Recording and Playback

The first playback unit I was around was a hand cranked 78 RPM record player my grandparents had in their basement. Then some time in my late teens I bought a Wilcox-Gay Recordio. This was a wooden cabinet table-top unit with a 78 RPM record player and an AM radio, but it also had a microphone and a cutting arm so you could cut (literally) your own records. The sound quality was the pits, but if you enunciated properly someone could play your recording on a 78 RPM record player and understand what you were saying.

My older brother had a wire recorder around for a while. A great big bulky thing with a little spool of wire, and you could not only record on it, you could record over previous messages.

After those days I had a small, reel to reel player/recorder, a variety of cassette player/recorders, 8 track units, multi-speed record players, and eventually graduated into the television VHS player/recorders.

Now I have one unit in the livingroom that will play 3 different speeds of vinyl records, play and record cassette tapes, has an AM - FM stereo radio and also a three disk CD playback feature. 8 track tapes have been gone for years.

I have an analog 27" television that gives me wonderful quality pictures, with a VCR player/recorder and a DVD player hooked to it. I also have a large section of one wall in the office covered with shelves of VHS tapes and DVD disks. Now they tell me if I was on antenna I wouldn't be able to receive television signals after next February, but my cable company assures me the set will continue to work fine through their system.

I'm just wondering if and when my television burns out and I have to switch to HD television, if that wall full of movies will even play on the new system. And when DVD's change to high definition will I have to then install a third playback unit just to be able to use old and new movies.

Of course I could keep up with the Jones' and have all the latest gadgets for this
sort of thing, but I have a feeling we're not too far from eliminating all of that conglomeration anyway. I can see how not too far in the future you will simply choose the movie you want to watch through the cable service, and never have to own a copy of. Like Pay Per View, but the movie starts when you want it too, and you can pause it just as if you had it in your home. Even burn a copy if you thought you might like to see it again later. About every movie ever made could be available in some giant Internet type server available at your beck and call. They system I have right now, suits me just fine. But I have a feeling I will be forced to part with more of my cash to keep up with the changes.

I may just go back to comic books and forget about the whole thing.

The First Oil Well

Titusville Pennsylvania claims the distinction of having the first well drilled for the purpose of striking oil in 1859, and much of the history of oil revolves around this discovery. However, a well at Burkesville Kentucky hit a gusher thirty years earlier in 1829. The oil shot up out of the ground fifty feet into the air, filling and flowing down a nearby stream into the Cumberland River where it covered the river from bank to bank to Selina Tennessee, a distance of 200 miles. It spewed forth an estimated fifty thousand barrels, and someone or something ignited the Cumberland, creating a two hundred mile river of fire for weeks. Where's an environmentalist when you need one.

To be fair to Titusville Pensylvania's claim to fame, the Burkesville Kentucky well was not drilled for oil, but for brine. Salt was an essential commodity to the pioneer settlers and one way they acquired it was by boiling off brine water. A fellow named Martin Beatty had accepted the job of drilling a brine well for a Dr. John Croghan from the Burkesville area. The drilling equipment was a crude, home make apparatus operated by foot power, and he had been laboriously drilling for weeks. Exasperated it's said he exclaimed one day "I will strike salt or I will strike hell". Some time after that his bit broke through into a pocket of gas and oil rocketing the rope and bit into the air followed by a fifty foot gusher of oil. It was reported he ran off into the woods never to be seen in the area again. I wonder if he was anywhere around to see the Cumberland on fire. He might well have thought he'd indeed unleashed hell upon the Earth.

When we think of oil producing states, we don't normally think of Kentucky. From where I sit here in south central Kentucky there are hundreds of wells pumping away in any direction you care to travel, several within two or three miles. Some of those wells have been steady producers for half a century and are still flowing. Most are not gushers, nor can they be pumped steadily. They determine the oil flow in any particular well and set the pumps on timers. It will pump for a while, then shut off long enough to allow the oil to flow back in before the pump comes back on.