Tag: Macfilos

It’s that most wonderful time of the year: Season’s Greetings from the Macfilos team

The members of Macfilos editorial team — Jörg-Peter Rau, Jon Cheffings, Keith James, Richard Watts and Mike Evans — join in wishing you all Season’s Greetings wherever you may be.

Macfilos images, galleries, and slideshow functions

Gallery image slideshows on Macfilos have now been repaired. See our update…

More on the new Macfilos: Layout, snags, the new Comments page and more

The new site format has had quite an impact on our readers. Mike responds to some of the feedback received, and outlines changes already made in response.

Joining the team: How to become a Macfilos author

Why not become a Macfilos author and create a worldwide audience for your photographs, your views on photography and equipment. It's easy, here's how...

Fourteen years of Macfilos: 5,500 posts and 10 million words

Macfilos is now 14 years old and has carried 5,000 articles running to over ten million words...

Why not write for Macfilos? Join our growing band of regular contributors

Macfilos, the photographic website, has built up an enviable group of regular contributors writing on a variety of subjects related to photography and travel photography. Why not become part of the community?

A question of focus: It’s one in the eye for the editor

Macfilos will be resting for the next couple of weeks. Who needs focus, anyway?

Macfilos mailing list interruption

Apologies to our mailing list subscribers who have not received updates since Monday this week. There is a problem...

Macfilos is twelve today: Five million words on photography and technology

Macfilos is twelve today: Over 5,000 articles and five million words.

Can you ever have enough cameras?

Hello - I’m Andrew. I’ve just published my first article on Macfilos - you can read it here -...

Macfilos: 5,000 posts already and here’s one from 2010

Review: Heroes of the Telegraph by John Munro (1891), iBookstore, free

Had blogs existed 120 years ago John Munro would have been up there with the best of 'em. His book, which traces electronic communications from the 50-year-old and "perfected" telegraph through to the latest modern developments, the telephone and the phonograph, is a Gutenberg gem. At the time of writing in 1891 both the telephone and phonograph had been around for little more than 10 years and Munro exhibits the sort of enthusiasm now associated with the latest technical news on Engadget or TechCrunch.

Edison and phonographThe story of the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison is fascinating enough, but it is Munro's conjectures on the future opened up by recordings that are much more interesting. Here is a review of possible future developments, some uncannily accurate, some wide of the mark, that make for gripping reading. 

He suggests that phonograph records could be used for correspondence, for dictation and for communication "on unsteady vehicles such as trains" where writing is difficult. He also foresees audio books and reports that Edison can fit the whole of Nicholas Nickleby on four eight-inch wax cylinders of five-inch diameter. "Perhaps," he says, "we could have circulating libraries which issue phonograms, and there is already some talk of a phonographic newspaper which will prattle politics and scandal at the breakfast-table. Addresses, sermons, and political speeches may be delivered by the phonograph; languages taught, and dialects preserved; while the study of words cannot fail to benefit by its performance."

Strangely, in 1891, the concept of recording music was not mainstream: "Musicians will now be able to record their improvisations by a phonograph placed near the instrument they are playing."

This book is a delight and is a must-read for all technophiles.  It has probably been out of print for decades, yet through the Gutenberg project and Apple's iBookstore we can read it again. Much of the book is concerned with the development of the electric telegraph and, of particular interest, the trials and tribulations of undersea cable laying.

After the break is a fuller excerpt from the chapter on Edison's invention of the phonograph.

Macfilos celebrates 11th birthday

Macfilos is 11 years old today: A trip back in time.