johnw@gatech.edu (John Wheeler) (05/15/89)
Now the story can be told. I just completed a 14-day stretch of audio
engineering for The Jason Project, which I feel has been a landmark in
telecommunications.
It may have been in your city. Woods Hole Oceanographic, Electronic Data
Systems (EDS), and Turner Broadcasting System worked together to bring
thousands of children in 13 U.S. cities live interactive television from
the Mediterranean. A robot named "Jason" which was developed with the
U.S. Navy, went down to the ocean floor with high-res color TV cameras
to bring beautiful video of, and retreive, Roman artifacts 1800 years old.
The children, at museums, were able to talk directly with the exploration
team, headed by Dr. Robert Ballard (credited with the "Titanic" find) by
means of telephone interfaces here at TBS in Atlanta, which we mixed into
the show, as well as into a phone line (a dial-up) to Holmdel, NJ.
This line was then uplinked to Pan-Am Sat 1, and received by a 2 meter
gyro-stabilized dish on board the Star Hercules. This same dish provided
uplinking for video (encrypted with 2 channels of DIGITAL audio as well
as a data stream allowing scripts to be fed back to Atlanta from
a laptop PC on the ship). EDS also provided several direct-dial phone
"lines" to the ship (which appeared as New Jersey telephone numbers
on board the ship) over which we sent production coordination
information, and received backup audio.
We produced 84 television shows, placed approximately 250 calls to
museums using primarily US Sprint (though we occasionally used AT&T when
Sprint circuits arrived at "low" audio level). We DID find that,
at least here in Atlanta, AT&T lines come out LOUDER, even with the
sometimes higher noise floor, than do the Sprint mostly fiber optics.
If anyone saw the show at any museum sites, I'd love to get feedback.
--
Turner John Wheeler
E N T E R T A I N M E N T ...!gatech!nanovx!techwood!johnw
Networks
Techwood Library * home of Superstation TBS * TNT * TBS SportsSchwartz.osbunorth@xerox.com (05/22/89)
To John Wheeler, Re: The Jason Project/"If anyone saw the show at any museum sites, I'd love to get feedback." I'm sorry to say that I didn't see the show, but I attended a series of "TechTalks" at DeAnza College last fall. At one of these talks, Dr. Robert Ballard was the speaker, and he gave a fascinating presentation on his work, and described the upcoming Jason Project in which you took part. I'm happy to hear that it was accomplished without any major problems. If you ever hear of plans for a more public showing of this event, please share this with us. Sincerely, Victor Schwartz Xerox Corporation Sunnyvale California