Surprising Nanotechnology in the 80's
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ย. 2022
- Today we're looking at RCA's ill-fated attempt to put video on vinyl records! SelectaVision, aka the Capacitance Electronic Disc. This was a system that encoded nanoscale features onto carbon-filled vinyl records, and measured the minute changes in height using an elaborate system to detect changes in capacitance.
Considering how old this technology is, the (nano)scale of features achieved is truly staggering!
This is a migration of the Micrographia channel. 🙂
📚 Sources
• Technology Connection's CED Playlist: • The CED (RCA SelectaVi...
• handwiki.org/wiki/Capacitance...
• www.cedmagic.com/selectavisio...
• slate.com/human-interest/2015...
• paleotronic.com/2020/10/04/th...
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacit...
🔬Instruments
• Amscope 40X-800X Trinocular Dual-illumination Metallurgical Microscope with Polarization
• Thermo Phenom XL G2 (BSD, SED and EDS)
• nGauge Atomic Force Microscope from ICSPI (www.icspicorp.com/)
🎵 Music
• Infinity Cycle by Spearfisher
• Murmuration by Spearfisher - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Oooh, I enjoyed re-watching that! Rather a lot of guesswork here, but assuming the 2.5 um groove is around 21 km long for an hour and the undulations have a fixed 400 nm length and the disk runs at constant linear pickup speed, the undulations are running at about 14 MHz as a constant carrier frequency (not FM at all). The original baseband FM composite TV signal on its 3.58 MHz subcarrier, plus audio at 4.5 MHz is used to modulate the *depth* of the undulations, so purely amplitude modulation *BY* the original FM signal. The diamond stylus was only there to float along the top of the undulations, but it had a 250 nm thick metallization on its trailing face. The edge of that layer faces the grooves and the capacitance between it and the disk forms part of the capacitance of a tuned RF cavity at about 910 MHz. That is excited by a 915 MHz oscillator. The Q-factor of the cavity (or tank circuit) is such that a small variation in resonant frequency moves the response at 915 MHz up and down the skirt of the resonance curve. The amplitude level of that induced signal is then envelope-detected as an AM signal. The demodulated output of that is the 14 MHz carrier, still amplitude-modulated. After another envelope detection, that is then converted back to the original FM baseband signal using a limiter and normal FM discriminator or phase locked loop. That is then used to drive a modulator so the reconstituted signal can be watched on a normal broadcast TV receiver. The capacitance change of around 100 attoFarads for 85 nm peak to peak height variation needs a high-reactance cavity, with perhaps less than 100 femtoFarads of capacitance so the variation in resonant frequency gives sufficient FM deviation. One day, I must make a video about this. Those folks at RCA really wild with this idea. Must have been something in the coffee....
Yeah so I don't understand this at all. So many terms. Envelope detection?
And why is there a frequency at 915 mhz?
Everything here is hard to put together. I am sure I would like a video that explains it well.
Your summary really puts the practical problems into perspective. It all sounds like someone at RCA thought "theoretically, if we make everything smaller, we could put a video signal on an LP". And then they started making everything smaller to end up with a system that was borderline impossible to develop. It took them 15 years to come up with some unreliable machines. It just sounds like technology that should have stayed in the lab.
@@graealex I suppose the same level of technical risk applied to magnetic bubble memory, but also to CDs and hard disks, but those projects were better managed. Ten failed projects for every billion dollar success needs significant capital and excellent management who are capable of taking a long view.
@@GoingtoHecq My understanding is that the system works on FM demodulation, where a reference frequency of 915MHz is compared to the frequency coming from the patterns on the disc. The difference between them is then decoded to become the audio and video signals.
I do like your fancy words, turboencabulator man. (Joking aside, your comment sounds very legit, but I couldn't tell if you were completely bullshitting because most of it goes waaayyy over my head.)
Since everyone is asking: I'm not just a monster, I had to cut the disc! I needed to cut a smaller piece to fit inside the SEM chamber, and on the AFM stage. Apologies for anyone who felt physical pain for watching that! 😅
No worries, not like the disks are priceless artefacts, as most are likely rotting away slowly in landfill anyway, or sitting warping in attics.
Gotta admit it hurt to see it cut. It is kind of a historical artifact. I accept the sacrifice was necessary for educational purposes.
I felt it a little, but it was a worthy sacrifice to the technology gods.
You have angered the Archaeology Gods!
Yeah. I had the 'what the...oh, right, of course' response.
Though, honestly, I have that same response to waffles...and the Irish.
Obviously just kidding about that last part, I love waffles. 😉[says the mostly Irish man]
Growing up, my grandma had one of these and they had around 200 discs at the local library. In the mid 90's the library sold them for $1 per movie and my grandma bought the lot. We had everything from Star Wars to Jane Fonda workouts.
The worst part was when someone would put the disc back in the case upside down so when you went to watch Escape from Witch Mountain it would start halfway through and you would have to reinsert the case upside down, take it out, flip it, put it back in only to find out there was a scratch and the movie would skip through the whole movie.
Oh neato. When I was a kid, my best friend had one (relegated to the kid's room). His only disc was a Herbie Hancock concert. I geeked out and watched _"Rocket"_ every time I came over. It was mind blowing to me, he couldn't have cared less.
as soon as i saw CED content i knew Technology Connections would be involved somehow 😂
A little correction - the height of the groove is not what encodes the signal, as stated at 4:45. As the signal is FM, it's actually the change in frequency from a known carrier (I believe 915MHz). This has a few advantages - you can normalize the amplitude and thus actually remove a lot of noise from the system, and as the amplitude ideally does not change at all, the groove stays a constant width.
Very cool to see up close! I'd never thought of actually trying to image the surface like that.
Thank you. The regular pattern of wiggly-bumps makes sense now.
yeah that is a big whoopsie, he just didnt understand how it worked, but has all the fancy toys to analyse it lol :)
It would still be accurate to say that the height of the groove is what encodes the signal, much like how the varying potential in an EM wave may encode a signal.
@@fnytnqsladcgqlefzcqxlzlcgj9220 Perhaps you missed him saying at 4:38 that the capacitance changes "are processed to extract an FM signal that contains the audio and video data." I think he understands pretty well. When he says at 4:45 "thus 60 minutes of color footage and audio are encoded in the nanoscale height differences of these small pits" he's perfectly summarizing the process.
@@Muny But it doesn't, not in radio or on the CED. It has to have some amplitude, but that amplitude is (ideally) constant in both cases. It's likely going through an AGC (automatic gain control) circuit, any changes in amplitude will actually be leveled out before demodulation.
I'm so glad you recommended Technology Connections for their video! Love his channel and yours too. Both two great and thorough channels.
ive watched the technology connections series on this like a dozen times. really fascinating saga, the politics, the science, it's just crazy
It’s bizarre that a surface depending on mere nanometers of precision to function correctly would ever have something rubbing against it *by design.* I’m just surprised the very concept was approved to enter engineering phase much less was even launched as a product.
The answer as to why something exists can simply be, "Humans are silly."
The general problem here was that development took so long. CED was conceived in 1964, that's about the time when serious development on diode-lasers started, which obviously is the precursor to CD and LaserDisc.
The technology that actually made CED irrelevant was VHS released in 1976, 5 years before CED.
The tracking force on the CED was _ultra_ low to help prevent wear (and they also used some fancy materials at first to help with wear, although that was eventually abandoned). I can see how they might have started with the premise of "well it's like a vinyl, but with lower tracking forces... we just need to balance it a bit better!". Might have felt like a slight incremental improvement over vinyl, when in reality it turned out to be a monumental undertaking.
@@BreakingTaps I don't think it was a particularly bad idea. The problem really was that some internal RCA problems, plus the practical problems they needed to overcome took them too long.
It remains that fabrication of CEDs was still a lot cheaper than for example LDs.
@@graealex Really? LD's were more expensive than CED's? I'd have thought that the LD's were pretty similar to CD manufacturing but I'm really not well versed in either of them. CED's just seem that they would be more complex.
Hope this video won't spiral into a 5 part series involving the latent heat
I wouldn't mind tbh
You'd rather like heat pumps or gas lanterns? :D
If there's anything the internet needs more of, it needs more latent heat.
Incredible technology, a shame it was all a bit of a waste. What I really wonder is how they made the masters, what sort of technology was involved 40-50 years ago to mass produce nanoscale features like this
Yessssss ... That's almost the more interesting topic. How the F were they able to manufacture those discs.
I believe they were pressed in a similar way as vinyl and its quite mind-blowing really !
I don't specifically remember if technology connections talks about about the production of the masters, but it's definitely worth the watch about this amazing technology that utterly failed.
CDs are made by stamping. Making the master is hard but the mass production is the easy part. Just slap it into some polycarbonate then aluminise it.
Dvds anc cd's for mass production are allso "pressed" the polycarbone is pumped into a mould that has the encoded data etched into it, low volume uses laser writing.
I hope Technology Connections is even half as excited as me to see this.
This thing feels like a project some engineer thought up out of curiosity whether it could work, and somehow it went way too far :D
At the start its development there were no "home video" systems, and this seemed like a reasonable way to achieve that, especially since it was seen as a further refinement of well understood and mature technology of vynil records (as opposed to brand new and uncertain methods). However it turned out to be far for more difficult to practiclly implement in real life which, combined with mismanagement/politics at corporate level meant that it took ages to reach market and by the time it did the VHS/Betamax and Laserdisk have been on the market for years.
@@HidingAllTheWay There's enough differences from audio vinyl that I would be hesitant to even compare the two. Surely, anyone who thought "vinyl recordings are well understood, this will be breezy" must have been either completely stoned, or a manager :D
Jokes aside, this technology seems pretty out there even by today's standards. I doubt the people involved didn't anticipate high risk it fails to deliver. No disrespect to any of them, they made a thing of beauty.
Basically, yes.
I'd love to see some other disc-based media. Magneto-optical discs, like a MiniDisc, might look interesting. Also, a comparison of recordable CDs vs re-writable CDs vs pressed CDs would be very informative to see.
Agreed and maybe even adding their dvd counterparts, HDDVD vs BluRay. Tbh just a full course of microscopy of electronic media storage would be neat.
It would be cool to see a size comparison to the pits on a cd/dvd.
About double the size as CD pits, but now you are also reading them by contact, instead of by light. Also CD rotation is slower, 300 RPM, while these disks had to run at frame rate, as the rotation generated 4 complete interlaced frames of video, unlike a DVD where the data rate is variable, so the playback channel only has to handle a lower rate of data and uses a buffer and hardware digital expander to recreate the video stream, instead of storing each field complete.
Awesome video! Absolutely amazing the detail that can be resolved from such small features. And yes the Technology Connections series is a masterpiece.
The best way to understand the CED failure is to put it into historic context with other developments:
1960 - First commercial products with helical-scan tape heads
1960 - First pumped/pulsed ruby laser operated
1960 - First continuous HeNe gas laser operated
1962 - First continuous GaAs semiconductor laser
1963 - LaserDisc invented
1964 - CED invented
1971 - VHS development started
1972 - First LaserDisc demo
1973 - First VHS demo
1974 - First analog optical disc development
1976 - VHS launched in Japan
1978 - LaserDisc launched
1981 - CED launched
1983 - CD Audio launched
Big problems with CED were machine price, and reliability. Using a physical pickup really wasn't a problem, the head drum is also in contact with VHS tape and degrades it with every play, and in contrast, CEDs could simply be pressed, basically with a normal vinyl-pressing process, just that the PVC was carbon-filled and I assume the master had a shorter lifespan.
I believe it was a four stage process for the moulds. There was only ever a single master for each title, cut from a near-atomically-flat copper disc. They then produced a "mother mould" negative from that, then interpositives, and then finally the relatively-short-lived pressing negatives. Some CEDs have a code near the centre which identifies the pressing mould version.
@@russwilliams4777 Thanks for the information.
Been patiently waiting for a new one of these. Fantastic work as usual Mr.Z
This is just the right amount of density of information. I don't know much about what's going on or the technical terms but you make it easy to listen to!
This video compliments Technology Connections' series extremely well! I found my way here from Ben @ applied science and I am happy as I can be!
If it didn't exist, I wouldn't believe it could work.
Exactly, I think the 'top brass' thought that too !
@@andymouse and it's one thing for it to work in principle - but it got polished enough to be released as a retail product.
I was always enchanted by those rainbow patterns it made back in the day
This is the best video you've ever put out. It's great! Good job and keep up the hard work.
Technology connections is my favourite channel, bar none. Really cool that you see that work as masterpieces as well! VERY cool vid!
Your microscopic content as well but mostly the way (intonation) in which you comment reminds me of the youtube channel: Journey to the Microcosmos. I just love the calm, almost hypnotic voice that sends my brain into a state of something in between being awake and asleep. Keep doing! Subscribed!
CED was a real wizardry to get old tech to do the unthinkable those engineers deserve all our respect
I always have to watch your videos at least twice, because the first time around I'm too mesmerized by the images to hear anything you say. Keep up the great work!
The technology we had when we were forced to create things in the analog.. it's just amazing. We created the entire digital world with nothing but transistors, ridges and grooves, sensitive decoders, and vacuum tubes.
Breaking Taps is a top 10 YT content creator in this category.
Depending on how you define the category, I'm not sure I can even name 10 YT content creators in the category. I define it here as science youtubers that do their own experiments and always bring "the good stuff". Here's the ones I came up with from the top of my head. Feel free to expand the list.
Breaking Taps. Applied Science (Ben Krasnow). Thought Emporium. Alpha Phoenix. NightHawkInLight.
Looks like some ancient artifact under the microscope. Makes one wonder about actual ancient artifacts and if their obvious appearance hides something more profound similar to this
Technology Connections would probably love this
Those were some very cool images. The later landing zone images of the rougher surface were especially interesting to think about the level of refinement and how these were made.
I randomly came across this video and my first thought was that this was some channel with millions of subscribers. This is top tier content, i love the narration!
Journey to The Microcosmos AND Engineering, my dream come true : )
Such an incredible feat of engineering, just to fall flat on its face when it released.
A beautiful video with great narration
Wonderful in-depth showcase!
so amazing. im glad i found your channel.
Beautiful music selection.
Love CEDs! 1970s analogue tech couldn't make use of it, but the feature size is *_so_* far below the wavelengths of visible light that optical discs like CD/DVD/BluRay could never compare - terabytes or even petabytes on a 12" disc!
this channel is so good!
Love to hear the Technology Connection recommendation at the end of the video!
There are two types of engineering problem solving. 1 -- consistently overcome all difficulties, complicate the system and get a miracle of engineering, a wonderful creation. 2 -- find a fundamentally different way where these problems simply do not exist and get a product that will change the world.
I had a CED and loved it!
Awesome channel and video!
Awesome stuff as always!!!
Great pace for this subject.
Honestly.. The fact we've had technologies to produce really incredible products even far back as the 70s is really crazy.. I only imagine what can we really do that's not yet public as of today... Truly amazing and interesting
I really enjoy your videos.
But I have a small problem. Ever since I first became aware of the tunneling electron microscopes many years ago, I have always wondered how they are able to move the tip with such amazing precision. So far all of the articles I have read seem to gloss over this aspect of the technology. I’d truly love to know how this apparent wizardry is accomplished. Thanks
I'm not sure what the original STM machines used, but nowadays they are likely piezoelectric stages. There are a few different varieties of stages, but for example one is called a stick-slip stage and it can give you both long range movements (several centimeters) as well as nanometer adjustments. If you juice the piezo with a large voltage it will shift forward rapidly and "slip" on the guide rail, then you lower the voltage slowly and it pulls itself forward via friction (the "slip" phase). Once you've positioned it, you can slowly change the voltage and it will shift slowly and by nanometers, allowing precise positioning.
They are a bunch of variants (typically called stick-slip, inertial motor, ultrasonic motor, etc), here are a few examples: xeryon.com/technology/how-do-piezo-motors-work/
@@BreakingTaps
Thanks for the information. Hadn’t considered piezo or ultrasonics before. I’m off to read the link you’ve provided. Cheers!
1960's used to play the old gramaphone in the old ladys bungalow
never understood how a needle could pickup sound from a disc seemed like magic dvds Cpus still seem magic to me trillions of tiny silicon strands that make a it work
About a decade ago now, my father bought 3000ish records that had been stored in the back of a van for who knows how long. Among those records, we found about 200 CEDs. Naturally, I had to look them up.
A couple minor points you missed. The stylus on a CED player is boat shaped. Also, the disc itself was coated in a lube that was required to keep the stylus from digging in like you showed. Well, that lube had 2 problems. The first, it attracted dust, like you showed in the landing groove. The second, it would dry out and destroy the stylus and cartridge.
I remember when they landed at Radio Shack in the early 80s.
This was the end of the line of electromagnetic analog recording formats. The CD and DVD finally moved us into the digital realm and now, streaming has eliminated physical media altogether.
this blew my mind... so in effect the player of the CED was a SCM device (similar to your AFM, which itself is kinda like the standard vinyl reader), all this done in 60s and 70s...
Beautiful video!
Awesome! I learned something cool just now.
That's pretty accurate and revealing. Thanks! I worked on the project at RCA so if you have any questions let me know. Great micro-images!
Fascinating and very well done! This is by far and away the only video I've found to go into such detail on the disc itself. It really is amazing that these where produced in the 70s, but it's also painfully obvious why this format is flawed and never should have caught on, due to the rapid damage and destruction of the media and Stylus. Bravo. But no thank you on the technology connections plug, I am not a fan. But of Breaking Taps? Hell to the yeah I'm a fan!
I knew you were going to say watch Technology Connections lol.
I enjoy rewatching this!
The information density will only be topped by photo masks for lithography or the silicon chips made.
I never expect to have a chance to see an analog video, all at once. Not even individual frames like a celluloid film would be.
My curiosity thanks you so much 🙌🏽🏆
This is fantastic
I discovered a while back that if you shine a green laser (green for best visibility) on the surface of a CD or DVD etc, you can see the tracks and individual pits in the reflection if you project it on a wall. It's more visible with larger tracks on CDs, but DVDs work, too. It shouldn't be surprising, but it never fails to impress me when I see 5-10 tracks of a CD being projected on my wall.
love your work
absolutely crazy to think its analog, mind blown
OK... Just WOW. WOW! A lot today was required to analyse what was "meh!" in those times to function!!!
I had a friend with one of these players. In the context of the time the video and audio were still better than VHS and CED Discs and players were more affordable than laser.
One of the things I like to do with your videos is get high and listen to them at .5 times speed. It makes you sound drunk but still highly intelligent and it makes me laugh.
Fascinating!
super cool!
I would love ❤️ to see a comparison of an AFM stylus to a CED stylus to the read/write head of a modern hard drive. I wonder how truly different they really are. I mean they all operate on the nm scale but serve completely different functions.
Quick! Somebody go get Alec…AKA “technology connections!”
He’s gonna love this shit
For any of those who aren’t familiar he did an incredible five part series on the history of the CD and what it did to RCA
Well shit my bad ….he mentioned it at the end of the video I was just so excited when I first saw it posted. And actually reached out to Alec and offered to use some of my similar lab equipment to examine the different media formats he has discussed. but my message must’ve been lost in the noise
i gasped when you started cutting it up.
Sorry! 😅Had to cut a piece to fit in the SEM chamber
"Engineers: Hmm we have problems with dust making distorsions and it require some high amount of data that take a lot of room on both side of the plate. If there only was a way to make a much smaller plate that has a protective surface that is much less sensitive and read out the info without even touching the surface, oh well that will never happen."
It is very impressive they could do this on a mass manufacturing and that it works
I’d like to see the same analysis on the Japanese version the VHD from what I understand they did not have groves
could you do organics under the AFM? organic polymers with micro- and nano- scale structures might be very interesting. particularly in chitin in funguses and insects
Well this is fascinating. Thank you YT algorithm, you got this one right.
Now I wanna see a VHD under that microscope
On the note of Storage Formats, how hard would it be to make Optical Disks with your equipment? Would you even be able to make stuff like this, or BETTER YET a new*minidisk* ?
Might be possible! I've been mulling over making a hard drive head for a long time (for reading/encoding magnetic domains on a big spinning platter, ala the early IBM disks). Optical might be doable, probably the hardest part is recreating or coming up with something similar to the coating used on CDs.
I ask to you more videos like this.
I just tought, could you probe a film strip? Or a photo? Could you get any detail out of that?
It may have been a market failure but it is far more elegant than any tape recording and certainly the digital discs.
What an absolute bonkers system. It feels kind of steampunk - like it's a weird hybrid of very modern and very old technology. I can see why it wasn't successful, but I'd be super curious to play with it.
It’s time for a technology connection
So cool
That's amazing
Nifty !
Awesome
I still will never understand how we can convert these types of information out of methods like this. It in no way "logically" represents a video or audio piece yet it somehow gathers intricate information from that storage method and it just boggles my mind..
How about developing an optical divice to read/interpret these analogue discs? That should be possible today... or is it not?
May be capture dust from the air and show that? Different types of dust from different environments.
How douyls these nanometer-scale features look under the AFM after just briefly touching them with a fingertip?
Would be great to the the needle itself 😄
at 2:11
it’s not diamond
diamonds are not conductive so you cannot create capacitance
I believe the CED stylus was made from titanium
Wow, cool tech! What speed do the discs rotate?
450 rpm for NTSC, 375 rpm for PAL! Constant rotation speed too which is interesting, so the encoding "density" changes as you move around the disc so that video playback is constant :)
@@BreakingTaps Wow, that's fast! That is something I always found interesting about vinyl records. Technically the quality near the outside of the record is higher than the center because of the information density. Thanks for the reply!
It supposedly was released in 1983 at which time I would have been four or five years old. It was just too late to the party to be taken seriously. CED was more something we heard about rather than were familiar with. VHS was already taking over as the consumer choice for home video. It could record programs and play movies. It's all we needed. The CD had been already out for a year, so I think the righting was already on the wall for vinyl. Why would you want a similar technology for movies? In reality, I think CED turned out to be a little more robust than LD. Laser Disc is rotting away while CED probably can still be played. Putting it in a caddy was quite smart. CD and LD really could have used one. Dust, fingerprints, and scratches haunt the format. Yet, they are easier to take care of than records. Records began to degrade as soon as you pulled them out of their sleeve. That's why I don't see it as this wondrous format audiophiles see it as. It has its novelty, but it's not a daily driver.
1:58 Not without a metamaterial super-lens.
Did you really have to cut the disc though? That really causes some _heartache._
Sorry, I pinned a comment with explanation since everyone was aghast 😅 Wouldn't fit inside the SEM chamber, or under the AFM, unless I cut out a piece.
This video says it's episode 05 but i only saw 3 episodes. Where can i find the rest?
analog technology makes it much more obvious to see the relation between energy and information, that a 1 or a 0 is just a difference in energy level.
I often find myself asking, how is it that X technology is from so long ago because it seems so much more complicated. CED and CRT often find themselves in that question.
No kidding... Another commenter asked about scanning electron microscopes, and the newer types which actually move a physical sensor... So, here we have a pickup which rides in grooves smaller than the wavelength of most visible light, and that was possible in the 70's. But our cutting-edge microscopes, now, basically brute-force tiny movement not dissimilar to this... IOW, they coulda made a pantograph-microscope, controlled by a disk like this, back then, insteada SEM. It's like the cutting-edge technologies flip-flopped.
And CRTs, I mean, it's amazing they can get such precision out of an electron beam, a couple magnets, and a couple capacitive plates, but that precision pales in comparison to an SEM, which basically uses the same technology... and, yet, now we're again, many years later, brute-forcing millions of individual off/on pixels, which is really hardly any more complex than the old light-bulb reader-boards from the early 1900's. Heh!
I didn’t even know this existed.
Any chance you decapsulate some CPUs and scan them? It'd be great if you could do old things like 386 and modern ones to compare.
That would be interesting! If he has the technology it would be interesting to see some advanced IC attacks like decapping and reading data directly from the chip, resetting fuse bits without erasing the chip (so protected data can be read out of the chip), and maybe some chips engineered with physical features designed to resist these attacks.