Special Event -- Electro-Music Concert on December 15th!

GET REALLY WIRED MUSIC FOR THE HOLIDAYS

The Electro-Music Chamber Orchestra Comes to Princeton

December 15, 2007 Sarnoff Corporation Auditorium

7:30 PM 201 Washington Rd
Princeton NJ 08540-6449

Admission $10 per person at the door

For information: 609-734-2636

It’s the time of year when the streets and houses glow and twinkle with festive lights. Everything’s wired and bright, including the Electro-Music Chamber Orchestra, the sonic ensemble that’s more plugged in than a city block.

The Electro-Music Chamber Orchestra brings its arsenal of synthesizers, keyboards, and bizarre machinery to the David Sarnoff Library Auditorium On Saturday, December 15^th for an evening of truly electrifying and sonorous musical mischief. Doors open at 7:00 PM for this rare event, with refreshments on hand provided by Grovers Mill Coffee and McCaffrey's bakery, thanks in part to the support of the Princeton ACM/IEEE-CS under the initiative of Dr. Rebecca Mercuri. Admission is $10.00 for the general public; online advance purchases can be made via Paypal at sales@davidsarnoff.org. For more information, please call 609-734-2636.

On the roster for the orchestra’s evolving membership are Howard Moscovitz, Greg Waltzer, and Bill Fox. As a trio in their own right, they’re known as Xeroid Entity, creators of rhythmic and ambient otherworldly soundscapes. http://xeroid-entity.com/

Joining them will be special guests Brainstatik, featuring Robert Burger, Ken Palmer, Mike Hunter, Jim Silvestri and Glenn Robitaille. Combining ambient, world, progressive rock, and space music, Brainstatik takes audiences on uncharted improvisational journeys,shifting and mixing genres within each piece.

Any self-respecting electronic chamber orchestra would be incomplete without the granddaddy of all electronic instruments: the theremin, the only instrument that’s played without being touched. Thereminist Kip Rosser will be on hand to weave the theremin’s haunting and beautiful voices into the mix. http://www.performancekr.com/theremin.html

Taking the stage first will be Brainstatik, each member a certified electronic gear junkie. Guitars can sound like drums, keyboards can imitate guitars and drums can play keyboards. The resulting performance often sounds rehearsed and composed, but in reality it happens in the moment. Brainstatik thrives on taking its music to the edge every time they perform.

http://www.brainstatik.com

During the second set of the evening, Moscovitz, Waltzer, Fox, and Rosser will complete the ensemble. The full Electro-Music Chamber Orchestra will perform a collaborative exploration of the vast territories of harmony, rhythm, melody and silence. Think Vangelis meets sci-fi with a dash of Brian Eno.

The evening will be set against the stunning visual backdrops of video artist Hong Waltzer, who will bridge sight and sound by creating her fluid and colorful “living paintings” that respond to the music in real time. Expand your ears, eyes, mind, and your definition of music–get really wired on the sight and sounds of the Electro-Music Chamber Orchestra.

Cognitive Radio Networks at Sarnoff!

What happens when you crossbreed computers and radios? Professor Narayan B. Mandayam of Rutgers University will explain in a free lecture at Sarnoff Corporation's auditorium next to the David Sarnoff Library Thursday, December 6, at 6:30 p.m. If you thought satellite radio was the last word in audio or video delivery, think again! Sponsored by the IEEE Princeton Section's Communications and Consumer Electronics Chapter, Dr. Mandayam's talk covers not only the technical requirements for software-defined radio networking but also considers the implications for broadcast and spectrum regulation and the future of the wireless internet. Here's his abstract, with his bio further below:

Recent advances in programmable integrated circuits have created an opportunity to develop a new class of intelligent or “cognitive” radios which can adapt to a wide variety of radio interference conditions and multiple protocol standards for collaboration between otherwise incompatible systems. Such a cognitive radio would be capable of very dynamic physical layer adaptation via scanning of available spectrum, selection from a wide range of operating frequencies (possibly non-contiguous), rapid adjustment of modulation waveforms and adaptive power control. In addition, a suitably designed cognitive radio with a software-defined physical layer would be capable of collaborating with neighboring radios to ameliorate interference using higher-layer protocols. Perhaps for the first time in the short history of networking, cognitive radios offer the potential for organic formation of “infrastructure-less” collaborative network clusters with dynamic adaptation at every layer of the protocol stack including physical, link and network layers.

While the development of cognitive radio hardware and software, especially at the physical layer, has received considerable attention, the question of how one transforms a set of cognitive radios into a cognitive network is much less well understood. This talk will present an overview of cognitive radio network research from the points of view of information and coding theory, game theory, collaborative and cooperative communications. The implications of such cognitive radio networks to spectrum policy as well as the design of the future internet will also be highlighted.

Narayan B. Mandayam is Professor at Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering,Rutgers University. He also serves as Associate Director at WINLAB. His research interests are in various aspects of wireless data transmission ncluding system modeling and performance, signal processing and radio resource management with emphasis on techniques for cognitive radio technologies. Dr. Mandayam is a recipient of the Institute Silver Medal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1989 and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1998. He was selected by the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 for the Annual Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering. He is a coauthor with C. Comaniciu and H. V. Poor of the book "Wireless Networks: Multiuser Detection in Cross-Layer Design," Springer, NY. He has served as an EditorWireless Communications (2002-2004) and as a guest editor of the IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Adaptive, Spectrum Agile and Cognitive Radio Networks. He is currently serving as a guest editor of the upcoming IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Game Theory in Communication Systems.

Library Gains Public Charity Status from IRS

It took five years to prove it, but the David Sarnoff Collection, Inc., which does business as the David Sarnoff Library, has been redefined as a public charity rather than a private foundation. This essentially means that we rely on contributions and grants to support our mission, instead of fulfilling our mission by making contributions and grants, The Internal Revenue Service backdated this status to January 1, 2002, based on our activities and sources of funding in that time. The most important consequences of this redefinition are that contributions, bequests, legacies, transfers, and gifts are all deductible for Federal purposes according to Sections 170, 2055, 2106, or 2522 of the Internal Revenue Code. In addition, the Library is now eligible for matching gifts from corporate and other foundations.

We'd like to thank our accountant, Kenneth Ditmars, CPA, of Ditmars Perazza, and the good and friendly people of the IRS in Cincinnati and Dallas for their help in guiding us through this process!

Executive Director named to IEEE History Committee

Our executive director, Alex Magoun, has just received word from IEEE president Leah Jamieson, that at its November meeting, the IEEE Board of Directors confirmed his appointment as a member of the 2008 IEEE History Committee. The term is for the calendar year 2008. The committee promotes the collection, writing, and dissemination of historical information in the fields covered by IEEE technical and professional activities, as well as historical information about the IEEE and its predecessor organizations. It also works with institutions of a public nature such as the Smithsonian Institution and with the Trustees of the IEEE History Center in recommending historical projects to be carried out by or under the direction of the Center.

The IEEE is the world's largest professional engineering organization, with over 370,000 members around the world involved in electrical and electronic technologies. David Sarnoff was one of the charter members of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1912, and this pioneering group eventually merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1961. Its operations center is located in Piscataway, New Jersey, and the IEEE History Center is located just down the road on Rutgers University's campus in New Brunswick.

Having assisted in the nomination process and ceremony arrangements for two IEEE Milestones conferred on the site of the RCA Laboratories, Alex is well familiar with the work of the History Committee and History Center. "I'm honored that the committee and the IEEE's executive board offered me this opportunity to help the IEEE promote its rich heritage in innovating the technologies that help shape our lives," he says. "This is another partnership that signals a rising interest in where we've come from as we head into an even more technologically complex future."

Alex also recently joined the board of the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame to help promote the remarkable record of technical creativity that runs throughout the state.

The DSL and the NJ Science Convention

Having staged our first field trip program to great acclaim, the next step is to publicize it! In mid-October, thanks to the support of board member and Plainsboro library director Jinny Baeckler, executive director Alex Magoun promoted the Library at the New Jersey Science Convention in Somerset, New Jersey. There he set up in his booth across from Arbor Scientific with the Library's new poster display and glossy color flyers to alert the state's science teachers and coordinators about the Library's activities and resources. Those who understood the power of the past to inspire the future paid attention, and the Library looks forward to following up with them!

When Art and Science Collide. . .

O, the humanity! Here at the David Sarnoff Library we were gratified to have the Hunterdon Radio Theatre and the New Jersey Antique Radio Club, aided and abetted by the Martian Radio Orchestra, revive the genius of Orson Welles, Howard Koch, and the uncounted inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and marketers who made the 1930s the Golden Age of Radio in the United States. On Saturday, October 27, we hosted two shows of War of the Worlds for 250 men, women, and children. Everyone pitched in on the set-up

. . . balancing the voices at the period and contemporary microphones for the best output from the 16.1 monophonic AM surround sound generated by the NJARC's radios.

Before the main event, Howard Moscovitz, Kip Rosser, and Greg Waltzer donned their outré apparel and entranced the early arrivals with two keyboards, a Moog theremin, and electronically treated voices and noises to cast a dramatic mood we won't soon forget!

The matinee found some 30 members of the Encore Monroe retirement community reliving a space-age past! The crowd didn't go wild as the HRT hit the stage, but all enjoyed the theatrics on-stage and the sensations conjured between the ears by the surround sound. What lessons might we draw from the 1938 broadcast and panic? Oh, there are the usual issues of responsibility, by both broadcasters not to transmit an electronic version of "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and citizens to inform themselves so as not to spread unfounded rumors (or urban or internet legends). And to this balance of power we should keep in mind Melvin Kranzberg's first law of technology: that it is neither good nor bad, but nor is it neutral.

Meanwhile, Library volunteers Sharon Chapman and Vrinda Kaimal were preparing the setting for the evening dessert reception, featuring Tracey's custom cookies, courtesy McCaffrey's Supermarkets








and gourmet coffee, courtesy Grover's Mill Coffee & Tea. We'd show pix, but everyone ate and drank everything before there was time!

A splendid time was had by all, including executive producer Alex Magoun and a small green friend:

So, until Saturday, October 25, 2008, stay tuned!

(photos by Sharon Chapman and Alex Magoun)

YouTube Contest Winner!

Congratulations to Dylan Roth, who has won our inaugural War of the Worlds YouTube video contest with his Battle of the Network Star Wars entry. Dylan will receive a YubzTalk phone handset, Which was donated by our friends at Oh No So Ho in West Windsor.

Madame Librarian!

This just in! Our super volunteer, Sharon Chapman, who has helped with everything from War of the Worlds to processing the Vladimir Zworykin and Harry Olson Collections to recruiting junior archivists to firing up this blog and our de.lic.ious account, has received official notice of Rutgers University's conferral of her master's degree in Library and Information Sciences:

MLIS October 2007
Program: LIBRARY AND INFORMATION STUDIES
Completed: N.A.S.D.T.E.C.
Approved Curriculum: EDUCATIONAL MEDIA SPECIALIST

We are extremely pleased to have both benefited from her degree-related projects and offered the Library as a site for her class work. Congratulations, Sharon!

YouTube Contest - Deadline Is Midnight Tonight!

This is your last chance to get those entries submitted. The more, the merrier!

YouTube Contest Details

Volunteers Brainstorming Session Monday, October 15th!

Remember to come to our fifth and final Volunteer Brainstorming Session of the fall on Monday, October 15th at 7:30 at the library. We will focus on the Archives, including cataloging, rehousing and storage of the collections of RCA broadcast manuals, technical reports and lab notebooks that were damaged during last April's flood. Please come for conversation and snacks, and feel free to bring a friend!

YouTube Contest - One Week To Go!

Remember - our first YouTube War of the Worlds contest submissions must be in by midnight on Saturday, October 20th. Get those video cameras, digital cameras and cell phones going!

Come For The Show, Stay For Dessert

It's official - our good friends at McCaffrey's Supermarket in West Windsor are donating their out of this world (pun intentional) gourmet cookies to the dessert reception following the evening performance of War of the Worlds on October 27th. Anyone who attended last year's event will recall just how beautiful and delicious these cookies are :)

So order your tickets now for the evening performance and stick around after the show and stick around for cookies and coffee afterwards.

Don't Forget The YouTube Contest!

Whether you can attend our War of the Worlds re-enactment or not, remember to enter our inaugural YouTube video contest! The deadline is October 20th, so get your submissions in soon!

Future Docents Wanted!

Don't forget to come to Monday night's brainstorming session if you have any interest in being a docent or any ideas about how to make our emerging tour guide program a success!

Volunteers - Please Come To Tuesday Night's Fundraising Meeting

This week's volunteer brainstorming session will focus on Fundraising. We'll be meeting at the Library on Tuesday, October 2nd at 7:30 PM. Please come and help us start planning and budgeting for 2008 and develop ways to raise funds for all of the field trips, exhibits, and other great programs that we are in the process of developing!

Hope to see you there!

The David Sarnoff Library's First Annual YouTube Video Contest

The Martians have landed—then or now.

Cover the breaking story in three minutes or less!

The theme of aliens arriving on Earth is an old one with many variations. How do they arrive? Where do they land? What do they look, sound, feel, or smell like? How do they communicate? What do we have that they want? What do they give that we need? Are they angelic, evil, or something in-between? How do we, the people, respond? What do we observe, assume, or do? All answers are up to you, the director!

Contest details

Begins: September 24, 2007
Ends: Entries must be received by 11:59:59 EST on October 20, 2007 to be eligible for prizes.
Must be 13 years of age or older

Register and Post Video: Online at www.rsvponthenet.com/Martian_Invasion.html - or -Download form at www.rsvponthenet.com/Martian_Invasion.html and email to: wotw@rsvponthenet.com - and -

Post video at: http://www.youtube.com/ with the tag .

Winners to be announced after the evening performance of War of the Worlds at the Library on October 27, 2007.

Prizes:

- Yubz Talk cell phone handset, courtesy Oh No So Ho of West Windsor
- Two other cool prizes
- Great publicity for your handiwork!

Visit www.rsvponthenet.com/Martian_Invasion.html to enter today!

The Library on WHYY

WHYY TV in Philadelphia is promoting the Library and its namesake through a three-minue Experience Arts & Culture video that currently runs between some programs and also on its website. Scroll down to the second entry and give mad props to director Andrea Campbell and cameraman Eric Sennhenn, who spent five hours interviewing our executive director, Alex Magoun, and shooting footage of exhibits and the TV ceiling!

Welcome Back Grover's Mill Coffee Company!

We are pleased to announce that the Grover's Mill Coffee Company will once again be providing coffee during the dessert reception following this year's evening performance of the War of the Worlds, which will be held on October 27th.

Come for the performance....stay for the coffee!

Brainstorming Meeting for Field Trips on Monday

Remember to come to the Library on Monday, September 24th at 7:30 PM in order to come up with ideas for our emerging field trip program. Help shape the direction of our activities as we strive to reach out to the schoolchildren of our area.

Hope to see you then!

What They Did for Their Summer Vacation

The summer of 2007 was the summer of volunteers for the Library, and most of them are local high school students. What started with one in the fall of 2006 has snowballed into twelve. They hail from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North and perform a variety of invaluable archival services, ranging from cataloging to sorting to rehousing to digitizing RCA collections of documents and periodicals.

Kunal Deopare, the pioneer, started scanning the lab notebook pages of RCA Labs staff who contributed to the invention of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) in the 1960s. Swapnil Mhatre joined him a few weeks later and after scanning to PDF format several hundred 1940s and 1950s RCA Princeton engineering memos and technical reports, he started in full-time last summer on scanning the 31 volumes of RCA Engineer, 1955-86. These illustrated magazines, published four to six times a year, contain articles by technical and managerial staff on new and old technologies, from radio and TV antennas to space cameras to solid-state lasers and computers, and how they fit in the company's changing strategies for return on investment.

Over the winter of 2006-7, they were joined by Ujaas Barvalia, Adnan Khan, Kishore Ryali, Hamad Masood, and Kirin Masood, joined in the scanning and downloading of reports, and did the preliminary sorting and weeding of the collections of John Coleman, biophysicist and super-electron microscope designer, and Charlie Wine, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at the David Sarnoff Research Center. Over the summer, with Jonathan Slawitzky, they removed the oxidizing (rusting) metal fasteners and foldered some 2,500 Princeton Engineering Memos between 1952 and 1969, and are gearing up for the Princeton and Zurich Technical Reports.

In addition this summer we saw Rohit and Renuka Reddy, and Vidya Nandarpurkar and Aleesha Shaik come on board. Rohit is busy digitizing and formatting for davidsarnoff.org the history of the invention of electronic color television at RCA's Princeton Labs, 1945-54, while Renuka is carefully typing into a spreadsheet the somewhat chaotic handtyped index to the Labs' newsletter, Radiations (so named in a contest by Labs staff member Lawrence Giacoletto to reflect RCA's use of electromagnetic phenomena in its products). Last but hardly least, over the summer Vidya Nandarpurkar typed in the annual tables of contents for RCA Review, the company's elite technical journal, 1952-86, into a spreadsheet and then scanned to PDF all the Reviews' contents from 1936-64 before school started. She recruited Aleesha Shaik to join her, and Aleesha has rehoused and relabeled in archival (acid- and lignin-free) envelopes some 2,500 4x5 photonegatives for the Carl Byoir RCA collection, before joining the PEM rehousing project. Executive Director Dr. Alex Magoun couldn't ask for a more productive and dynamic group of students, who are doing so much to preserve the legacy of invention and innovation at one of the country's greatest companies!

photo by Frank Wojciechowski