this game, only a wall of shame behind the salespeople. The only game control appears to be the intellivision running Donkey Kong. It’s noteworthy that this was just before the 1983 video game crash.
visarga 4y ago
When I see Atari I think "cute RL environments". Nice historic video.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Nice quality video footage, well preserved, considering it is for 1982.
- h3mb3 4y ago
  I wish it was 60 fps though. At some point the footage was probably deinterlaced by discarding every other field. (Also, YouTube would not show it as 60 fps anyways as the resolution must be upscaled to at least 720p for the 60 fps option to be available.) I understand this is very typical with online video. I wish it wasn't though.
- boondaburrah 4y ago
  I wish the stupid youtube compressor hadn't hit it with the "SD doesn't matter" settings. VHS should look way better than this, but there's digital macroblocks everywhere, and as sibling comment said, no longer 60i. I agree though, for a videotape that old, it must not have been played very much for the tracking to still be that solid. Also modern "record NTSC Video to your computer" USB dongles tend to be unable to deal with even slightly unsteady CSYNC signal, so they must've used good equipment. Too bad about the youtube.
- hammock 4y ago
  Have you never watched a movie from before the 90's? :)
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Star Wars? :) Sure, the tech was there, but it probably wasn't affordable for everything. Plus the preservation. This is before mass consumer digital media (maybe something like laserdiscs were available though?)
    - boondaburrah 4y ago
      It's weirder than that; I watched the Silicon Cowboys documentary about compaq, and the archived footage quality takes a sharp dive from the 70s to the 80s as they switched from recording on film to videotape. Tape quality was good and a lot cheaper, but it doesn't last as long before the video signal gets munged
Kozmik1 4y ago
Check out those prices! That Atari 800 at $699 would be $2,150 today adjusted for inflation. I guess it was pretty capable but today you could have a hell of a computer for that price! The sewing machine at $300 is $920 today and looks basic as heck. I bought a computerized sewing machine last year for $400 which sews 40 stitches and is basically automated. You could get a basic Singer today for 85 bucks. Those microwaves would come in at about $1,200 in today’s dollars. Most of us spend about $50 on one today, granted the quality is probably crap. How did people afford to buy anything back then? I recall my parents getting the Beta Max player, big 30” TV and satellite dish back in the early 1980s (we lived in the country). Throw in a stereo and a few kitchen appliances and I think it would rival what they paid for our house!
- tyingq 4y ago
  The low prices for bigger ticket items like college tuition and houses more than made up the difference. Yes, even after adjusting for inflation.
- samch 4y ago
  Just from my memories, we didn’t have as much stuff competing for our income. There were no cell phones or ISP bills, and we didn’t have cable TV either. This made it easier to save a little bit every month to afford these more expensive items. It really was a simpler time. Also, if a sewing machine or microwave broke, you would get it repaired rather than replaced with a new one. It was expected that these big ticket items were long-term purchases. Because of that, people tended to care a bit more about the reputation of the brand and how easily you could get things serviced. Sears, for example, had service centers everywhere.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    You also didn't have the internet hype machine (i.e. people with no experience in whatever you're asking about who feel compelled to answer anyway) telling you that you that your off brand blender with 99% the MBTF of the name brand one is vastly inferior.
wgx 4y ago
"Communication between computers over normal telephone lines" As a kid, I would have walked up, seen that, and my mind would be reeling with the possibilities. Computers that can talk to each other remotely! The hassle and the hurdles you'd have to overcome just to send a message to another Atari over dial-up. It's 40 years later and we all have a portalable, always-on computer in our pockets, with instant access to all the world's information. Just mind blowing progress in 40 years.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  They're truly tricorders. They can 3d scan the world, they can broadcast live to the entire world, they can connect you with a doctor and help diagnose your illness, on and on.
  - dwighttk 4y ago
    Point it at a bird or bug or flower and get an ID Record a birdsong and get an ID
    - iancmceachern 4y ago
      Tell you who sings the songs playing
  - zitsarethecure 4y ago
    Phyphox really does it for me to get that "a tricorder, but real" feeling. https://phyphox.org/ https://phyphox.org/
- wil421 4y ago
  When I was young my dad hooked up 2 computers so my brother and I could play 2 player Doom II (could’ve been Doom but unlikely). It was probably 5fps and barely playable. My brother and I almost fell out of our chairs when we saw the other player. It blew my mind being able to see another player and what he looked like in game.
  - 4y ago
Jemm 4y ago
My first access to a personal computer was in a department store where they had Commodore PETs on display. Sales guy didn't know how to use them so was happy to let us stand there for hours playing with them.
- zikduruqe 4y ago
  We use to think we were hackers and would write up BASIC code something like: 10 PRINT CHR$(147) 20 X = 1 30 FOR X+1 30 PRINT X 40 GOTO 20 Then run away cackling as the numbers kept printing thinking that somehow it would run forever. (or something like that... it was 40 years ago)
  - technothrasher 4y ago
    You need your knuckles rapped for that code. It reminds me of the "spot the errors" assignments my teacher in high school computer class would give us ;-) As for the department store computer displays, I do remember K-Mart would have the Atari 2600's running in some kind of demo mode so it would reboot whatever game it was playing after about 5 minutes. I learned I could just barely win "Superman" before the reboot, if I started it right away.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
antiterra 4y ago
I have no memory of those neat Atari 800 kiosks, but plenty of memories of 2600s, colecovision, intellivision, sears entertainment center, etc. This would lead me to conclude the 800 failed quickly. Yet, somehow the Atari 800 wasn’t discontinued until the 90s??
- aidenn0 4y ago
  The Atari 8-bit series was an also-ran compared to the C64, but the very first Logo I used was on an Atari 8-bit at school. Apple eventually ran a very successful campaign to get Apple II based systems into schools, and so the few Atari 8-bit machines we had at my school ended up collecting dust in a corner. [edit] A total of 4M units were sold, which is about equal to 2 years of sales of the C64 when it was at peak popularity.
  - gernb 4y ago
    What a ridiculous way yo frame things. Assuming wikipedia is correct, Atari sold 4million units, C64 sold ~17. So I guess Macs are "also-ran" compared to Windows PCs as Macs have an even lower market share (currently 9%)
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      1. In terms of sales volume, macs are an also-ran. Lenovo, HP, and Dell each ship more laptops than Apple. I'm traveling now, at my Uncle's house with many family members visiting; there are: - 2 Surface Pros - 2 Dell Laptops - 1 HP Laptop - One mac Laptop 2. Apple is clearly positioned as a luxury brand; it's fine to object to calling BMW an also-ran to Toyota or Ford. The Atari 8-bit systems were at least priced mid-ranged, so I'm not sure that applies here. The expansion bus was positioned as easy-to-use, but that's about the only parallel I can think of. 3. There were other 8-bit computers; C64 doesn't make up the entirety of the market; The Apple II sold 5M; the TRS-80 sold 2.4M; Amstrad sold 3M. 4. When the units were sold matters too; there were 8-bit machines being sold along side 32-bit machines, with the 8-bit machine being a budget option. The TRS-80 was not being sold during this later period; it was the best selling computer of the 1970s. This doesn't seem to significantly affect comparisons between the Atari 8-bit line and Commodore or Apple though, as the IIgs and atari 8-bit line both ended in 1992 and the C64 sold relatively few units in 1993.
focusedone 4y ago
This is amazing stuff! I love seeing when people have preserved random b-roll type things from different eras.
zxcvbn4038 4y ago
Playing with all video games was the only reason to go to Sears. JCPenny would usually have a Mac stashed someplace, but all you could do with it was paint waffle patterns on the screen. ;) I never appreciated the vectrex while it was out, I wish I had gotten one in hindsight. It is really amazing how well the arcade vector screens have held up over the years, I have never seen one with phosphor burn or screen issues. Which is good because nobody has made those in decades, doubt retro arcade enthusiasts are enough of a market that anyone ever will again. All the Neo-Geo cabinets I've found lately have had a heavy green tint. Its like they all went within a couple years of each other. I'm not sure why people don't swap out the screens while CRTs are still easy to obtain.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Some I've seen have deflection issues, and lines are distorted near the edges of the screen, maybe something solveable with degaussing or other adjustments.
greggman3 4y ago
The demo in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgT8279DVGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgT8279DVGQ
dangus 4y ago
You know how they say "they don't build em like they used to?" Take a look at these appliance prices! $399 for a microwave ($1200 today) $299 for a sewing machine ($920 today) $699 for an Atari computer ($2100 today) I wish I could see the washer/dryer prices in the video as well. If you want something to be built "like the used to," you really do have to pay for it. There's a reason that your $400 Hotpoint washing machine doesn't perform like a $1600 Speed Queen.
- bluedino 4y ago
  Those were all assembled in America, as well. (Atari didn't shutter the 1,700 employee Sunnyvale factory until 1983, sending production overseas)
- kube-system 4y ago
  And honestly, as expensive and overbuilt on the outside as many old appliances were, some of their technology wasn't that great. Brushed motors, belted transmissions, and mechanical timer switches were not really that reliable, even if you could throw the thing down a flight of stairs without a scratch. And they were pretty crude in operation. There was no "delicate" cycle on those old machines, heck, they'd shred t-shirts if you looked at them the wrong way. People really do have rose tinted glasses.
allturtles 4y ago
From 8:03, we know this is in the Washington D.C. metro area. Can anyone identify the mall from the establishing shot at 8:46?
- pookha 4y ago
  Pretty sure it's landmark mall (RIP). https://nostalgicvirginian.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/LSC_outdoors1.jpg https://nostalgicvirginian.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/LS...
  - kloch 4y ago
    That would make sense since this was a news crew from DC and that was one of the closest malls for them to visit. The Proper People recently did a video in Landmark Mall just days before it was demolished, including a walk through the old Sears which was in very bad shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L106fYg9H5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L106fYg9H5M
drewg123 4y ago
I'd like to go back and get some of those appliances. Today's washing machines are terrible.
recursive 4y ago
Surprised to hear Moonlight Sonata in a retail shopping setting. One of the most powerfully depressing pieces of music I can think of.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kdtop 4y ago
I lived at that time, and I don't remember it looking like that. All the colors are washed out!
tiahura 4y ago
10 PRINT “EAT ME!” 11 PRINT 20 GOTO 10
yuan43 4y ago
Couple of thoughts. 1. In the background you can hear a series of two or three chimes/tones. This was a constant part of the department store experience. It was a communication system that I guess eliminated the need to tell customers what exactly was happening. https://ask.metafilter.com/14044/Department-Store-Chimes https://ask.metafilter.com/14044/Department-Store-Chimes 2. That vertical black box with the space wars clone was a Vectrex. A kid was playing it and it was on display at the checkout counter (amazingly, unoccupied). It would have been brand new at the time. > The Vectrex is a vector display-based home video game console–the only one ever designed and released for the home market, developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally manufactured by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released the system in Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex 3. November 1982 marked the end of the then-worst recession since the Great Depression. > Prior to the 2007-09 recession, the 1981-82 recession was the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. Indeed, the nearly 11 percent unemployment rate reached late in 1982 remains the apex of the post-World War II era (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Unemployment during the 1981-82 recession was widespread, but manufacturing, construction, and the auto industries were particularly affected. Although goods producers accounted for only 30 percent of total employment at the time, they suffered 90 percent of job losses in 1982. Three-fourths of all job losses in the goods-producing sector were in manufacturing, and the residential construction industry and auto manufacturers ended the year with 22 percent and 24 percent unemployment, respectively (Urquhart and Hewson 1983, 4-7). https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82 https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-19... 4. It's interesting to consider that the raw footage collected in the clip may be more valuable than the actual news story ever was. It's really hard to know what future generations will find compelling.

165 points by kloch 4y ago

This links to the 4 minute 4 second mark when they show them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edTzDPwPTt4&t=244s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edTzDPwPTt4&t=244s

thyrox 4y ago

> This video comes from btm0815ma whose channel was tragically shut down and who had uploaded more news and historical footage than anyone else on YouTube. That's sad. But looks like Good guy internet archive saved some of their videos(1) though so not everything was destroyed forever. (1) https://archive.org/details/btm0815ma https://archive.org/details/btm0815ma

userbinator 4y ago
If it was due to copyright reasons, then archive.org is definitely a good place to store the material, and it would be good to upload there intead; indeed, maybe he has already started to do so.
- mongol 4y ago
  How come it is a good location? Does archive.org allow copyrighted material?
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Yes. They are excepted from violation as a chartered library. It shouldn't be abused but that is what allows them to archive material under active copyright.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mgdlbp 4y ago
Apparently many of the channel's uploads are from the 'ABC News Archives',[0] so they might not be entirely lost. Maybe prod IA to see if its tv news project can ingest it officially, or already have. BTW a quick scrape (raw HTML, missing any JS-loaded stuff) of archived btm0815ma channel pages[1] finds some more videos that were saved "naturally" in the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/wayback-fakeurl.archive.org/yt/<ID> Qcdo0oENjCc 60 Minutes (CBS) - 1994-04-24 SEqbaaxsEqI NBC Nightly News - 2003-11-19 mHHacMAFZxc Viewpoint (ABC) - 1994-07-22 NXQvrVQw1Uw What About Tomorrow? on computers (1973) RZB1zY6yKDc Democratic Convention (1968) - 8 - Day 3 gEGCPC3GfC4 CBS Evening News open - 1994-11-09 V7UcBk2A_58 CBS News - Video games (1995) T0yWcB5f1Qs CBS News - TV Nielsen ratings (1984) LnDZi85n-Ac CBS News - Claymation (1986) o7ujCaLV8SA CBS News - various Apollo 11 reports - 1969-07 HF1k6HnJrTU CBS Evening News - 1980-08-05 B5-WkCUlXe4 The Video History of Our Times - 1940 Sabw_n3EYC4 The Video History of Our Times - 1945 U8dknEvXw40 The Video History of Our Times - 1946 813sTJDv0cc The Video History of Our Times - 1941 fuskHqS8QRk 60 Minutes (CBS) - "Underground Railroad" - 1988-10-16 ZExs5rFpIkg 60 Minutes (CBS) - "The Prince of Penny Stocks" (1988) 4GtTNe6N3ds 60 Minutes (CBS) - George Burns - 1988-11-06 MQOBNTMwqTE 60 Minutes (CBS) - Home Shopping Club - 1988-12-18 9itrdPnp3l4 World News (ABC) - 2009-11-05 Jf3kACc68bk NBC Nightly News - 2011-03-15 hHp0565IdKs NBC Nightly News - 2011-03-14 jMmZKafb6no American Parade (CBS) - The Contra War (1984) o11zhy-43yE CBS Evening News (Western) - 1979-09-04 d21Z8oXybig CBS Reports: Robert F. Kennedy (1967) slUnV2RabfI 60 Minutes (CBS) - "Secrets and Lies" (1997) OS0QNJ0Xbaw Nintendo of America headquarters (1990) UrTS_lmPQ1k CBS Evening News - 2011-03-12 ITtQigDn0FU CBS News - 2003-03-19 - 11:35 p.m. - 2 of 3 r0xsJFREmOU Carter's final hours in the White House (1981) x_t-iKeWdRI Steve Jobs in 1991 SkNnWxDKxh4 CBS - 1990-07-26 - report on Roseanne Barr GWgL5W0b6k0 Dan Rather signs off with "Courage" - September 1986 zsa72D8Kegc Public Broadcast Laboratory: The Whole World Is Watching (1968) 0 https://twitter.com/shabanianaram/status/1490172899868565505 https://twitter.com/shabanianaram/status/1490172899868565505 1 https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=youtube.com/channel/UCVTQ7Jdm8_6L3RxH3_EAGMQ%2A https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=youtube.com/chann... That's quite an interesting documentary on HCI, including maths pedagogy with turtle robot graphics from the Logo Project at MIT. There's no trace of the series elsewhere on the web... “The computer symbolizes both the promise and problems we face in our complex, man-machine world. Its misuse by large institutions irritates us. Its misuse by government could threaten us. But its potential for extending our ability to communicate and our knowledge of ourselves is enormous. If it is made relatively easy for anyone to use, the chances are far greater that it will be used on the side of man. “No longer can we ask, ‘What can we do?’ But rather, ‘How can what we do give us a better world?’ In future programs in this series, we'll look into research that just might point to solutions for our cities, our healthcare, and our education. We'll discover that there is hope, but there are no quick, easy answers to the question we ask: What about tomorrow? This is Jules Bergman.”

cesaref 4y ago

Not only that, but also a Vectrex! The technology was so impressive in the early 80s in arcade games that used it, my first experience of proper 3d graphics effects (e.g. battlezone and star wars). I'm not sure how the colour support worked on the star wars machine thinking about it...

kzrdude 4y ago
This slow mo video of a vector graphics arcade machine recently introduced me to this technology - I was a bit too young to actually be there in person, so never realized that this kind of CRT (?) drawing technology even existed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVpYL44jUQ
bitwize 4y ago
My guess is the same way color raster CRTs work: there's an aperture grille or shadow mask and three electron guns, and the grille masks off the beam of each gun except for where it's supposed to hit its corresponding color phosphors. Color mixing is performed by tracing over the same vector lines with more than one gun. If you look carefully at a Star Wars arcade machine, you can see the shadow mask in the vector lines. You cannot see this on, say, an Asteroids machine or a Vectrex; on those, the lines are smooth and sharper than a draftsman's straightedge. Everyone should experience an original Asteroids, or failing that something like the Vectrex, at least once in their lives. It's indescribably different from emulation; the long-decay phosphor and direct CPU control over brightness means that shots and explosions glitter in the dark in a way not even MAME can replicate.
- cbm-vic-20 4y ago
  Another anecdote about the original Asteroids machines- the dynamic brightness of the vector displays added a great effect: the asteroids themselves were sort of grayish lines with very sharp, crisp edges, but shots fired from alien spaceships were searingly bright, and would and up also exciting the phoshor around the shot itself, lending a bit of a halo effect.
- joezydeco 4y ago

_the_inflator 4y ago

Coincidentally 1982, the year Tron hit the cinemas! Fantastic footage. Sewing machines were all the rage I guess. ;)

mellavora 4y ago
> Sewing machines were all the rage I guess. ;) The Simplicity Pattern Company has been selling sewing pattern guides since 1927. In the early 1970s it was one of the "Nifty Fifties": > The Nifty Fifty were a group of premier growth stocks, such as Xerox, IBM, Polaroid, and Coca-Cola, that became institutional darlings in the early 1970s. All of these stocks had proven growth records, continual increases in dividends (virtually none had cut its dividend since World War II), and high market capitalization. > The Nifty Fifty were often called one-decision stocks: buy and never sell. Because their prospects were so bright, many analysts claimed that the only direction they could go was up. Since they had made so many rich, few if any investors could fault a money manager for buying them. At the time, many investors did not seem to find 50, 80 or even 100 times earnings at all an unreasonable price to pay for the world’s preeminent growth companies. http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/valuing-growth-stocks-revisiting-the-nifty-fifty.pdf http://csinvesting.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/valuing-gr...
wishfish 4y ago
To bring it back to the Atari 800, I remember magazines like Compute and Antic having breathless headlines about how Atari and Commodore played some big part in making the movie. As the new owner of an 800 in 1982, I was quite excited by this. Thinking my Atari could render a lightcycle! Turns out, it was minor sound effect work done on the Ataris. That wasn't quite as exciting.

guidedlight 4y ago

I can’t actually see the 2600 in this game, only a wall of shame behind the salespeople. The only game control appears to be the intellivision running Donkey Kong. It’s noteworthy that this was just before the 1983 video game crash.

visarga 4y ago

When I see Atari I think "cute RL environments". Nice historic video.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Nice quality video footage, well preserved, considering it is for 1982.

h3mb3 4y ago
I wish it was 60 fps though. At some point the footage was probably deinterlaced by discarding every other field. (Also, YouTube would not show it as 60 fps anyways as the resolution must be upscaled to at least 720p for the 60 fps option to be available.) I understand this is very typical with online video. I wish it wasn't though.
boondaburrah 4y ago
I wish the stupid youtube compressor hadn't hit it with the "SD doesn't matter" settings. VHS should look way better than this, but there's digital macroblocks everywhere, and as sibling comment said, no longer 60i. I agree though, for a videotape that old, it must not have been played very much for the tracking to still be that solid. Also modern "record NTSC Video to your computer" USB dongles tend to be unable to deal with even slightly unsteady CSYNC signal, so they must've used good equipment. Too bad about the youtube.
hammock 4y ago
Have you never watched a movie from before the 90's? :)
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Star Wars? :) Sure, the tech was there, but it probably wasn't affordable for everything. Plus the preservation. This is before mass consumer digital media (maybe something like laserdiscs were available though?)
  - boondaburrah 4y ago
    It's weirder than that; I watched the Silicon Cowboys documentary about compaq, and the archived footage quality takes a sharp dive from the 70s to the 80s as they switched from recording on film to videotape. Tape quality was good and a lot cheaper, but it doesn't last as long before the video signal gets munged

Kozmik1 4y ago

Check out those prices! That Atari 800 at $699 would be $2,150 today adjusted for inflation. I guess it was pretty capable but today you could have a hell of a computer for that price! The sewing machine at $300 is $920 today and looks basic as heck. I bought a computerized sewing machine last year for $400 which sews 40 stitches and is basically automated. You could get a basic Singer today for 85 bucks. Those microwaves would come in at about $1,200 in today’s dollars. Most of us spend about $50 on one today, granted the quality is probably crap. How did people afford to buy anything back then? I recall my parents getting the Beta Max player, big 30” TV and satellite dish back in the early 1980s (we lived in the country). Throw in a stereo and a few kitchen appliances and I think it would rival what they paid for our house!

tyingq 4y ago
The low prices for bigger ticket items like college tuition and houses more than made up the difference. Yes, even after adjusting for inflation.
samch 4y ago
Just from my memories, we didn’t have as much stuff competing for our income. There were no cell phones or ISP bills, and we didn’t have cable TV either. This made it easier to save a little bit every month to afford these more expensive items. It really was a simpler time. Also, if a sewing machine or microwave broke, you would get it repaired rather than replaced with a new one. It was expected that these big ticket items were long-term purchases. Because of that, people tended to care a bit more about the reputation of the brand and how easily you could get things serviced. Sears, for example, had service centers everywhere.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  You also didn't have the internet hype machine (i.e. people with no experience in whatever you're asking about who feel compelled to answer anyway) telling you that you that your off brand blender with 99% the MBTF of the name brand one is vastly inferior.

wgx 4y ago

"Communication between computers over normal telephone lines" As a kid, I would have walked up, seen that, and my mind would be reeling with the possibilities. Computers that can talk to each other remotely! The hassle and the hurdles you'd have to overcome just to send a message to another Atari over dial-up. It's 40 years later and we all have a portalable, always-on computer in our pockets, with instant access to all the world's information. Just mind blowing progress in 40 years.

iancmceachern 4y ago
They're truly tricorders. They can 3d scan the world, they can broadcast live to the entire world, they can connect you with a doctor and help diagnose your illness, on and on.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  Point it at a bird or bug or flower and get an ID Record a birdsong and get an ID
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Tell you who sings the songs playing
- zitsarethecure 4y ago
  Phyphox really does it for me to get that "a tricorder, but real" feeling. https://phyphox.org/ https://phyphox.org/
wil421 4y ago
When I was young my dad hooked up 2 computers so my brother and I could play 2 player Doom II (could’ve been Doom but unlikely). It was probably 5fps and barely playable. My brother and I almost fell out of our chairs when we saw the other player. It blew my mind being able to see another player and what he looked like in game.
- 4y ago

Jemm 4y ago

My first access to a personal computer was in a department store where they had Commodore PETs on display. Sales guy didn't know how to use them so was happy to let us stand there for hours playing with them.

zikduruqe 4y ago
We use to think we were hackers and would write up BASIC code something like: 10 PRINT CHR$(147) 20 X = 1 30 FOR X+1 30 PRINT X 40 GOTO 20 Then run away cackling as the numbers kept printing thinking that somehow it would run forever. (or something like that... it was 40 years ago)
- technothrasher 4y ago
  You need your knuckles rapped for that code. It reminds me of the "spot the errors" assignments my teacher in high school computer class would give us ;-) As for the department store computer displays, I do remember K-Mart would have the Atari 2600's running in some kind of demo mode so it would reboot whatever game it was playing after about 5 minutes. I learned I could just barely win "Superman" before the reboot, if I started it right away.
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antiterra 4y ago

I have no memory of those neat Atari 800 kiosks, but plenty of memories of 2600s, colecovision, intellivision, sears entertainment center, etc. This would lead me to conclude the 800 failed quickly. Yet, somehow the Atari 800 wasn’t discontinued until the 90s??

aidenn0 4y ago
The Atari 8-bit series was an also-ran compared to the C64, but the very first Logo I used was on an Atari 8-bit at school. Apple eventually ran a very successful campaign to get Apple II based systems into schools, and so the few Atari 8-bit machines we had at my school ended up collecting dust in a corner. [edit] A total of 4M units were sold, which is about equal to 2 years of sales of the C64 when it was at peak popularity.
- gernb 4y ago
  What a ridiculous way yo frame things. Assuming wikipedia is correct, Atari sold 4million units, C64 sold ~17. So I guess Macs are "also-ran" compared to Windows PCs as Macs have an even lower market share (currently 9%)
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    1. In terms of sales volume, macs are an also-ran. Lenovo, HP, and Dell each ship more laptops than Apple. I'm traveling now, at my Uncle's house with many family members visiting; there are: - 2 Surface Pros - 2 Dell Laptops - 1 HP Laptop - One mac Laptop 2. Apple is clearly positioned as a luxury brand; it's fine to object to calling BMW an also-ran to Toyota or Ford. The Atari 8-bit systems were at least priced mid-ranged, so I'm not sure that applies here. The expansion bus was positioned as easy-to-use, but that's about the only parallel I can think of. 3. There were other 8-bit computers; C64 doesn't make up the entirety of the market; The Apple II sold 5M; the TRS-80 sold 2.4M; Amstrad sold 3M. 4. When the units were sold matters too; there were 8-bit machines being sold along side 32-bit machines, with the 8-bit machine being a budget option. The TRS-80 was not being sold during this later period; it was the best selling computer of the 1970s. This doesn't seem to significantly affect comparisons between the Atari 8-bit line and Commodore or Apple though, as the IIgs and atari 8-bit line both ended in 1992 and the C64 sold relatively few units in 1993.

focusedone 4y ago

This is amazing stuff! I love seeing when people have preserved random b-roll type things from different eras.

zxcvbn4038 4y ago

Playing with all video games was the only reason to go to Sears. JCPenny would usually have a Mac stashed someplace, but all you could do with it was paint waffle patterns on the screen. ;) I never appreciated the vectrex while it was out, I wish I had gotten one in hindsight. It is really amazing how well the arcade vector screens have held up over the years, I have never seen one with phosphor burn or screen issues. Which is good because nobody has made those in decades, doubt retro arcade enthusiasts are enough of a market that anyone ever will again. All the Neo-Geo cabinets I've found lately have had a heavy green tint. Its like they all went within a couple years of each other. I'm not sure why people don't swap out the screens while CRTs are still easy to obtain.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Some I've seen have deflection issues, and lines are distorted near the edges of the screen, maybe something solveable with degaussing or other adjustments.

greggman3 4y ago

The demo in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgT8279DVGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgT8279DVGQ

dangus 4y ago

You know how they say "they don't build em like they used to?" Take a look at these appliance prices! $399 for a microwave ($1200 today) $299 for a sewing machine ($920 today) $699 for an Atari computer ($2100 today) I wish I could see the washer/dryer prices in the video as well. If you want something to be built "like the used to," you really do have to pay for it. There's a reason that your $400 Hotpoint washing machine doesn't perform like a $1600 Speed Queen.

bluedino 4y ago
Those were all assembled in America, as well. (Atari didn't shutter the 1,700 employee Sunnyvale factory until 1983, sending production overseas)
kube-system 4y ago
And honestly, as expensive and overbuilt on the outside as many old appliances were, some of their technology wasn't that great. Brushed motors, belted transmissions, and mechanical timer switches were not really that reliable, even if you could throw the thing down a flight of stairs without a scratch. And they were pretty crude in operation. There was no "delicate" cycle on those old machines, heck, they'd shred t-shirts if you looked at them the wrong way. People really do have rose tinted glasses.

allturtles 4y ago

From 8:03, we know this is in the Washington D.C. metro area. Can anyone identify the mall from the establishing shot at 8:46?

pookha 4y ago
Pretty sure it's landmark mall (RIP). https://nostalgicvirginian.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/LSC_outdoors1.jpg https://nostalgicvirginian.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/LS...
- kloch 4y ago
  That would make sense since this was a news crew from DC and that was one of the closest malls for them to visit. The Proper People recently did a video in Landmark Mall just days before it was demolished, including a walk through the old Sears which was in very bad shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L106fYg9H5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L106fYg9H5M

drewg123 4y ago

I'd like to go back and get some of those appliances. Today's washing machines are terrible.

recursive 4y ago

Surprised to hear Moonlight Sonata in a retail shopping setting. One of the most powerfully depressing pieces of music I can think of.

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kdtop 4y ago

I lived at that time, and I don't remember it looking like that. All the colors are washed out!

tiahura 4y ago

10 PRINT “EAT ME!” 11 PRINT 20 GOTO 10

yuan43 4y ago

Couple of thoughts. 1. In the background you can hear a series of two or three chimes/tones. This was a constant part of the department store experience. It was a communication system that I guess eliminated the need to tell customers what exactly was happening. https://ask.metafilter.com/14044/Department-Store-Chimes https://ask.metafilter.com/14044/Department-Store-Chimes 2. That vertical black box with the space wars clone was a Vectrex. A kid was playing it and it was on display at the checkout counter (amazingly, unoccupied). It would have been brand new at the time. > The Vectrex is a vector display-based home video game console–the only one ever designed and released for the home market, developed by Smith Engineering. It was first released for the North America market in November 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally manufactured by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released the system in Japan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vectrex 3. November 1982 marked the end of the then-worst recession since the Great Depression. > Prior to the 2007-09 recession, the 1981-82 recession was the worst economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. Indeed, the nearly 11 percent unemployment rate reached late in 1982 remains the apex of the post-World War II era (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Unemployment during the 1981-82 recession was widespread, but manufacturing, construction, and the auto industries were particularly affected. Although goods producers accounted for only 30 percent of total employment at the time, they suffered 90 percent of job losses in 1982. Three-fourths of all job losses in the goods-producing sector were in manufacturing, and the residential construction industry and auto manufacturers ended the year with 22 percent and 24 percent unemployment, respectively (Urquhart and Hewson 1983, 4-7). https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-1981-82 https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/recession-of-19... 4. It's interesting to consider that the raw footage collected in the clip may be more valuable than the actual news story ever was. It's really hard to know what future generations will find compelling.