The Computer Chronicles - Lasers and Computers (1984)

Everyone loves lasers, and it's no surprise that the forerunner to the CD-ROM, the laserdisc, was an exciting prospect for movies, storage, and computing in general on this episode of The Computer Chronicles.
Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/det...

[@Jeff-rq4jv]

7:49 "It's virtually indescructible" said no one who's ever scratched a CD EVER

[@DryLog420]

You know it's the 80's when the reference in size is compared to a particle of cigarette smoke... Lol

[@zeldaoot23]

Came here to say this! Different times.

[@FoundationsofPause]

Gotta love how hard they pushed the idea of indestructible disc surfaces. Meanwhile in 2001 that time I dropped a disc in a busy hallway, RIP.

[@Nine-Signs]

Thats actually due to capitalism, not the format. When they first came out they were genuinely seriously tough items that would take a beating. I had one of the first CD roms shown to me, they smeared jam on it and used it as a skate on the floor. Cleaned it and it played perfectly. I also owned them back then and they were made of thicker layers. But, where is the profit in making a disc that will take a decade of punishment? ... We can make all manner of things last a good long time, a washing machine or a kettle or a fridge that will last 20 years, but capitalism demands corporations make ever increasing amounts of profit and so over the life of a product produced whilst they may start out reliable they ensure build quality is as far down the list as they can get away with. Resulting in the mass consumption to fuel infinite growth capitalism in the face of physics telling us that will not be possible for much longer. Cest la vie.

[@RonJohn63]

@@Nine-Signs "but capitalism demands corporations make ever increasing amounts of profit" No, you idiot. *Consumers demand lower costs, or they won't buy the product,* if they think the excess cost does not bring enough value over existing products.

[@joshuayousef2805]

Instablaster.

[@OhFishyFish]

@@Nine-Signs Or perhaps 99.999% of people don't use their CDs to skate on a floor and would rather pay a bit less for the end product.

[@seantu1496]

It's all relative, LD's, and even CD's of the time, were things that didn't wear out like the magnetic tapes or vinyl records of the time, where in the last 2ish decades the coating on blu ray disks now is a lot better than what we had with the first DVD's. PS, I do take extra care of my vintage LD collection when I pull the things out and play them :)

[@oubrioko]

0:44 I like how Stewart Cheifet used to emphatically nod his head perfectly in sync with each syllable.

[@DavePoo2]

I think Kermit the Frog when he was doing news reporting did the same thing

[@adenowirus]

If anyone is interested, that MSX at 8:45 is, if i'm not mistaken, a Pioneer Palcom PX-7. The joystick is a Pioneer PX-JY7.

[@randywatson8347]

Oh the solid state world we now live in... Paul got it right... in the late 90's CD RW became a thing.

[@TheJoeDavis]

7:46 - The turning expression on the other guy's face when Vladimir says "virtually indestructible". He knew the truth even back then.

[@mpettengill1981]

They never tested in the foot well of my Ford Tempo

[@enginerdy]

He compares it to a hard drive (a Winchester) which requires a sealed enclosure, so he’s not wrong by comparison! At the time the capacity would have been massive compared with the average hard drive too.

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

At 1:52, the videodisc format shown that Stewart mentions as being a flop and not being manufactured anymore was indeed defunct at the time this episode was produced. It's the CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc, aka "Selectavision") format, introduced and developed by RCA as Gary mentioned. They had just pulled the plug for player manufacturing in 1984 at the time of this episode's production and airing, after a much-delayed introduction in 1981. RCA had been developing the format since the mid-1960s, but was severely held back due to difficulties in disc design development, compounded by RCA's executive boardroom controversies (& resulting turnover) arising at the company in the early 70s. However, new CED disc releases of movie titles would still be available until 1986, since sales of software for the format were still strong even after CED players were discontinued (mainly due to CED titles being quite cheaper than their Laserdisc, and even VHS or Beta videocasssette, counterparts, and a loyal base of CED users, but sadly not enough of them for RCA to continue with CED as a whole). As Gary also mentions, CED's failure was also mostly due to VCRs already being established in the consumer electronics market in '81 and being much more popular at the time. Had CED been introduced earlier in the '70s as originally was intended (and especially if it could've been introduced before Sony introduced the first consumer-market VCR of the Betamax format in 1975), it probably could've been a success. The player demonstrated by Stewart looks like a later SKT100 or SJT100 (or maybe a SKT/SJT400) model, which uses a direct-drive turntable internally rather than being belt-driven like the earlier and first CED players used.

[@rtperrett]

There is a really good video here explaining the CED format at kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zn3VgZhmp9yLhbc It was a timing issue, but then one can't record on to CED and LaserDiscs like with VHS, while VHS is not perfect, that format lasted for a very long time before DVD replaced it.

[@DiGiTyDarKMaN]

My Pioneer LaserActive is still the peak of technology. 😂

[@therealhardrock]

It's very odd that this technology actually existed this early, yet 99.99% of all people on earth never saw CD-ROM before 1991. Most people were also still buying music on vinyl records until the end of the 80s.

[@megabojan1993]

+therealhardrock It's not odd, because CD players and CD-ROM drives were extremely expensive before 1991. Too expensive for the average consumer.

[@therealhardrock]

+MegaBojan1993 Then why did smartphones and iPads become ubiquitous less than 5 years after their introduction? Why was the technical attach rate so slow back then?

[@megabojan1993]

therealhardrock Technology in those areas progressed quite slow in the 80's and that's why the prices were coming down very very slowly.

[@oldtwins]

A lot has to do with cost of manufacturing. Back in the day, it simply cost a lot of money to build something and quality control was rather poor so a lot of waste product. Also, distribution channels were quite different than now. This all meant the cost to a consumer was out of the price range for the masses. Your average Joe Sixpack wasn't going to fork over $400 for a CD player and pay $15 for a CD when he could pay an eighth of that at the same time. Nowadays, it's a magnitude cheaper to get a factory in China churning your product and distribution costs are a fraction of what they used to be, plus you can get your product out in a matter of weeks rather than months.

[@CMDRScotty]

My parent's did, the military was especially the Air Force. They were very interested in useing it for secure information transfers. When I turned 4 in 1989 the Air Force told my parent's to buy a personal computer for work.

[@siljamickeify]

Hahaha, Gary Kildall calls bullsh*t!

[@Sinn0100]

This thing is a dinosaur....points at a LaserDisc player in 1984. That's telling the future.

[@VilleMetsola]

Paul Schindler is cool

[@Maskddingo]

I still have 'War Games' on CED. I also have a player that works.

[@ens8502]

Grow up and get rid of this pathetic trash

[@drdiamler]

I absolutely love the fact they are watching WarGames as the demo!

[@calif1mc]

Do you want to play a game? Yes, Global Thermonuclear War :D

[@puresweetnessyo]

"1 10th a particle of cigarette smoke" ... interesting choice for a relatable example... haha

[@adrianrobey7716]

I actually felt bad for Rick. He got savaged by Gary.

[@rtperrett]

22:30 Looking back Paul Schindler predictions was wrong about CDs replacing records, records are making a comeback, and Laser Discs didn't replace anything, and it took a very long time for CD-rom disks to replaced floppies for Games, and even longer for VHS to be replaced by DVD in the early to mid 2000s, and there was no read-write format for DVD or any optical media in the 90s, I was using Zip Disks in the late 90s as floppies were too small. The floppy wasn't replaced until the mid 2000s. It was the flash drives that replaced the floppy. It wasn't until the mid to late 2000s that we got read-write formats for any optical media. For those that don't want to own any medium or any disc, we got services such as streaming for movies (Netflix) and music (Spotify).

[@kathrynradonich3982]

There most definitely was CD-Rs in the 90s they were just generally too expensive for most people. I remember making a mixed CD at my grandma to play on her car when we were going on a trip, still have it actually and works fine.

[@mikepilyih6524]

Didnt realize CD ROM was already a thing by 1984

[@RonJohn63]

Only inside Sony. They were still developing at that time.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Took quite a few years for consumer market. There simply wasn't any need to have that much data for consumer purposes. Industrial/commercial, absolutely, but not really consumer until the 486 era enabled sufficient processing power to use multimedia that then demanded the storage.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

Optical media never really replaced the floppy disk (or the hard disk for that matter), floppy disk survived into the 21st century and was effectively replaced by USB sticks. Magnetic hard drives are still being used to a limited extent...

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@25:37 Your typical smartphone today has far more processing power than this supercomputing center being discussed. Amazing.

[@tomr.knudsen3897]

first of all, I never had problems with cd, only when I would borrow someone else CD, then they used to be quite bad... just don't touch the data side, and put it back into its cover when not using it, and not drag or scratch it when moving it from the cover to cd.... I still have cds I had over 20 years now, still works perfectly fine, and never had problems with disc rot, except one RW I think I had to throw away, I still regurlarly uses CD, especially for my old windows pc, and my ps1 collection, as well as newer system. I also not had problems with severeal cd games I bought the last few years online, second hand, not to mention my audio cds, they all works great.. again apart from a few that I got from family members, they especially one of my brother was awfull with cd. When I was like 5-6 years playing with audio, and ps1, I got told not to touch the data side, and not to put the cd down on it... I have vivid memories of older brothers, and friends who did who did touch the data side, and then put it face down, and drag it along table or floors to take it up, and me being really upset because it would damage it. Perhaps all the comercials and show like this that push the idea of it being indestrucble did it a disservice... it is a shame, I really still love cds, and its a great way to get alot of music for basically free, in great quality, especially when ripping it and putting it on a external ssd connected to the router. But really they are really great compared to other mediums, because you could touch the data side and it would not damage it, and it could have huge amount of scratches without it being unreadable. perhaps they underestimated how reckless people would become with it. the surface is just to protect the data, and as long as the lazer can read throug it, it is fine. and yes toothpaste really works, with some scratches, to help the laser go through it. If you got a scratch on any other medium at the time, that section was damaged, but not with cds, ofc cd is digital, so while a analouge medium might just might the image or sound slight worse at that damaged, a cd with digital information obviously would react differently. again that might have been part of problem, because cd would work perfectly fine with lots of scratches, people didn't care, but suddenly if got to much scrathces, yes it would react to it. Also love looking at random encyclopida, and various stuff like that, on various cd I gotten really cheap, or free over the years. Btw Paul Schindlers prediction at the end is so good, rewritable disc in 84, ofc floppies already was, but in the 90's as he said... I don't consider really consumer RW-Disc to have come before the early 00's, mayby late 90's, atleast affordable, and normal. It might have existed earlier...

[@darvindillon8525]

24:00 they mention the failure of the PC Jr. Little did they know that Tandy would go to use their graphics format to become a great 80s gaming PC

[@Fazer_600]

HAL : "Huh?"

[@OhFishyFish]

Halcyon AI code leaked. IF ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE ELSE

[@randywatson8347]

One of my favorite episode

[@baardbi]

The title screen at the beginning of the video says 1985, not 1984 like in the KZbin description. Could you change the description to make it easier and more accurate when searching for these?

[@KabelkowyJoe]

23:00 Probably only one Paul Shindler was right :> But not precisely because it didn't happen in 90s happened in 2000, trough 90s we had all kinds of magnetic disk magneto/optical disks, and mini tapes

[@KabelkowyJoe]

25:45 And then he review software, more and more i see more more i think he was there so everyone could make fun of him, never saw good software recommended by him only some crap, overshooting predictions from left to right never direct hit

[@haizahmedhaiz5387]

In 35 yrs, Alexa would seem as primitive as Halcyon does today

[@DavePoo2]

Well, maybe a little sooner now that Alexa has been discontinued. But it is interesting to note that they mentioned that they wanted to interact with the computer via conversation, and that is what ChatGPT is doing now.

[@nealparry]

@@DavePoo2 No it hasn’t.

[@Nine-Signs]

50 cents a megabyte. At that cost a blu ray disc will cost a reasonable twenty thousand dollars per disc.

[@andriandrason1318]

don't know if you calculated with inflation which would make it a cool $57,068.03 per disc.

[@animalvideos8477]

u know laser is impressive but my god those comeovers.. there from another world entirely

[@bcbock]

It’s like none of the people on this show know that Hal became homicidal. We do not want computers that are like HAL.

[@enginerdy]

HAL was given secret instructions that conflicted with the safety of the crew. Like a good computer, just doing what it’s told..

[@Ray2Jerry]

These new "compacted lazered discs" are just an expensive fad, long live the 5 1/4 inch floppy!! 😁 Also, "Halcyon what is the weather right now?" "First look outside and tell me the weather conditions, and then I will tell you."

[@haizahmedhaiz5387]

HAL was IBM with each letter shifted left, as if it was the precursor to IBM..

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

Random Access: IBM Announced they stopped production of the PC Jr admitting failure in the low price how market. Basically the foreshadowing of the end for IBM in the PC market.

[@McVaio]

It really didn't; IBM would be in that market for 20 more years.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@McVaio Not really, late 1980s and most assuredly 1990s consumer market were monopolized by clone manufacturers like Tandy, Compac, HP, Dell etc. They tried to set new standards with their own proprietary expansion slots like MCA (I think it was called) but the majority of people chose to embrace PCI instead leaving that slot format as a footnote in history. Their later gamble on PowerPC CPU based systems also didn't pay off. They might still have been a player in the market for that time (Though 30 years I think is an exageration as they didn't release anything past the Pentium Pro generation AFAIK) but they turned from the market leader to a minor player.

[@kobold1538]

It's crazy how bright, forward looking, enthusiastic, and just plain right Gary Kildall was compared to everyone else around him. Really upsetting that he went in such a senseless way. The world would probably have been a better place if he was in Bill Gates' place.

[@haroldfarthington7492]

what happened to him

[@kobold1538]

@@haroldfarthington7492 Sadly he passed away due to a head injury sustained during a fight, i believe in a bar but I'm not sure.

[@ReasonBeing25]

Those sales people were full of it. Lol trying to sell their box as having real artificial intelligence.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

"Lasers and Computers" and later Laser Computers. :P (Laser was a brand here in the late 90s )

[@picobyte]

Funny now CD/DVD is following the vinyl record.I have my blue-ray writer disconnected because never using it.My flash-drive holds more memory than a bunch of those really large bulky discs. Also mechanical computing is not the way to do it,CD and harddrives is motors&mechanics that are slow and break down.

[@nyqa]

Love this stuff 🥲 These programs give nice insights in the beginning of the human and home computer interaction. Its super interesting hearing the technology thoughts of the 80s

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@25:55 "Coach" Me: So it's a Fitbit :P

[@neoasura]

Crazy, I never knew Laserdiscs were out before computer optical storage devices.

[@werkis2]

Philips made first in 1956, but they costed to much player and disk, so vhs was cheaper and easier to copy tapes

[@NickKont]

Forgot to mention the CD/DVD use as a mirror too!

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

I was 10 years old when all this shit was going on. All i needed was my star wars action figures. Fuck hal. I love this shit.

[@UTEPUTE]

can't go wrong with that!

[@kpkp2655]

Stuart's hair, I want that style.

[@vamooooos]

❤MSX!

[@timcat1004]

50 cents a megabyte? How much is that by todays standards?

[@shpoople4209]

since a 2TB (2,000,000 MB) drive cost roughly $50, (50/2000000)*100 = 0.0025 cents per MB

[@MrMarlowe3488]

oh god they found the first fmv game

[@enginerdy]

This is the guy who made Dragon’s Lair, yeah

[@CMDRScotty]

Microsoft is coming, Microsoft is coming!!!

[@wohlhabendermanager]

"McGraw Hill, publisher of Popular Computing". No longer "Micro Focus"?

[@ninjasiren]

It's just lately when voice recognition is widespread. Like the Amazon Echo or Google Assistant.

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

13:47 😳

[@nickwallette6201]

2:55 One billion bytes! That’s all you could cram onto a LaserDisc in digital form..?!? I know this is 1985 bytes, but still .. color me underwhelmed!

[@Devire666]

I'd say 1 gig of storage is damn impressive for 1985, especially for a removable media, not a hard drive. I remember when in 90s I've read in a book how much is a gigabyte I've thought: wow, I don't think I'll ever see that much data in a home PC!

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@Devire666 Yeah, but the early CD-ROM they showed right after could already hold 540MB at the fraction of the size.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

LaserDisc is from 1978. It shouldn't be too surprising that in 6 years they made some progress...

[@chloedevereaux1801]

fkkn hell, laser graphics...... c'mon nvidia you missed that pony.... paaahaaahaaahaaaaaa.....

[@CaptchaNeon]

That one of the worst voice recognitions I've ever heard.

[@ens8502]

I dont believe, you dont seem as Voice Recognition Specialist

[@tomservo5007]

paul bet on the wrong horse

[@nickwallette6201]

He has a very unique CD player though. Appears to be a Sanyo CP 200.