Serious gaming started 45 years ago, with Pong

©Mark Ollig

How many of you recall playing the challenging table tennis (ping-pong) game called Pong on your television back in the mid-1970s?

Ah yes, I, too, was addicted to playing Pong.

Allan Alcorn, who worked for Atari Inc. as an engineer, designed Pong when he was 24 years old.

A standing cabinet version of his video arcade game was first installed in September 1972, at an establishment called Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, CA.

Pong was an instant success, and was being regularly played by the bar patrons.

However, a couple of weeks after its installation, the Pong video arcade machine began having problems and stopped accepting quarters.

Much to the dissatisfaction of the bar patrons (and I imagine the tavern owner), the Pong game stood inoperative, and so the bar manager called Atari and said, “The machine is broken,” and asked to have someone come out and fix it.

When Alcorn, himself, came out to investigate, he may have smiled after discovering why the Pong machine was not working.

The cause of the trouble was too many quarters had become jammed inside the cabinet’s coin-catcher.

This story takes me back to the days when I was out repairing public payphones (What’s a payphone, Grandpa?).

Sometimes I’d find quarters, dimes, and nickels had become lodged inside the payphone’s coin chute assembly, causing the phone to become “out of order.”

But, I digress back to today’s topic.

Atari had obtained enough funding to announce, Nov. 29, 1972, that Pong video arcade cabinet games would be mass-produced on an assembly line and sold commercially.

Three years later, Atari released the consumer version, called Home Pong, using a game console.

The Atari Home Pong console connected to a television and sold for $98.95, which in 2017, would be nearly $580.

Before Pong was on the scene, Ralph Baer had invented a simple “dot chasing” video game, called Chase, in 1967.

This game is played by connecting a brown controller box to a television.

By 1972, Baer’s design developed into what became the Magnavox Odyssey home video game console.

The Magnavox Odyssey game console was manufactured by the television maker of the same name, Magnavox, so consumers reasoned the Odyssey console would only work on a Magnavox television, when, in fact, it could be connected to any television.

The attentive folks at Atari picked up on this false belief and began printing “Works on any television set, black-and-white, or color” on all of its Pong game boxes in what I consider a brilliant advertising strategy. The result was increased sales of Pong game consoles among Magnavox television users.

Going back to 1958, William Higginbotham, instrumentation division head at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY, created a game played using an oscilloscope connected to an analog computer as a way of entertaining visitors to the laboratory.

Higginbotham called this game Tennis for Two.

The year 1952 saw the first computerized digital graphical game called OXO, in which an individual played the tic-tac-toe game against a computer.

A person used a rotary phone dial as the game controller when playing OXO.

Dialing a digit from 1 to 9 represented the location of where to place an X or O on the tic-tac-toe board displayed on the computer’s cathode ray tube (CRT) display screen.

Alexander S. Douglas wrote the programming code for OXO at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

The OXO game was played using the processing power of a 1949 British computer called Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator.

Going back further, we find World War II radar images to be the inspiration for a game played using a CRT.

Inventors Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed for a US Patent Jan. 25, 1947.

Dec. 14, 1948, both were granted US Patent 2,455,992 for Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device.

“In carrying out the invention, a cathode-ray tube is used upon the face of which the trace of the ray or electron beam can be seen. One or more targets, such as pictures of airplanes, for example, are placed upon the face of the tube. Controls are available to the player so that he can manipulate the trace or position of the beam, which is automatically caused to move across the face of the tube,” reads the text from their patent.

A player’s manipulating “the trace of the ray or electron beam” on the CRT of their device has been likened to how an Etch A Sketch game creates the solid lines on its gray screen.

Check out this informative YouTube interview with Pong’s Allan Alcorn at http://bit.ly/2z4fyJk.

Be sure to visit my Bits & Bytes online webpage at https://bitscolumn.blogspot.com.

(Pong video arcade game cabinet)

This column originally published Feb. 14, 2011, and was recently updated by the writer.

North Korea’s internet is a ‘walled garden’

©Mark Ollig


Granted, it’s not the global internet you and I access; quite the opposite. It’s a tightly-controlled network within the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

I can best describe the DPRK/North Korean version of their country’s “in-house internet” as similar to a company or organization’s private network or intranet system.

An intranet or (internal network) is a communications/computer network with software programs and services used by the computing devices of specific users with authorized access.

The North Korean name for their internet system is “Kwangmyong,” meaning “walled garden.”

Kwangmyong connects with the country’s educational and governmental research institutes, its libraries, and higher learning (universities) webpages.

The official media source for DPRK is the Korean Central Television/News Agency, which is also accessible on Kwangmyong.

Other content available includes the state insurance corporation, official government web portal, and the Pyongyang Broadcasting Agency’s webpage.

There are also webpages for the Pyongyang International Film Festival, the Korean Tourist Board, and the state-owned airline of North Korea; Air Koryo.

Kwangmyong connects with the North Hwanghae Provincial People’s Study House, which is equipped with spacious computer rooms for use by university students and military officers.

Pyongyang is the largest city and capital of the DPRK, and contains several internet cafes available with Kwangmyong.

Kwangmyong’s resources are normally accessed via computer modems and dial-up telephone lines.

This type of access – including the webpages I saw – was reminiscent of the modest graphical user interfaces found on CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy, and hobbyist computer BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) during the early 1990s.

North Koreans have no connection from Kwangmyong for accessing the global internet.

In order to own a computer, a North Korean needs the permission of their government, and they must register it with their local policing agency.

A demonstration of how Kwangmyong is used was the theme of a recent video I located.

This video included some English translation by Finland foreign news correspondent Mika Mäkeläinen.

Mäkeläinen was in the company of a North Korean presenter who explained and navigated through the information hyperlinks on Kwangmyong from a North Korean university classroom computer.

University students were seated at other desks and could be seen and heard using their computers.

I observed some of the hyperlink pages clicked presented a “This webpage is not available” English message on the demonstration computer screen.

“Let’s see if we can get somewhere else,” a person on the video said.

Next, I viewed a list of about 40 hypertext links, each labeled in the Korean language. The presenter clicked on a link which opened the Kim Il-sung University webpage.

This university is located in Pyongyang, North Korea, and was built in 1946. It contains a large computer lab.

The presenter described the content on this webpage, including numerous achievements performed by the university, and the listing of student resource hyperlinks.

When asked by Mäkeläinen if the university’s webpages had any journalism information, or if they taught journalism, the North Korean presenter paused and then briefly conversed with another person. The presenter then clicked a hyperlink on the screen showing a news webpage containing articles and stories.

Another hyperlink was selected showing a webpage featuring movies on compact discs which could be ordered or downloaded to a computer.

It was pointed out several computer anti-virus software programs were also available for ordering.

Another hyperlink opened the webpage for a North Korean restaurant. “Cooking is science and art” was one of the articles found there.

This 11-minute video can be viewed on the Finnish webpage, http://bit.ly/2hoNj0K.

I took a screen-capture photo of the North Korean classroom showing students using computers. Framed photographs of Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il, can also be seen on the wall at the front of the classroom.

Here is the classroom video screen-capture photo I uploaded to my blog webpage: http://bit.ly/2hy3PQ3.

Of the 25 million people in North Korea, approximately 3,000 have access to Kwangmyong.

The North Korean global internet service provider is Star JV (Joint Venture) Company.

It’s been reported only high-ranking North Korean government officials, citizens with “special permissions,” and select foreign visitors have the approval to use the global internet.

Since 2010, these select few were routed to the global internet through China’s Unicom internet connection.

As of last month, Russia’s telecommunications company, TransTeleCom, activated a newly installed internet fiber-optic cable into Pyongyang, in what I assume is a backup in the event China’s internet-provided connection is interrupted.

The Twitter username for Mika Mäkeläinen is @Mikareport, and the official news feed for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is @DPRK_News.

Be sure to visit my Bits & Bytes online webpage at https://bitscolumn.blogspot.com.

Below is the classroom video screen-capture photo.

Technology captures bygone voices of indigenous Californians

©Mark Ollig


 A collection of 2,713 wax cylinders containing native voices more than 115 years old are being heard for the first time.

According to the National Science Foundation (NSF), beginning in 1901, California Native language speaker’s stories and songs were being recorded onto the surface of wax cylinders (think vinyl records).

More than 100 hours of assorted languages spoken by indigenous California Native Americans who lived in the state are stored in this collection of wax cylinders.

In all, California has more than 90 indigenous languages associated with 21 different language families, making the state linguistically more diverse than any area of its size in the western hemisphere.

Over the years, patches of mold covered the surface of the wax cylinders, making the use of standard audio mechanical playback devices and needle stylus’s ineffective.

There was a concern any playback device or stylus which came into physical contact with the wax cylinders, would further deteriorate their surface.

May 20, 2015, the NSF awarded Abstract No. 1500779 for “Linguistic and ethnographic sound recordings from early 20-century California: Optical scanning, digitization, and access.”

This grant was awarded to the University of California-Berkeley (UC), which had begun a project named “Documenting Endangered Languages.”

May 31, 2018, is the scheduled completion date for digitizing and archiving the audio contained on the wax cylinders.

Thus far, this NSF grant has awarded $200,000.

The restoration and digitalization of the wax cylinders were urgently needed, as the analog speech patterns contained within the indentations/grooves on the wax, had become practically unrecognizable.

New technology developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was used at UC to create non-intrusive digital transfers of the audio information contained in the wax cylinders.

Optical laser light was used to “see” through the mold and capture the audio pattern indentations on the wax surface.

The indentations were then digitally scanned and stored as files on a computer.

No equipment or devices came into direct physical contact with the wax cylinder during the process.

The optically-obtained high-resolution image of the wax cylinder was then fashioned into a three-dimensional (3D) image using a special computer software program.

The software program used algorithmic processes on the 3D image of the wax cylinder.

The program then mathematically calculated the movements of how a needle’s stylus would be following the indentations of the spinning 3D wax cylinder.

Finally, a software algorithm then comparatively extracted and authentically recreated what the audio signal would actually sound like.

Faithful audio reproduction was also retrievable using this technique from damaged or broken wax cylinders.

I learned the audio quality using the above optical scanning and computer software technology, is superior to what would have been heard on a newly-recorded wax cylinder in the early 1900s.

By means of improved optical technology and program software modeling methods, investigators at UC have digitally recorded audio of the stories and songs by people in 78 indigenous languages which would otherwise have remained unheard; and thus lost forever.

The treasure-trove of the voices recovered from these wax cylinders is today being heard by the descendants of the indigenous people of California who recorded them.

These sound recordings from early 20th century California are a gift of language and culture from the past to the present.

The newly-archived digital recordings will remain available for future generations’ learning, scholarly research, and general appreciation for the rich history they bring to the present.

Speaking of recordings, Thomas Edison invented the speech recorder/cylinder phonograph in 1877.

Tin foil, instead of wax, was used as the recording surface for holding the sound vibration indentations of spoken words and music.

The tin foil he used was limited in the number of playbacks (using a hand-crank to rotate the cylinder), which could be heard before the foil’s indentations wore out.

The tin foil was later replaced with wax-coated cylinders, which could be repeatedly played, and was able to hold several minutes of audio.

The indigenous Native Californian wax cylinder collection is kept at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology on the UC campus in Berkeley, CA. Its website is http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu.

The National Science Foundation’s YouTube channel shows highlights used for obtaining the voices from the wax cylinders and digitally archiving them. I encourage my readers to view this informative video at http://bit.ly/2ydwmx6.

Follow my personal social commentary on Twitter at @bitsandbytes.

(below is a screen-capture from the NSF YouTube video link)

A driverless bus, are you ready?

©Mark Ollig

Are you ready to hop aboard and take a ride in a battery-powered shuttle bus with no human driver, or even a steering wheel?

Don’t be nervous. A certified human shuttle operator will be aboard providing customer service for the passengers, as well as the human intervention of the autonomous bus ride if it’s needed.

This driverless, fare-free, 12-passenger shuttle travels at comfortable cruising speeds averaging 10 to 12 miles per hour, with a top speed of 20 miles per hour.

The city council of Arlington, TX is currently operating two self-driving electric vehicles under a lease agreement with EasyMile headquartered in Toulouse France, with offices in Denver, CO.

Arlington’s self-driving shuttle service is called Milo, meaning “mile zero” or the point at which shuttle passengers arrive or depart from an event’s location.

“Arlington is the first local government in the US to offer ongoing autonomous vehicle service to the general public,” said Arlington Mayor Jeff Williams.

These self-driving vehicles are shuttling people back-and-forth over non-public vehicular transportation roadways and trails within the city’s Entertainment District, where many events take place.

Arlington is exploring the use of autonomous transportation software and hardware technology, and is conducting a one-year pilot program which began in August.

Part of the purpose of the Milo pilot program is to familiarize the public with driverless vehicle technology, according to Bill Verkest, Arlington Transportation Advisory Committee Chair.

One of the routes Milo travels is the paved trail system connecting to AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys professional football team plays.

Information about Milo posted on the City of Arlington’s website includes the following:

• Milo shuttles are free to use, wheelchair accessible, and can hold up to 12 passengers, (or 10 passengers plus one wheelchair).

• Shuttle rides are available along select Entertainment District off-street trails during stadium and ballpark events.

• Although Milo runs autonomously, a certified operator will always be onboard.

• Milo has a maximum speed of about 20 miles per hour and can accelerate, brake, and steer by itself.

• Milo’s driverless technology comes with collision avoidance systems that detect other vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and obstacles.

• Milo will operate by following a pre-programmed route on trails, not city streets.

• Milo includes air-conditioning and an automatically-deploying ramp for people using a wheelchair or those pushing a stroller.

“The experts are saying every day there is something new being invented in transportation. It’s a great opportunity for us to do these pilot projects, for us to actually test them in our community and for our citizens to be able to look at them and see if they work here and what their opinion of it is,” Arlington Mayor Jeff Williams said about Milo during his 2017 State of the City address Oct. 18.

“We want to see how this technology performs, where it is best utilized and how it can be harnessed to potentially serve the city’s transportation needs in the future,” he added.

I encourage you to watch the City of Arlington’s video, “Arlington Unveils Milo Autonomous Shuttle Service,” at http://bit.ly/2uOqfwV.

Another video of Milo in action can be seen at http://www.arlington-tx.gov/visitors/milo.

EasyMile was founded in 2014, and specializes in providing software powering autonomous vehicles and end-user smart mobility solutions. Its website is http://easymile.com.

Follow me on Twitter at @bitsandbytes, and visit my blog page at https://bitscolumn.blogspot.com.

(The above photograph is used with permission from the City of Arlington, TX)