Good day everyone. My name is Michael, aka modernzorker, from good old Indiana in the middle of the United States. While I've had an interest in the LD format ever since I was a child, I've only owned a player for about fifteen years. I was well on my way to a decent-sized library until the day my dogs decided they would taste good and ate their way through the sleeves of about half my collection one afternoon when I took a nap.
After that, I 'shelved' my 'disc collection habits up until a couple of months ago when a large lot of discs came into the place where I work, and I got the itch to re-build (one does not see the Japanese "Millennium" LDs all that often, and I didn't even know they existed at the time--needless to say I couldn't NOT buy them, and things spiraled out from there). I stumbled across this site when looking for a way to catalog and keep track of my haul, but now I've hit a snag: something that not only doesn't seem to be in the database, but also that I can't find anywhere else online. I figure it's time to turn to the experts to see if anybody knows what on earth this disc is. It came as part of a bulk lot of discs I purchased at a yard sale last month, and I only just now got around to cataloging.
The disc itself came in a plain white sleeve with no artwork, although across the top of the front, someone had originally marked it as "The Elephant Man" in red pen. This was later written over in black ink with the words, "M.I.T. Summer 1981."
Inside the sleeve is a plain white paper sleeve holding the disc. Notations on one side of the sleeve have been made in pencil, and they appear to be frame references of some sort:
Quote:
27373 - Blondie
27325 -
29840 - b&w photos
On the bottom part of the sleeve is more pencil writings:
Quote:
Video/Optical Disc
Background and Developments > 31509
The disc itself has two sides (A and B), sports a Disco Vision label, reading, "M.I.T. Summer Session 1981", and has what I assume to be a catalog number as well: 07708. The copyright on the label gives a year of 1980.
I figured I'd stick it into the player and see what happened. The disc is NTSC, in CAV format, but the quality is very poor, something like you'd get from a multi-generational VHS copy--it doesn't appear rotted as far as I can tell. I pressed play and discovered it opens with a series of what appear to be French animated short cartoons, just a minute or two each. After several of these play in succession, there's a commercial for an old magazine called "Technology Illustrated". Following that comes a news story about the launch of a new satellite. The news presenter is cut off as the recording switches to a video of the launch as recorded from the ground as the shuttle ignites engines and takes off into the sky.
Following this was a seizure-inducing array of images that flashed by faster than the eye could perceive. It took me a few seconds to realize this was obviously a slide show, meant to be stepped through using the remote. There are thousands of images here, all of them roughly grouped into different categories: photographs of nature, works of art, pictures of wild animals, what look like candid shots from a college campus (one with references to the Dartmouth College Glee Club), bits of technology, faces of a whole slew of people I don't recognize (faculty/staff at MIT?), and it just keeps going from there into what look like someone's own personal vacation pictures, still frames captured from the video from an old handheld movie camera, and even a few, uh, 'candid' shots of somebody's wife/girlfriend that she'd probably prefer remained out of the public's eye, if you catch my drift...
Side B is even stranger: an array of video clips, each with a short title card, identifying where the material came from and what it's intended usage is. The first is a clip from the TV show "All In the Family", from the episode, "Archie and the Computer." The second is a video from England showing how to assemble the fuel pump for a Jaguar. From there it just gets stranger: a juggling demonstration which starts off using balls but progresses to using laserdiscs(!), a sales promotional video from the Avon corporation entitled "Avon Goes Disco At MIT" presented by the Avon Success Network, a video from AT&T, and more.
It's one of the weirdest things I've ever run across, in any format, ever. I cannot fathom what purpose any of it could serve, beyond just being a sort of tech demo for all the things one
could do with a laserdisc. Without any accompanying materials or paperwork, or even a table of contents, I feel ill-equipped to suss out its true nature. Thus I'm hoping the community is up to helping me solve a mystery.
Does anybody out there have any idea what this is, why it was made, or what purpose it may have today beyond sheer curiosity value? Has anyone come across similar pieces in their travels? I can post pictures of it later tonight if there's any interest. In the lot I purchased, it was sandwiched in with a number of other sampler-style discs: Pioneer Laser Optics, Paramount Sampler, and a couple of MGM/UA samplers. Guess the previous owner didn't know what to do with it either.
In any case, thanks so much for building up this awesome community and being so welcoming to neophytes and novices such as myself.
Thanks list
