Re:Man, I love being a nerd!!! (Score 1)

In 1954 my Uncle Jack Powell -- a radio repairman in Alpine, Texas -- predicted that the recording industry would go with light which, in a way, could include the laser used in CDs and DVDs.

He believed that the soundtrack on movie films -- a squiggly clear line on the black photo edge -- was going to be the forerunner of revolutionary changes in recording quality.

At that time the most popular "new" idea was wire recording, a spool about three inches in diameter with very fine stainless steel good for about one hour if my ancient memory is working today. When the wire broke you tied it together with a square knot and trimmed the ends of surplus wire dangling out. It wasn't perfect but was very much better than the bakelite or vinyl records that came a little later.

Those of us from West Texas also knew that one of the best "needles" for playing the old flat disks were from cactus. The sound was transmitted very faithfully to the crystal in the recording arm head and the nature of the cactus spine did not damage the record surface as much as steel did. Had to be replaced fairly often.

One of Uncle Jack's chores in Alpine was retrieval of some the first dial short-waves in aviation from the B-29s stored near Alpine in the dry air of West Texas. The radio's did away with crystals that formerly had to be inserted for each band. The continuous dial was a wonderful advance and it was in a radio of small size, about 24" wide and maybe 12" square. The Enola Gay was parked down there at the huge field of stored bombers, near the highway so folks passing by could see the plane that dropped the atomic bomb.

That might give our valuable nerds another path to examine. Aloha from Hawai`i.