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Today we celebrate Drop Frame Timecode in the U.S.A.
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As I remember the US went metric in the late 70’s. Just didn’t stick. In physics, we have been metric for a century or so. I think cars are almost completely metric at this point, except for the PSI of the tires, the mph on the speedometer. The Bolt reads out in miles/kiloWatt hr, that is not such a great unit, half metric and half English. Better than furlongs/fortnight. But I agree the NTSC issue is an irritation. I can think of some bigger issues facing the U.S at the moment though.
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[Bill Davis] “Firmly in the enjoyable holiday read category. ”
It’s from an obscure book I read 18 years ago called Time by Alexander Waugh. Fascinating history of how units of measure of time from basic counting to how we then quantified seconds, minutes, hours, days, years etc.
Gets a bit into esoterics of math & physics but a cracking detective story.
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[Claude Lyneis] “that is not such a great unit, half metric and half English”
like film!
metric width (35mm, 16mm)
imperial length (16, 40 frames per ft)how did that happen?!
(answering my own question: perhaps developed i Europe, industrialised in the UK/US?)
nick
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Speaking of the Declaration itself, this is an interesting article about its preservation.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a22025447/declaration-of-independence-science/
– Oliver
Oliver Peters – oliverpeters.com
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Also, the .1% slow down was not so much a shortcut than a solution allowing existing television owners to not have to buy new ones in an age where a new TV was very expensive. In 1954 the average color TV cost $1,000 and the average salary was $3,200.
Average salary today is ~$52,000 (minimum wage earners at $15,000) and the average worldwide TV cost for 4K is still about the same ($1,162).
Color TV did not outsell B&W TV’s till the mid-70’s.
Michael
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[Michael Phillips] “Also, the .1% slow down was not so much a shortcut than a solution….”
In the PAL world they engineered colour properly so there was no need to do the NTSC shortcut. Old B&W TVs still worked when PAL went colour (spelling intentional). And it was really a shortcut. If they had thought through the ramifications of altering the real time relationship the ongoing issues we all suffered of dual timecode formats and sync drift could have been avoided.
My father designed microwave links including broadcast TV links in the 60s and 70s. I’ll take his word that it was a shortcut solution and poor engineering decision.
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