Two Tapes and a Tape: Diptych #23

a rollercoaster of space travel and inward pondering

This Week Has No Theme

Well, at least no obvious theme. A couple weeks ago, I was at a thrift store in Johnson City, Tennessee and I came across all three of the pieces of media I have for you today stacked on top of each other. Sometimes I try to give these posts an arch or a motive as to why I would group them together, but this week I let fate decide and fate said planet mars, Deepak Chopra, and 3D rollercoasters.

That’s not to say there’s nothing interesting here, though. From some wild computer generated renderings of what deep space travel might be like in the future to the incoherent ramblings of fake intellectuals, there’s really something for everyone this week.

Starting with the most interesting (to me), is:

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America's Greatest Roller Coaster Thrills in 3-D

1994 | Runtime 60 minutes

This one is particularly interesting for it’s 3D effect. The footage on this tape is utilizing the natural psychological phenomenon where your brain experiences a natural delay/slowness when processing darker images. This type of 3D media is referred to as Pulfrich style 3D, named after Carl Pulfrich, who was the first to describe the phenomenon in 1922.

As this is early days for 3D media, and not active 3D of any kind, the two pairs of glasses packed in with the tape are very simple. Different from the red and blue Anaglyph Type 3D glasses you may be familiar with, these are merely dark on one eye and clear on the other. This allows the Pulfrich effect to happen naturally.

There are pros and cons to using this type of 3D, however. The pro is that viewers without glasses can still enjoy a mostly sharp 2D image, and in most instances won’t notice anything is different about the footage. The con is that the 3D effect is a little difficult to perceive at times. Many people who have viewed this type of media have reported that closing one’s eyes or looking away for awhile every few minutes can help keep the eyes and brain from getting used to the effect causing it to be perceived less.

I’m going to assume that most of my readers don’t have a pair of Pulfrich style 3D glasses lying around (I didn’t either until these two pairs dropped out of the VHS box when I unwrapped it), but if you have an old pair of sunglasses that aren’t in use any more, popping out one lens or holding up a loose lens to one eye can’t provide the same effect.

• Featured Coasters:
  Viper and Batman-The Ride in Six Flags Magic Mountain
  The Texas Giant in Six Flags Over Texas
  Magnum XL-200, Mean Streak, and Raptor in Cedar Point
  Cyclone in Astroland, Coney Island
  The Beast in Paramount's King's Island
  Top Gun in Paramount's Great America
  Kumba in Busch Gardens, Tampa
  Drachen Fire and Big Bad Wolf in Busch Gardens Williamsburg
  Thunderbolt and The Steel Phantom in Kennywood

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Journey to Mars: The Real Inside Story

This is a tape I had so much trouble with. In the past, when I’ve come across a tape this damaged, I’ve first made absolutely certain no one else has uploaded the same piece of media yet, and then gone on to do my best to capture what I can from it. That’s what I did here, and the overall quality is decent, though I was NEVER able to get the color / hue right. The resulting image is clear but discolored in different ways in nearly every scene.

I’ve had a few stinkers in the past, mostly LP (Long Play) recorded tapes that were never recorded well to begin with, but I’ve never experienced this problem before. It persisted across 3 other VCR’s and multiple capture cards, so I’m really not sure what else I could have done. If anyone has a suggestion after viewing this footage, please let me know. My contact information is down below, or you can leave a comment! I’d be very grateful.

2000 | Runtime 52 minutes
Witness actual triumphs and tragedies!
Includes commentary from astronomer Carl Sagan and Honorary Academy Award winner Orson Welles
From the first Mariner Orbiter to send close-up photos of The Red Planet, to the first Viking craft to land, to the monumental loss of the recent Polar Lander, Journey to Mars reveals the most spectacular triumphs and darkest tragedies of all the Missions to Mars.
View the most authentic film footage and the latest cutting-edge animation secured directly from NASA, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Johnson Space Center, and many other space agencies.
Get the inside story of how and why man searches the celestial for life, and the tragic price man sometimes pays for these high-risk endeavors
For the first time, learn what major scientists foresee in space colonization, the techniques for identifying new life forms, and new high-tech transport missions to the Read Planet.

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Self Enlightenment / Your Inner Quest

1994 | Runtime 40 minutes

This is exactly what you think it is. I might be one of the few who has the attention span for this kind of stuff, but from the catchy interstitial music and the droning on about self / nature / spirit, I find tapes like this charming to some extent. If you have any interest in New Age stuff, whether it’s genuine or some sort of ironic affinity like I have, Deepak Chopra is certainly a name you’ve heard before. While not exclusively narrated by him, this tape does have a small portion of it’s short runtime dedicated to his theories, which starts right here (26:24).

I find junk like this all the time when sorting through the media shelves and bins at thrift stores, and most of the time I pass it up. Stores seem to be pricing media higher and higher lately, which happens from time to time. A few months will pass and their shelves will be full from customers not buying anything and the prices will go back down, but it’s a little disheartening to see something I want to digitize for the blog way overpriced. Just this week, I saw audio cassettes going for $7/ea because the owner heard that’s what they are on Ebay. For context, this tape cost me $0.15.

Anyways, if you’re interested, I keep Youtube Playlists of the all the wonderful media I find. You can check out the Video Archive here, and the Audio Archive here.

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Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych. As always, if you have any questions or comments you can get at me here or here or leave a comment below this post. If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet (it’s free) please think about doing so.
See you soon.
—Forrest