February 22, 2006
The Cat Piano
I find this funny but cruel.. of course only more than 350 yrs ago... so old.. although interesting use of cats as primitive technology in music...
snagged from Gizmodo: The Cat Piano:
Chill out, PETA. The cat piano was the work of a German scholar over 350 years ago. Athanasius Kircher designed the cat piano and documented it in the Musurgia Universalis in 1650. The piano was designed to raise the spirits of an Italian prince who was too stressed out. The musician would select cats whose voices were at different pitches then arrange them in the pens accordingly. The piano delivered sharp pokes into the tails of the cats. Cruel? Definitely. Funny? Yeah, a little bit.
The Cat Piano [We-make-money]
February 3, 2006
By the Numbers: ABC’s Super Bowl XL Coverage
WOW!
Snagged from Gizmodo.com : By the Numbers: ABC’s Super Bowl XL Coverage:
1,000,000,000 worldwide television audience
130,000,000 US viewers
70,000 fans at Ford Field in Detroit
720p HD standard of the broadcast
500 monitors in control trucks
400 crew people for production, technical, administrative and support
100x optical zoom of the longest Canon lens to be used
180 frames per second of Sony’s new experimental super slo-mo camera
90 inputs on the video switcher
90 miles of cable for cameras and microphones
60 microphones, including 12 on-field parabolic mics
54 cameras used by FOX at last year’s Super Bowl, but not all were HD as they are this year
40 digital video instant replay units
36 TV cameras
36 seasons of ABC NFL coverage, of which this is the last season and last game
29 mobile vehicles
25 degrees, forecast temperature outside the domed stadium at kickoff, a concern of ABC technicians
20 “hard” cameras (stationary as opposed to hand-held)
10 television production trucks (not including the infamous horse trailer)
10 commercials bought by the game's biggest advertiser, Anheuser-Busch
7 handheld cameras
6 robotic cameras
6 super slo-mo cameras
5 million dollars per minute to buy a commercial
4 announcers: Al Michaels, John Madden, Michelle Tafoya and Suzy Kolber
3 60-second advertisements (the rest are :30), bought by General Motors, Burger King and ESPN
2 operators for SkyCam: one cameraman, one "pilot"
1 director, Drew Esocoff, his second Super Bowl as a director
ABC Sports Prepares for HD Super Bowl XL [TV Technology]
Super Bowl XL on ABC Sports in SD/HD simulcast [Broadcast Engineering]
Super Bowl XL Ready to Go in Detroit [Broadcast Newsroom]
Super Bowl Gets Supersized Production [Broadcasting & Cable]
