Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2013 May 21

= May 21 =

Gekkou Kamen

 * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrLa1CpMK6w (00:02~00:04)
 * Main article: Moonlight Mask

From 00:02 to 00:04, there's a biker's animation shown on some sort of a matrix display.


 * 1) How did they do it?
 * 2) How did they came up with the idea of matrix display in 1958?

The display seems to be made of light bulbs. I guess it was installed in a baseball field. However, without a computer, how did they make it display animation?

Certainly you can use a mechanical device, such as a punch card reader or something like the music box or player piano to control the matrix display. However, light bulbs do not last very long when you switch them on and off repeatedly.

Did people have this kind of primitive matrix display in 1958? -- Toytoy (talk) 08:52, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * You don't need to have a computer to have digital technology, and engineers of that era were wizards at building sophisticated control systems with electro-mechanical components (relays, steppers, and related gadgets). The complexity of a short animation on a few hundred cells is less than the existing automatic telephone exchanges in use at the time (e.g. 5XB switch). The sweet-spot for feeding the system a series of animations might still be Hollerith cards, or perhaps punched tape.  Either way, an electromagnetic system like this would be a big rack of noisy stuff, and would require an operator to feed it a different sequence for each animation. A matrix display is a pretty logical consequence of existing loom technology (dating back to Jacquard, and by the '50s capable of some very sophisticated patterns) once you add bulbs, and I don't think these animations are asking too much of bulbs - decorative bulbs for things like fairgrounds, indicator lights, and automotive turn flashers too, have to do tens or hundreds of thousands of cycles. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 16:22, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Well first modern "computers" came out in the late 1940's, and by the 1950's dozens of UNIVAC systems had been installed throughout Europe & the US with languages such as FORTRAN not only being used but being improved in what today we might call "open-source" ways. As far as the actual graphics though about 8 years after this show was aired engineers were are the cusp of extremely complex algorithms for displays such as the Westinghouse Sign(s):


 * [[File:VirtualWestinghouseSign.gif]]  Market St.⧏  ⧐ Diamond Way   17:39, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Graphic lighting displays for outdoor advertising date back as far as 1905, apparently. See exhibits 11 and 14 here.  Textorus (talk) 21:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Didn't mean to change the topic to exterior lighting displays, while my example of the Westinghouse Signs were indeed outdoor I was answering OP's questioning if the "matrix"/computer technology existed circa mid-century. The Wikipedia article on the Westinghouse Signs goes into how shortly after OPs film example was produced technology did exist to sequence or graphically matrix signs:

 Market St.⧏  ⧐ Diamond Way  22:43, 21 May 2013 (UTC)