The Apollo 13 Squawk Box
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 พ.ย. 2024
- Bill Eppridge Photos “Mr. Life Magazine” - www.google.com...
Bell Telephone "Spokesman" desk speaker, model 107a: www.radiomuseu...
Apollo 13 Mission Audio: archive.org/de...
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my TH-cam Channel on Patreon: / frantone
Music by Fran Blanche -
Frantone on Facebook - / frantone
Fran on Twitter - / contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - www.frantone.co...
FranArt Website - www.contourcors...
The prices for DX-160 receivers are about to go up on Ebay....
did you stockpile a bunch before releasing this video?
Fran, if you decide one day to part with the 160 i'll buy it if it's not junk. They can be a pain-in-the-ass to align. I gave up on mine 20 or so years ago, The low bands you need to pick what part of the band you want to have sensitivity. And mine was very drifty - not real good on sideband. Also Keep the injection level low it helps keep things stable. The higher bands can be a little deaf - except for the hot spots you choose.
Nearby AM broadcast stations create images all over the place. I also had the dx300 another marginal reciever with many of the same issues as the 160.
Good thing I already scored one.
WOW -- today I not only 'discovered' you Fran -- but minutes before I glimpsed this speaker in your video thumbnails I had been perusing a 1974 Tandy catalog ( www.tandyonline.com/doc/catalogues/Tandy-Catalogue-1974.pdf ) reminiscing about my beloved DX-160, a faithful companion from 1974-1990. Growing up in the US Virgin Islands coming out of a sunspot maximum I experienced no sensitivity problem, it delivered the world. Radio Moscow/Netherlands Canada Romania VOA BBC AFRTS... It drifted a lot but that is how I learned to like fiddling a lot.
Probably, her thought was that this was live (delayed) and not for the general public to hear, so if it was radio, it would likely be encoded in some way.
That is some *serious* attention to detail right there. Impressive!
Would you expect less from Fran, thats one reason I love watch her videos, its all in the details!!!
When I first saw the movie I knew instantly what that speaker was, since I had that same shortwave radio. I didn't have anyone to tell it to that would even care. It's nice to know someone else noticed that too.
Amazing how details we notice in life can escape everyone else. I did not catch that detail. I miss Radio Shack.
I learned two things today: how to make an "Apollo 13" movie prop squawk-box, and how to improvise a circular-to-square CO2 scrubber adapter from "household" items. Thanks, Fran!
Handy info for everyone planning a translunar cruise.
Once you know they have duct tape, you know it can be done...
I never met an engineer that didn’t like Apollo 13. I have the DVD and the gold master disk soundtrack. Must have watched that movie 1000 times! Very inspiring! Going to visit Kennedy Space Center real brought it all together for me. Amazing place! Thanks for showing this Fran. I really enjoyed watching it!
My great uncle was actually part of the team at Houston that helped engineer the jury rigged co2 scrubber attachment.
A steely eyed missile man.
I always wondered if that scrubber mod was left behind or did it find it's way back?
jsmu55 It burned up on reentry with the rest of the LM.
Trivia: Did you know the scrubber "pile of parts" on the conference table scene from Apollo 13 was the inspiration for the TLC show "Junkyard Wars" (originally "Scrapheap Challenge" in The UK)?
When I was a young kid, Appolo 13 was one of my brother and I's favorite movie. And this was always my fav prop from the movie. I wanted my own beside my bed so I could listen to the astronauts before I fall asleep. Glad to know someone else loves it too haha.
I closed my eyes listening to that narrative with mission control and visualised the entire process. Very clear instructions.
Really neat video. Your attention to detail is impressive!
The "Spokesman" desk speaker looks a lot like the one they used on "Clarlie's Angles" to communicate with Charlie from Bossly's office.
What a hoot....I was wandering through TH-cam and ran into this. Next to the monitor is a my Realistic DX 150A and the auxiliary speaker. I didn't know I had a possible movie prop. April of 1970 I listen to updates about Apollo 13 via short wave on a knight kit shortwave receiver since at the time the NBC nightly news came into Fairbanks, Alaska by film, three days late. A little hint about the speaker, put a piece of 1/2 inch foam in the back of the box to make it a little more easy on the ears and not sound too tinny. Have a good day.
I recognized it instantly in the movie, only because my father had a DX-160 at one point. (I forgot the model number, but didn't forget how the speaker nor the cabinet looked). He was a Radio Shack franchisee in the mid-70s. As I remember the speaker had excellent audio for AM signals.
I always wanted one of them as a kid! I’m glad I’m not the only one
Back in the early 80's I had used that model with a crystal controlled scanner. I have no idea what happened to the speaker but it but it was solid as a brick and served me well for many years. There was a time when RS sold decent stuff.
I had one of their stereo receivers from the late 70's with the wood and aluminum cabinet. It was relatively small at 25Wx2 but it had a massive transformer and was dead quiet.
I just love it when you pay (meticulous) attention to the glory days of rocketry, those fantastic Apollo missions. Bravo!
Nice! I still have my DX-160 and speaker that I purchased new in the mid 70s. Saved up one summer's worth of lawn mowing earnings to buy it.
You could double your money if you put it up on Ebay now!
I remember dad coming home with a DX-160 circa 1980. We had a great time tuning into many ham operators and overseas commercial stations. Great times and memories ☺ Thanks Fran!
Yea i know that speaker very well since i own one. Its the speaker for my 70s radioshack shortwave receiver. I noticed it when the movie came out. I would never change my speaker i bough it when i was in high school and still love it.
Interesting story about the squawk box and film. Thanks.
Bonne année!
Thank you for your nice videos! Our team's Matt & J-F are absolute fans of everything you're interested in. You truly are a #builderofprosperity - many many thumbs up
What a great idea. I knew it was a Realistic speaker in the movie. I followed the space program starting with Mercury and I was 12 YO when we landed on the moon. Apollo 13 is my most favorite too.
The coolest and most interesting channel on TH-cam. Nothing else comes close !
Grew up with the same exact speaker and am radio in Bklyn. First you showed the speaker then the radio came on and it was so heart warming to see the radio which fascinated me growing up.
Hi Fran. My Purple Tee Shirt arrived December 28. Sydney Australia, Thank you.
Several people asked about it while attending New year's
fireworks display, Sydney Harbour / Bridge. Cheers.
Great video! I agree with your theory. At first I didn't understand why you chose "menacing" to describe it. I could see that it was perhaps a bit intimidating but to me the look was honestly more cold and impersonal, more hopeless and uncaring. But then I started to think deeper and about the contrast between the real unit and the movie unit and I had the epiphany. It's not just big and metal, unlike the Spokesman it lacks a volume control, so there's no way of escaping what you're hearing, you can't turn it off and pretend that what you heard isn't real, that everything is ok. And that helplessness, being coerced into accepting the darker side of reality, that is certainly menacing. Again, great video!
I think it was an error on Ron Howard's part. Somebody described the Realistic, believing it was a squackbox. The film was so obsessed with detail that they would never sacrifice absolute authenticity for a dramatic effect. It would be interesting to get an answer from Ron Howard.
Wow...I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to why they ditched the spokesman in the film. Interesting thanks Fran!
Learn something new every day
You could add a small amp and an mp3 player with the recording of mission control as well as your favorite tunes ! With a small remote controller and maybe even a blue tooth dongle added to ! Always enjoy watching your presentations ,Happy New Year ! : )
Funny to think the prop was more "Realistic" than the original :-)
I see what you did there.
And the original item was just telco equipment instead of something cooked up in a radio shack
Fascinating to hear in real time the work they had to do to make the CO2 scrubbers fit.
I think having two of those would make for a neat desktop speaker set. Definitely would be more fun than your standard computer speakers!
Great reproduction. I thoroughly enjoyed this!
You did a great job doing the same movie replica and the sound coming out of it is nostalgic..awesome video
I have no idea how I missed this channel until now. No matter, subbed immediately.
FYI Fran many of the props and space craft sets were built here in Hutchinson Kansas. We are the home of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space center who operates Spaceworks a Museum space artifact builder. many of the props were actually artifacts from the Apollo era. Apollo 13 is on display here at the museum.
the comms lines would have a standard dry-line or wet equ'ed 8 or 15K radio line used for remote radio location broadcasts.
they are still used quite a bit today as well, for radio backhaul or modem comms to remote locations.
Fascinating video today. Very well done.
The First American is a great read! Love that book!
I liked how you wore different glasses to fit the time period while listening to the Squawk Box. One of my favorite film scores is from Apollo 13, during to launch sequence all the way to lift off, that part of the movie send shivers down my spine!! Happy 2018, I hope this year brings many more videos from you, and thank you for all the ones you have done so far!!
WillRM listen to the lift off sequence part of the soundtrack while taking off in a plane. It really adds to the excitement!
That's an Awesome idea, it's the closest any of us could experience what it was like taking off on a rocket, like they did. I will have to add the soundtrack to my phone for the next time I fly!
You've done it again, Fran! Your knowledge of retro electronic and space esoterica is just impressive.
My t-shirt arrived yesterday, thanks from London! :-)
My late dad had one of those receivers was a decent big of kit for the money.
Looks great! I may have to do this to my 160!
Fran, you are just too cool!
Now I -have- get to watch Apollo 13 again. That _was_ a good movie, the last time I saw it. :p
Good video, loved the movie Apollo 13. Have always wanted the power Supply they used to find the start up sequence.
While HF retransmissions of Apollo missions weren't done, some of the unclassified Shuttle missions were. Radio station WA3NAN of the Goddard Amateur Radio Club relayed shuttle audio in the 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 meter bands. Though music is prohibited in the amateur radio service, WA3NAN was granted a waiver to also share the incidental wake up music that was a part of mission audio. Referencing your pinned comment, I imagine that some of these transmissions were received on DX-160 receivers, as well as DX-150s, AX and SX-190s, and eighties vintage DX-100, DX-200, DX-300 and DX-302. The last sets were the DX-394, which were introduced in a time to catch the last missions. 73 de KA0RFB
Good job Fran. Very interesting.
Apollo 13 was my very first famous movie.
Love this, great attention to detail!
It's impossible to understand the sheer terror those wives were stressing over while sitting next to that box.
Happy New Year Fran!
Which is more impressive. That squawk box or the video production? The hat the glasses even the Jack Kerouac book and the simulated film noise just great.
I love you Fran!
yay! another video, thanks Fran!
As a film maker I would say it was done for framing.....to allow the speaker to fill the frame more and still maintain the aspect ratio of the the shot with her also in frame......and as you say make it big enough in shot to be menacing.
I listen the ground loop of Apollo 13 to learn how to cope with anxiety.
I've got one of those speakers with my 1970s Realistic DX-160 communications receiver.
When I saw the prop in the movie I figured it was some kind of subcarrier subscriber radio (that I learned more about here at FranLab). Interesting to find out it was really a phone line. BTW those Bell speaker phones had real nice sound but then again the older phone systems had better sound then today's cell phone digital stuff.
I miss RadioShack 😢
MultiShawnt So do many of us as it did not have to end the way it did, but when you just keep doing the same exact thing expecting a different outcome each time it was not too surprising. There are still about 70 stores around the country, who knows what will become of them in time. They could have worked to tap into the Maker movement and very possibly survived as a relevant entity, but they never made any effort to do anything different than what they had been doing. They were great up until the early 90s, then killed off their catalog service and everything else that made them at all unique and just became a shell of what they once were and elected to put all their eggs into the cellular service basket.
Dang I have that same radio! Some old ham guy I was friends with in the 90's gave it to me when I asked him some questions about SSB. He told me how to make a long line antenna when I lived in Olympia, Wa. It could even receive weather forecasts from the Aleutian Islands.
Whenever someone says "the perfect woman", Fran comes to mind.
I believe those point to point circuits were called "dry loops".
I have that same pair of tin snips. I call them my big boy scisors. They are great for everything.
*Idea for a Part 2:*
Remove the speaker from the amp, and tuck a Raspberry Pi Zero + amp + power supply into the casing, so as to create a _standalone_ squawk box.
Love the hat and glasses!
gotta love that "roger beep" :-)
I'm happy you like movie memorabilia and cats.
Prices for DX - 160's DID go up! (Went and looked half way through video!)
Hey Fran, you could put the guts of an Amazon Echo Dot in the speaker case then tell the SB to "Play Apollo". It would require a bit of software work but nothing too involved.
I used to have that radio,I think I paid 169.00 for it many years ago ,work good ,wish I would have hung on to it..story of my life.
my favorite movie ever
Cool video, worth the wait. Happy New Year.
Hah, I was recently given one of those exact radios. If it had come with the speaker I would have lost my marbles! Thanks for the continual inspiration! Might be fun to make a couple of those speakers from scratch.
Not bad at all. A very good start to the New Year!
Seeing that box took me completely out of the moment. I owned a DX-160 in the 1970's and I assumed it was an anachronism. I was right but for the wrong reason. The older DX-150 came out with the same speaker in 1967 so it was contemporary to the Apollo era after all. I would have liked it if they had used the historically correct Spokesman though since back in my teens I had its cousin, the Bell Speakerphone model II, which used an identical speaker. (I was a gigantic WE/Ma Bell fanboy back then.)
Any time you're gluing paper, I recommend artist's spray-mount adhesive, such as 3M Super 77. It's wonderful, as it doesn't warp or wrinkle the paper.
The way I demonstrate here using a spreader with wet glue and a roller is the proper way to permanently laminate paper. Spray adhesives remain chemically active, and they dry up and delaminate after 5-10 years. Plus they're super nasty.
very cool Fran.
Awww, Fran! I have that speaker and radio. I recognized it in the movie and thought it meant that I had what NASA used. Now I know it was only as prop. :-(
i really love this channel, I learn a lot :) It makes me want to learn basic electronics, I'm already subscribed to people like AvE and I'm learning a lot just by watching, so cool to hear about NASA electronics
Wow Fran! That was a great video, one of my favourite movies to, just love it :-)
That's so awesome!!
Neat project. It would be cool to add a raspi that plays the nasa tv audio stream.
Siempre impresiona todo lo relacionado con la serie Apolo . Felicitaciones por rescatar un pedazo de historia.
The swoosh on the logo comes from the first A in NASA. Its a stylized wing.
Fran, a very happy new year to you. Keep up the great work! Your attention to detail for this one is impressive. Placing the speaker next to Kerouac is only the tip of the iceberg, good choice!
Oh Fran you adorable geek, Happy new year !
Hey Fran, have you already seen "The Ultimate Apollo Guidance Computer Talk"?
It's an one-hour talk that was recently held at the 34c3 hacker conference. It's out there on youtube (and other parts of the internet), and it's probably the best talk I've ever seen on any subject. It details everything from the AGC's odd quirks in the instruction set and other design decisions, the actual hardware implementation to system and mission software, with some forays into periphery devices (read, thrusters and radars and such) and other interesting bits.
I can only recommend it. It's very tightly packed, but the speakers did a great job at making it fun and intuitive.
Fran I love your videos.
Most likely the art dept just scanned the patch sized and printed. They could have also have used a color xerox machine and scaled it right in the settings. Quick and simple.
Viola! Realistic. Why did that go away? (A news woman was reading the teleprompter and said "Veeola". I was like, Really?)
I haven't watched the movie in years, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail for this video I knew what they were talking about. I recognized the speaker as something that was in the first Radio Shack catalog I owned (and still own) (from age 11)... from 1979:
www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1979/h166.html
Wish I’d gotten a T-shirt, darn it
The 'phone tap' speaker would have made sense, easy to implement, no need for encryption.
Incidentally, when i worked for our telecom company (installing exchanges) we could use an amplifier to listen in to conversations, basically an amplifier (could have been balanced input) with a couple of capacitors to isolate the dc.
If you get hold of the original speaker, you could do that and wire it to the phone line, but be aware of when the phone rings (maybe only attach once answered)
Nice project, I bet Adam Savage would love one of those for his collection.
wow! Great eye for detail.... thanks:-)
Video well done.
The DX-150 also had the same speaker. As speakers go, it really isn't the best sound. I always thought it sounded too "tinny".
I picked up a DX160 at a swap-meet, I was disapointed in the audio, don't all old radio's have a nice mellow sound? - not this one.
As you went into so much detail in the makeup of the logo, When it came to actually making it work. I was thinking if the majority of the entire mission's audio is available you could have an Arduino with just an SD card or a SSD if necessary that would be enough to hold the many hours of audio which would play the mission audio in 'real time.' You could also expand it to include multiple Apollo missions.
If I'm able to find a period Bell Speaker Phone, I might just try it out.
another idea is to turn it into a radio to pick the ISS communications.
Fran, have you thought of placing a bluethooth or even internet connection (wireless) in the box? then you can get the feed from mission control... and feed it to the box (last I saw they still do that on launches)