Subject: AUDITORY DISPLAY HISTORY From: Gregory Kramer <70312.265(at)COMPUSERVE.COM> Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1993 10:59:37 EDTDear Colleagues: A couple of months ago I sent out a call on the AUDITORY list asking for information on early (or unusual) uses of non-speech audio to convey information. I'm enclosed a summary of the responses here. If these responses stimulate others, please contact me at :kramer(at)santafe.edu. Thanks. Gregory Kramer Clarity/Santa Fe Institute Nelson Lane Garrison, NY 10524 914-424-4071 fax:914-424-3467 kramer(at)santafe.edu ------------------ FLYBAR for flying an aircraft under instrument conditions using sound (nonspatial, for the most part,i.e., only intensity panning).-- Beth Wenzel Neurophysiologists still use amplifiers/speakers to listen to the sound of spiking neurons. Since neurons spike at a rate from < 1 Hz to 1000Hz, their spike trains are pitched and easy to listen to and to discern different neuron types.-----Josh Krieger, BBN Roy Patterson's work on auditory alarms.---Chuck Watson When LISP was first installed on the PDP-6, register 1 was reserved for garbage collection computations. This meant that, if you monitored it of sound, you would hear bursts of noise whenever garbage collection took place and silence otherwise. This would give the user a crude idea of how much of his clock time was going into garbage collection, rather than the computing he intended. Contemporary systems now tend to do things like modify the cursor when garbage collection is taking place, but I still tend to prefer the old auditory cue. ----Stephen W. Smoliar Morse code. Predates speech communication by radio and was used in telegraph offices.---Leslie Smith On the use of radios to diagnose computers, Boris Beizer mentions it in a couple of his books.----Jim Ballas The use of audio monitors to "Listen to Neurons" was well engrained in the culture of the Neural Encoding Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University when I was a graduate student of Eric Young. I believe that the use of audio-visual aid in determining the responsivness of auditory nerve fibers to acoustic stimulation was in place at the Eaton Peabody lab during the early 60's.----Herb Voigt Rebecca Mercuri mentioned Jesse Klapholz and Jon Sank, both audio engineers, who have interesting historical perspectives. ________________ Remember, if you have any other thoughts or sources, please let me know. Thanks. Greg