Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Games

GAMES
Playing games is an important part of growing up, it is what most children enjoy doing the most. And as time pass by, as the world changes, these games goes with the flow.
patintero, sipa, touching ball and so on….
-physical games which gives children exercise
-enhanced children social involvement
-gives parents more time to do other things

board games
-requires the use of mental ability
-improve the critical thinking of children
-give security to parents
-led to the sedentary lives of children

1) History of sony playstation
Early playstation to playstation 2
The history of the Playstation begins in 1988 when Sony and Nintendo were working together to develop the Super Disc. The Super Disc was going to be a CD-ROM attachment that was intended to be part of Nintendo’s soon to be released Super Nintendo game. However, Sony and Nintendo parted ways business-wise and the Super Disc was never introduced or used by Nintendo. In 1991, Sony used a modified version of the Super Disk as part of their new game console – the Sony Playstation. Research and development for the PlayStation had began in 1990, headed by Sony engineer, Ken Kutaragi.
Only two hundred models of the first Playstation (that could play Super Nintendo game cartridges) were manufactured by Sony. The original Playstation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the Playstation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information as well. In 1994, the new PlayStation X (PSX) was released that was no longer compatable with Nintendo game cartridges and only played CD-ROM based games. A smart move that soon made Playstations the best selling game console.

2) Online game
Online games refer to video games that are played over some form of computer network, most commonly the Internet. The expansion of online gaming has reflected the overall expansion of computer networks from small local networks to the Internet and the growth of Internet access itself. Online games can range from simple text based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Many online games have associated online communities, making online games a form of social activity beyond single player games.
Early online games
Online games started in the 1980s with MUDs, simple multiplayer text-based games, often played on a BBS using a modem. These games were frequently based on fantasy settings, using rules similar to those in the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Other styles of games, such as chess, Scrabble clones, and other board games were available. Since continuous connectivity was often expensive as access was frequently charged on a per-minute basis, some games were set up as play-by-email games.
First-person shooter games
During the 1990s, online games started to move from a wide variety of LAN protocols (such as IPX) and onto the Internet using the TCP/IP protocol. Doom popularized the concept of deathmatch, where multiple players battle each other head-to-head, as a new form of online game. Since Doom, most first-person shooter games contain online components to allow deathmatch/arena style play.
Real-time strategy games
Early real-time strategy games often allowed multiplayer play over a modem or local network. As the Internet started to grow during the 1990s, software was developed that would allow players to tunnel the LAN protocols used by the games over the Internet. By the late 1990s, most RTS games had native Internet support, allowing players from all over the globe to play with each other. Services were created to allow players to be automatically matched against another player wishing to play.
Browser games
As the World Wide Web developed and browsers became more sophisticated, people started creating browser games that used a web browser as a client. Simple single player games were made that could be played using a web browser via HTML and HTML scripting technologies.
The development of web based graphics technologies such as Flash and Java allowed browser games to become more complex. These games, also known by their related technology as “Flash games” or “Java games”, became increasingly popular. Many games originally released in the 1980s, such as Pac-Man and Frogger, were recreated as games that could be played using the Flash plugin on a webpage. Most browser games have limited multiplayer play, often being single player games with a high score list shared amongst all players.
Pet games are also very popular amongst the younger generation of online browser games. These games range from the gigantic games with 70 million + users, such as “Neopets” , to the smaller end more community based pet games like Petnebula.com, or TheUltimateHorse.com.

3) Effects/ Advantages/ Disadvantages:
• Some computer games show graphical violence, sexual themes or consumption of drugs and alcohol. Playing violent games leads to increased physiological arousal, Increased aggressive thoughts, feelings, and aggressive behaviors.
• Video games are natural teachers. Children find them highly motivating; by virtue of their interactive nature, children are actively engaged with them; they provide repeated practice; and they include rewards for skillful play.
• Video games have become a popular means of education both in the classroom and in the home. Research has shown that they have been used to teach a wide variety of subjects from fractions and history to flight simulation and building cities, roller coasters, and even families.
• Compared to Console games (PlayStation, Xbox etc.), online gaming has the advantage wherein you can play against other people in the network.
• They are attracted to video gaming simply because it offers such unprecedented ability to interact with large numbers of people engaged simultaneously in a structure environment where they are all involved in the same activity (playing the game).
• Players can develop and test their techniques against an advanced computer player or online against other human players.
History of Computer games
1970’s
• Coin –operated gaming
• Early handhelds- OXO
• First Generation (1972-1977)
On May 1972, video game console was released. It was built using analog electronics, and
was connected to a home television set.
• Second Generation (1977-1983)
In the earliest consoles, the computer code for one or more games was hard coded into
microchips using discrete logic, and no additional games could ever be added. By the
mid-1970’s video games were found on cartridges. Programs were burned onto ROM
chips that were mounted inside plastic cartridge casings that could be plugged into slots
on the console. When the cartridges were plugged in, the general-purpose
microprocessors in the consoles read the cartridge memory and ran whatever program
was stored there.
1980’s
• Hand held LCD games- Nintendo
• Third Generation (1985-1989)
In 1985, the North American video game console market was revived with Nintendo’s
release of its 8-bit console, the Famicom, known outside Asia as Nintendo Entertainment
System (NES). It was bundled with Super Mario Bros. and suddenly became a success.
In the new consoles, the gamepad took over joysticks, paddles, and keypads as the default
game controller included with the system. The gamepad design of an 8 direction D-pad
with 2 or more action buttons became the standard.
1990’s
• Decline of arcades
• Handhelds come of age- release of gameboy
• Fourth Generation (1989-1994)
The Sega Genesis (known elsewhere as the Mega Drive) proved its worth early on after
its debut in 1989. Nintendo responded with its own next generation system known as the
Super NES in 1991. CD-ROM drives were first seen in this generation.
• Fifth Generation (1994-1999)
In 1994-1995, Sega released Sega Saturn and Sony made its debut to the video gaming
scene with the PlayStation. Both consoles used 32-bit technology; the door was open for
3D games, though the Sega Saturn launch in the US started with a controversial advert
launch which saw a PlayStation console being thrown out of a window of a tower block
in an attempt to appeal that the Sega Saturn was much better than the PlayStation.
2000’s
• Sixth Generation (1998-2006)
1998
o Dance Dance Revolution
o Game Boy Color
2000
• Playstation 2
• The Sims
2001
• Game Cube and Game Boy Advance
• Xbox
2003
• Improved Game Boy Advanced SP
• Nokia N-Gage
• Seventh Generation (2004-Present)
2004
o N-Gage QD
o Nintendo DS
2005
• PSP (PlayStation Portable)
• Xbox 360
2006
• Nintendo DS Lite
• Wii (features new controller)
• PlayStation 3

Electronic games
Game boy
a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo
first released in released on April 21, 1989 in Japan and in August 1989 in the United States
Invented by nintendo employee Gunpei Yokoi (Japan)
thought of a system that should be small, light, inexpensive, and durable, as well as have a varied, recognizable library of games
it has a black and green reflective LCD screen, an eight-way directional pad, two action buttons, and Start and Select buttons.
It plays games from ROM-based media contained in small plastic detachable units called cartridges
originally bundled with the puzzle game Tetris, since Nintendo thought that an addictive puzzle game would get consumers’ attention
cartridge-based system that supported more than four players at one time

advantages in the modern family
- parents can leave their children playing game boy and do other work since children are hooked in this game
- this game enhances children’s thinking skills

disadvantages
- can damage children’s vision
- can cause relationship gap between parents and children
- expensive
1989 – The Nintendo Game Boy
– black and white screen,
- massive, It was cutting edge at the time and you could play Tetris
1995 – Nintendo released several Game Boy models with colored cases
1996 – Game Boy Pocket: a smaller, lighter unit that requires fewer batteries.
– the Pocket has a smaller link port, which requires an adapter to link with the older Game Boy. The port design is used on all subsequent Game Boy models
– screen was changed to a true black-and-white display
– batteries can last about 10 hrs
1997 – Game boy light was released in Japan
– has about the same size as the Pocket and has a backlit screen for improved visibility.
- uses 2 AA batteries, which give it approximately 20 hours with the light off and 12 with it on.
1998 – Game Boy Color was released
– added a color screen to a form factor slightly larger than the Game Boy Pocket.
– has double the processor speed, twice as much memory, and an infrared communications port.
– has near-universal backward compatibility

2001 – Game Boy Advance, a significant upgrade to the Game Boy line.
– featured a 32 bit 16.8 MHz ARM. It included a Z80 processor for backward compatibility to Game Boy and Game Boy Color game
– sported a larger, higher resolution screen
– controls were slightly modified with the addition of “L” and “R” trigger buttons
– drawback of the Game Boy Advance is that the screen is not backlit, making viewing difficult in some conditions.
2003 – Game Boy Advance SP
– featured a new smaller clamshell design with a flip-up screen, a switchable internal frontlight, and a rechargeable battery, with the omission of the headphone port, which now required a special adapter to be purchased separately
2005 – The third form of Game Boy Advance system, the Game Boy Micro
– four inches wide, two inches tall, and weighs 2.8 ounces.
– screen is slightly smaller than the SP and GBA screens while maintaining the same resolution (240 × 160 pixels) but is now a higher quality backlit display with adjustable brightness.

Remote control toys
Remote control
-electronic device used for the remote operation of a machine
- the use of radio signals to remotely control another device. The term is used almost universally to refer to the control of model cars, boats and airplanes from a user-held control box.
- usually small wireless handheld objects with an array of buttons for adjusting various settings
- communicate to their respective devices via infrared (IR) signals and a few via radio signals.
- usually powered by small AAA or AA size batteries.
- the first remote control was discovered in 1893 by Nikola Tesla and named it named Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vehicle or Vehicles.
- In 1903, Leonardo Torres Quevedo presented the Telekino, which is consisted of a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. It was a pioneer in the field of remote control.
- The first remote-controlled model airplane flew in 1932, and the use of remote control technology for military purposes.
-Zenith Radio Corporation in the early 1950s developed a remote control for television
- 1956, Robert Adler developed “Zenith Space Command”, a wireless remote. It was mechanical and used ultrasound to change the channel and volume.
- in the late 1970s, Ceefax teletext was developed. It is a re,pte control that has each number from zero to nine, as well as other control functions, such as switching from text to picture, and the normal television controls of volume, station, brightness, color intensity and so on.

Remote controls use a near infrared diode to emit a beam of light that reaches the device. This light is invisible to the human eye but carries signals that are detected by the appliance, as well as by the sensor of a digital camera.
A radio-controlled car is a powered model car driven from a distance using a radio control system. Inputs from joysticks on a transmitter are sent to the car’s onboard receiver.
Advantage in modern family:
- child can play at home even without supervision from an adult
- cannot cause any damage in the body unless by accident
- affordable

REFERENCES:
• Cultural Heritage. (2006)
Website: www.globalpinoy.com/ch_category=pinoygames
• Native Games. (2006).
Website: http://www. Pasyalan. Net
• Radio. Retrieved January 12, 2007, from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio
• Bellis, M. (2007). The invention of television. Retrieved
January 17, 2007, from About, Inc.
Website: http://inventors.about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/Television_Time_3.htm
• 5 Big Advantages of Online PC gaming. Retrieved January 16, 2007
Website: http://www.frogpad.com,
• Spohn, D. (2003). PC vs. Console – The Future of Online Gaming. Retrieved
January 16, 2007
Website: http://internetgames.about.com.
• Salt, B. (1997). Cinema, early development. Retrieved January 17, 2007, from
Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia
Website:http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_781532189_3/Cinema_qEarly_Development_of.html
• Crabb, J. History of theater. Retrieved January 13, 2007
Website: http://www.theaterhistory .com

Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Print Media

Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Audio/Music

HISTORY AND INVENTION OF RADIO
Various scientists proposed that electricity and magnetism, while both capable of causing attraction and repulsion of objects, were linked. In 1820 Hans Christian Ørsted performed a widely known experiment on man-made electric current and magnetism. He demonstrated that a wire carrying a current could deflect a magnetized compass needle. Ørsted’s experiments discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism in a very simple experiment. Ørsted’s work influenced André-Marie Ampère to produce a theory of electromagnetism.
In the history of radio and development of “wireless telegraphy”, several people are claimed to have “invented the radio”. The most commonly accepted claims are:-
Wireless Prehistory (19th century)
In the late 19th century it was clear to various scientists and experimenters that wireless communication was possible. Some early work was done by local effects and experiments of electromagnetic induction. Many understood that there was nothing similar to the “ethereal telegraphy” [1] [2] and telegraphy by induction; the phenomena being wholly distinct.
In 1831, Michael Faraday began a series of experiments in which he discovered electromagnetic induction. The relation was mathematically modelled by Faraday’s law, which subsequently became one of the four Maxwell equations. Faraday proposed that electromagnetic forces extended into the empty space around the conductor, but did not complete his work involving that proposal.
William Henry Ward –
Maxwell- Between 1861 and 1865, James Clerk Maxwell made experiments with electromagnetic waves. In 1873, as a result of experiments, Maxwell first described the theoretical basis of the propagation of electromagnetic waves in his paper to the Royal Society A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.
Mahlon Loomis of West Virginia has the oldest and most documented claim of inventing radio. Loomis received U.S. Patent 129971 for a “wireless telegraph” in July 1872. This patent utilizes atmospheric electricity to eliminate the overhead wire used by the existing telegraph systems.
David E. Hughes
In 1878, David E. Hughes was the first to transmit and receive radio waves when he noticed that his induction balance caused noise in the receiver of his homemade telephone. He demonstrated his discovery to the Royal Society in 1880 but was told it was merely induction.
Calzecchi-Onesti
In 1884, Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti at Fermo in Italy invented a tube filled with iron filings, called a “coherer”.
Edouard Branly
Between 1884 and 1886, Edouard Branly of France produced an improved versions of the coherer.
Edison
In 1885, Edison took out U.S. Patent 465971 on a system of radio communication between ships (which later he sold to Marconi).
Hertz
Between 1886 and 1888, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz validated Maxwell’s theory through experiment. He demonstrated that radio radiation had all the properties of waves (now called Hertzian waves), and discovered that the electromagnetic equations could be reformulated into a partial differential equation called the wave equation. But he saw no practical use for his discovery. For more information see Invention Of Radio#Hertz’s radio work.
Wireless radio beginnings
In 1893, at St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla gave a public demonstration of “wireless” radio communication. means to reliably produce radio frequencies, publicly demonstrated the principles of radio, and transmitted long distant signals. He holds the US patent for the invention of the radio, as defined as “wireless transmission of data”. The apparatus that he used contained all the elements that were incorporated into radio systems before the development of the “oscillation valve”, the early vacuum tube. Tesla was the first to apply the mechanism of electrical conduction to wireless practices. Also, he initially used sensitive electromagnetic receivers [5], that were unlike the less responsive coherers later used by Marconi and other early experimenters.
Oliver Lodge- transmitted radio signals on August 14, 1894. On 19 August 1894 he demonstrated the reception of Morse code signalling via radio waves using a “coherer”.
Lodge improved Edouard Branly’s coherer radio wave detector by adding a “trembler” which dislodged clumped filings, thus restoring the device’s sensitivity. [8]
In November of 1894, the Indian physicist, Jagdish Chandra Bose, demonstrated publicly the use of radio waves in Calcutta, but he was not interested in patenting his work
In 1894, the Russian physicist Alexander Popov built a coherer. On May 7, 1895, Popov performed a public demonstration of transmission and reception of radio waves used for communication at the Russian Physical and Chemical Society, using his coherer. Popov was the first to develop a practical communication system based on the coherer, and is usually considered by the Russians to have been the inventor of radio. In 1898 his signal was received 6 miles away.
In 1899 his signal was received at 30 miles away.
1895: 3-way near photofinish for first use of radio
In 1896, Tesla detected transmissions from his New York lab with a receiver located at West Point, “a distance of about 30 miles.” [15]
In 1895, Marconi received a telegraph message without wires, but he did not send his voice over the airwaves.
In March 1895, Popov transmitted radio waves between campus buildings in Saint Petersburg, but did not apply for a patent.
The New Zealander Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson was instrumental in the development of radio. In 1895 he was awarded an Exhibition of 1851 Science Research Scholarship to Cambridge. Rutherford was encouraged in his work by Sir Robert Ball, who had been scientific adviser to the body maintaining lighthouses on the Irish coast; he wished to solve the difficult problem of a ship’s inability to detect a lighthouse in fog. Sensing fame and fortune, Rutherford increased the sensitivity of his apparatus until he could detect electromagnetic waves over a distance of several hundred metres.
In 1896, Guglielmo Marconi was awarded a patent for radio with British Patent 12039, Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus There-for. This was the initial patent for the radio, though it used various earlier techniques of various other experimenters (primarily Tesla) and resembled the instrument demonstrated by others (including Popov). Marconi established the radio station on the Isle of Wight, England. In the U.S. during 1897, Tesla applied for two key radio patents. Those two patents were issued in early 1900.
In 1898, Marconi opened a radio factory in Hall Street, Chelmsford, England, employing around 50 people. In 1899, Bose announced his invention of the “iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector” in a paper presented at Royal Society, London. In 1900, Reginald Fessenden made a weak transmission of voice over the airwaves. Around 1900, Tesla opened the Wardenclyffe Tower facility and advertised services. In 1903, Wardenclyffe Tower neared completion. Various theories exist on how Tesla intended to achieve the goals of this wireless system (reportedly, a 200 kW system). Tesla claimed that Wardenclyffe, as part of a World System of transmitters, would have allowed secure multichannel transceiving of information, universal navigation, time synchronization, and a global location system. In 1904, The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, possibly influenced by Marconi’s financial backers in the States, who included Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie. This also allowed the U.S. government (among others) to avoid having to pay the royalties that were being claimed by Tesla for use of his patents.
Early radio telegraphy and telephony
British Marconi
Using various patents, the company called “British Marconi” was established and began communication between coast radio stations and ships at sea. This company along with its subsidiary American Marconi, had a stranglehold on ship to shore communication. It operated much the way American Telephone and Telegraph operated until 1983, owning all of its own equipment and refusing to communicate with non-Marconi equipped ships.
The invention of amplitude-modulated (AM) radio, so that more than one station can send signals (as opposed to spark-gap radio, where one transmitter covers the entire bandwidth of the spectrum) is attributed to Reginald Fessenden and Lee de Forest. On Christmas Eve of 1906, Reginald Fessenden used an Alexanderson alternator and rotary spark-gap transmitter to make the first radio audio broadcast, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible.
In April 1909 Charles David Herrold, an electronics instructor in San Jose, California constructed a broadcasting station. It used spark gap technology, but modulated the carrier frequency with the human voice, and later music. The station “San Jose Calling” (there were no call letters), continued to eventually become today’s KCBS in San Francisco. Coined the terms “narrowcasting” and “broadcasting” (The term “broadcasting” had been used in farming to define the tossing of seed in all directions) To help the radio signal to spread in all directions, he designed some omnidirectional antennas, which he mounted on the rooftops of various buildings in San Jose. Herrold also claims to be the first broadcaster to accept advertising (he exchanged publicity for a local record store for records to play on his station).
Audio broadcasting (1915 to 1950s)
The most common type of receiver before vacuum tubes was the crystal set, although some early radios used some type of amplification through electric current or battery. Inventions of the triode amplifier, motor-generator, and detector enabled audio radio. The use of amplitude modulation (AM), with which more than one station can simultaneously send signals (as opposed to spark-gap radio, where one transmitter covers the entire bandwidth of spectra) was pioneered by Fessenden and Lee de Forest.

FM and television start
In 1933, FM radio was patented; Edwin H. Armstrong invented it. FM uses frequency modulation of the radio wave to minimize static and interference from electrical equipment and the atmosphere, in the audio program. In 1937, W1XOJ, the first experimental FM radio station, was granted a construction permit by the FCC. In the 1940s, standard analog television transmissions started in North America and Europe.

FM
After World War II, the FM radio broadcast was introduced in Germany. In 1948, a new wavelength plan was set up for Europe at a meeting in Copenhagen. Because of the recent war, Germany (which was not even invited) was only given a few medium-wave frequencies, which are not very good for broadcasting. For this reason Germany began broadcasting on USW, “ultra short wave” (nowadays called VHF). After some amplitude modulation experience with VHF, it was realized that FM radio was a much better alternative for VHF radio than AM.
Later 20th century developments
In the early 1960s, VOR systems finally became widespread; before that, aircraft used commercial AM radio stations for navigation. (AM stations are still marked on U.S. aviation charts). In 1954, Regency introduced a pocket transistor radio, the TR-1, powered by a “standard 22.5V Battery”. In 1960, Sony introduced their first transistorized radio, small enough to fit in a vest pocket, and able to be powered by a small battery. It was durable, because there were no tubes to burn out. Over the next twenty years, transistors displaced tubes almost completely except for very high power, or very high frequency, uses.

Telex on radio
Telegraphy did not go away on radio. Instead, the degree of automation increased. On land-lines in the 1930s, Teletypewriters automated encoding, and were adapted to pulse-code dialing to automate routing, a service called telex. For thirty years, telex was the absolute cheapest form of long-distance communication, because up to 25 telex channels could occupy the same bandwidth as one voice channel. For business and government, it was an advantage that telex directly produced written documents.
Telex systems were adapted to short-wave radio by sending tones over single sideband. CCITT R.44 (the most advanced pure-telex standard) incorporated character-level error detection and retransmission as well as automated encoding and routing. For many years, telex-on-radio (TOR) was the only reliable way to reach some third-world countries. TOR remains reliable, though less-expensive forms of e-mail are displacing it. Many national telecom companies historically ran nearly pure telex networks for their governments, and they ran many of these links over short wave radio.

21st century development
Internet radio consists of sending radio-style audio programming over streaming Internet connections: no radio transmitters need be involved at any point in the process.
Early technology wars: Push or pull, streaming media or multicast
Run your own station with live365 or almost like Geocities or Hotmail

Sound Recording and Reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, usually used for the voice or for music.
The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording.
The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical cylinder phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878, and in some ways resembled the phonoautograph patented by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1857. The invention soon spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s. The development of mass-production techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910.
The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone disc, generally credited to Emile Berliner and commercially introduced in the United States in 1889.
Discs were easier to manufacture, transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being recordable/playable on both sides — cylinders, by necessity, were single-sided. Sales of the Gramophone record overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of World War I the disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. In various permutations, the audio disc format became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century, and the double-sided 78rpm shellac disc was the standard consumer music format from the early 1930s to the late 1950s.
Although there was no universally accepted speed, and various companies offered discs that played at several different speeds, the major recording companies eventually settled on a de facto industry standard of 78 revolutions per minute, which gave the disc format its common nickname, the “seventy-eight”.

Electrical recording
Sound recording began as a mechanical process and remained so until the 1920s, when a string of groundbreaking inventions in the field of electronics revolutionised sound recording and the young recording industry. These included sound transducers such as microphones and loudspeakers, recording devices such as the tape recorder and various electronic devices such as the mixing desk, designed for the amplification and modification of electrical sound signals.

Postwar Advances
There were further advances during and just after World War II. British technicians developed full frequency range recording (FFRR) which for the first time enabled the creation of disc recordings that could reproduce sounds across the full spectrum of the human hearing range.
Shortly after the war the music industry was revolutionized by the two new innovations. The vinyl microgroove disc, greatly extended the duration, sound quality and durability of commercial records and led to the introduction of two new record formats. Columbia Records introduced the 33-1/3rpm long-playing (LP) record in 1947, soon followed by the RCA 45rpm 7-inch single, launched in 1948.
The other major inventions of this period were magnetic tape and the tape recorder. Paper-based tape was first used but was soon superseded by polyester and acetate backing due to dust drop and hiss. Acetate was more brittle than polyester and snapped easily. This technology, the basis for almost all commercial recording from the 1950s to the 1980s, was invented by German audio engineers in the 1930s, who also discovered the technique of AC biasing, which dramatically improved the frequency response of tape recordings. Tape recording was perfected just after the war by American audio engineer John T. Mullin, whose pioneering recorders were based on captured German recorders, and the Ampex company produced the first commercially available tape recorders in the late 1940s.
Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it.
American musician-inventor Les Paul had invented the first multitrack tape recorder, bringing about another technical revolution in the recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the Musique Concrète school and avant garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen, which in turn led to the innovative pop music recordings of artists such as Frank Zappa, The Beatles and The Beach Boys.
The vinyl microgroove record was introduced in the late 1940s, and the two main vinyl formats — the 7-inch single and the 12-inch LP (long-playing) record — had totally replaced the 78rpm shellac disc by the end of the 1950s.

Stereo and Hi-Fi
Magnetic tape also enabled the development of the first practical commercial sound systems that could record and reproduce high-fidelity stereophonic sound.
The first major breakthrough in practical stereo sound was made by Bell Laboratories, who in 1937 demonstrated a practical system of two-channel stereo, using dual optical sound tracks on film. Major movie studios quickly developed three-track and four-track sound systems, and the first stereo sound recording in a commercial film was made by Judy Garland for the MGM movie Listen, Darling in 1938. The first commercially-released movie with a full stereo soundtrack was Walt Disney’s Fantasia, released in 1940.

The 50’s and Beyond
The electronics revolution that followed the invention of the transistor brought other radical changes, the most important of which was the introduction of the world first “personal music device”, the miniaturised transistor radio, which became a major consumer luxury item in the 1960s, transforming radio broadcasting from a static group experience into a mobile, personal listening activity.
The next important innovation was the compact cassette, introduced by the Philips electronics company in 1964. The cassette became a major consumer audio format and advances in microelectronics eventually led to the development of the Sony Walkman, introduced in the 1970s, which gave a major boost to the mass distribution of music recordings. Cassettes became the first successful consumer recording/re-recording medium.
The key advance in audio fidelity came with the introduction of the Dolby A noise reduction system, invented by Ray Dolby and introduced in 1966, which greatly improved the sound of cassette tape recordings.
The transistor also fuelled a boom in the sale of consumer high-fidelity “hi-fi” sound systems in the 1970s. In the 1950s and 1960s most record players were monophonic and relatively “low-fi” in sound quality, and few consumers could afford high-quality stereophonic sound systems. In the 1960s American manufacturers introduced a new generation of “modular” high-fidelity components — turntables, integrated amplifiers, tape recorders and other ancillary equipment (like the graphic equaliser), which could be connected together to create a complete home sound system. These developments were rapidly taken up by the Japanese electronics companies, who flooded the world market with a plethora of relatively cheap, high-quality components, and by the 1980s corporations like Sony had become world leaders in the industry.

Digital Recording
The invention of digital sound recording and the compact disc in 1983 brought massive improvements in the durability and sound quality of consumer recordings. The CD initiated another massive wave of change in the consumer music industry, with vinyl records effectively relegated to a small niche market by the mid-1990s.
The most recent and revolutionary developments have been in digital recording, with the invention of the first purely electronic consumer recording format — the MP3 digital music file — accompanied by the invention of solid-state computerised digital audio players like the Apple iPod. New technologies such as Super Audio CD and DVD-A continue to set very hi-fi digital standards.
The field covers many areas, from Hi-Fi to Professional audio, Internet radio and Podcasting.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Radio

Advantages
Cost
-Radio also offers the greatest value in terms of price and efficiency.” (McGoldrick, 1996) Low advertising rates in comparison with TV are the best advantage of radio as an advertising medium. This low cost for producing radio advertising can be compared with the low cost for creating content on the Internet.
Reach and Frequency
-With the help of radio’s mobility, radio has the widest exposure compared with any other medium. Radio can reach consumers no matter where they are. In addition, advertisers can repeat their advertising on radio on behalf of the low cost of radio time. The reason for survival of radio as an advertising medium in the environment of digital CMC era could be attributed to mobility and exposure strength of the radio medium.
Target Audience Selectivity
-Radio is an effective medium because of its ability to target audiences specifically. According to McGoldrick (1996), “The typical radio listener only listens to 3 stations per week: the preferred music station, the backup news and information station, and a station determined by the listener’s mood.” Because of such limited divergence of radio listeners’ usage habits, conveying the right advertising messages to the right audiences will be possible.
Creative Opportunities
-Radio seems to be the least effective advertising medium in terms of sensory stimulation because of its limited unidimensional function. However, that unidimensional function of radio can make radio have a better chance at stimulating the imagination of the listeners.

Disadvantages
Interference: communication devices using similar frequencies – wireless phones, scanners, wrist radios and personal locators can interfere with transmission
Lack of security: easier to “eavesdrop” on transmissions since signals are spread out in space rather than confined to a wire

KARAOKE
Karaoke (カラオケ, Karaoke? 空 kara, “empty” or “void”, and オーケストラ ōkesutora, “orchestra”) listen (help•info) is a form of entertainment in which an amateur singer or singers sing along with recorded music on microphone. The music is typically of a well-known song in which the voice of the original singer is absent or reduced in volume. Lyrics are usually also displayed, sometimes including color changes synchronized with the music, on music video to guide the sing-along.
Karaoke has been a popular form of entertainment beginning first in Japan, then the rest of East Asia, since at least the 1980s, and has since spread to other parts of the world.

History
It has been common to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party in Japan, as in the rest of the world, for a long time. This tradition appeared in the earliest Japanese mythology. For a long time, singing and dancing remained one of the few adult entertainments in rural areas. Noh was initially played at a tea party and guests were welcomed to join in for a cheer or a shout of praise. Dancing and singing was also a part of a samurai’s education. It was expected that every samurai have a dance or a song they could perform. During the Taisho period, Utagoe Kissa, (literally song coffee shop), became popular and customers sung to a live performance of a music band.
Japanese singer Daisuke Inoue (Inoue Daisuke) was asked by frequent guests in the Utagoe Kissa, where he performed, to provide a recording of his performance so that they could sing along on a company-sponsored vacation. Realizing the potential for the market, Inoue made a tape recorder that played a song for a 100-yen coin. This was the first Japanese sing-along machine. Instead of selling karaoke machines, he leased them out, so that stores did not have to buy new songs on their own. Originally it was considered a fad which was lacking the “live atmosphere” of a real performance.
Roberto del Rosario, a Filipino inventor who called his sing-along system Minus-One, now holds the patent for the device now commonly known as the karaoke machine. Following a court battle with a Chinese company which claimed to have invented the system, his patents were issued in 1983 and 1986.
Early karaoke machines used cassette tapes but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In 1992, Taito introduced the X2000 that fetched music via a dial-up telephone network. Its repertoire of music and graphics was limited, but the advantage of continuous updates and the smaller machine size saw it gradually replace traditional machines. Karaoke machines connected via fiber-optic links to provide instant high-quality music and video are becoming increasingly popular.
Its popularity has spread rapidly to the United States, Canada and other Western countries. Some people still regard it as “hokey” and simply a method for the intoxicated to embarrass themselves, but as the novelty has worn off and the available selection of music has exploded, more and more people within the industry see it as a very profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment.

Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Television/Movies

The Invention of Television

Timeline
Television was not invented by a single inventor, instead many people working together and alone over the years, contributed to the evolution of television.

1831
Joseph Henry’s and Michael Faraday’s work with electromagnetism jumpstarts the era of electronic communication.
1862 First Still Image Transferred
Abbe Giovanna Caselli invents his Pantelegraph and becomes the first person to transmit a still image over wires.
1873
Scientists May and Smith experiment with selenium and light, this reveals the possibilty for inventors to transform images into electronic signals.
1876
Boston civil servant George Carey was thinking about complete television systems and in 1877 he put forward drawings for what he called a selenium camera that would allow people to see by electricity.
Eugen Goldstein coins the term “cathode rays” to describe the light emitted when an electric current was forced through a vacuum tube.
Late 1870s
Scientists and engineers like Paiva, Figuier, and Senlecq were suggesting alternative designs for Telectroscopes.
1880
Inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison theorize about telephone devices that transmit image as well as sound.
Bell’s Photophone used light to transmit sound and he wanted to advance his device for image sending..
1881
Sheldon Bidwell experiments with his Telephotography that was similiar to Bell’s Photophone.
1884 18 Lines of Resolution
Paul Nipkow sends images over wires using a rotating metal disk technology calling it the electric telescope with 18 lines of resolution.
German engineering student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the world’s first electromechanical television system in 1884. Paul Nipkow devised the notion of dissecting the image and transmitting it sequentially. To do this he designed the first television scanning device. Paul Nipkow was the first person to discover television’s scanning principle, in which the light intensities of small portions of an image are successively analyzed and transmitted. In 1873 the photoconductive properties of the element selenium were discovered, the fact that selenium’s electrical conduction varied with the amount of illumination it received. Paul Nipkow created a rotating scanning disk camera called the Nipkow disk, a device for picture analyzation that consisted of a rapidly rotating disk placed between a scene and a light sensitive selenium element. The image had only 18 lines of resoution.
1900 And We Called It Television
At the World’s Fair in Paris, the first International Congress of Electricity was held. That is where Russian Constantin Perskyi made the first known use of the word “television.”
1906 – First Mechanical Television System
Lee de Forest invents the Audion vacuum tube that proved essential to electronics. The Audion was the first tube with the ability to amplify signals.
Boris Rosing combines Nipkow’s disk and a cathode ray tube and builds the first working mechanical TV system.
1907 Early Electronic Systems
Campbell Swinton and Boris Rosing suggest using cathode ray tubes to transmit images. Independent of each other, they both develop electronic scanning methods of reproducing images.
Electronic television is based on the development of the cathode ray tube – CRT – which is the picture tube found in modern television sets. A cathode ray tube or CRT is a specialized vacuum tube in which images are produced when an electron beam strikes a phosphorescent surface. Television sets, computers, automated teller machines, video game machines, video cameras, monitors, oscilloscopes and radar displays all contain cathode-ray tubes. Phosphor screens using multiple beams of electrons have allowed CRTs to display millions of colors.
1923
Vladimir Zworkin patents his iconscope a TV camera tube based on Campbell Swinton’s ideas. The iconscope, which he called an electric eye becomes the cornerstone for further television development. Zworkin later develops the kinescope for picture display (aka the reciever).
1924/25 First Moving Silhouette Images
American Charles Jenkins and John Baird from Scotland, each demonstrate the mechanical transmissions of images over wire circuits. What John Logie Baird did towards the development and promotion of mechanical television in Britain, Charles Jenkins did for mechanical television in North America.
John Baird becomes the first person to transmit moving silhouette images using a mechanical system based on Nipkow’s disk.
Charles Jenkin built his Radiovisor and 1931 and sold it as a kit for consumers to put together.
Radiovisors were mechanical scanning-drum radiovision devices manufactured by the Jenkins Television Corporation, founded in 1928. The radiovisor was a multitube radio set that had a special attachment for receiving pictures, a cloudy 40 to 48 line image projected onto a six-inch square mirror. Jenkins preferred the names radiovisor and radiovision over television. Charles Jenkins also opened and operated North America’s first television station, W3XK in Wheaton, Maryland. The short-wave radio station began transmitting across the Eastern U.S. in 1928, regularly scheduled telecasts of radiomovies produced by Jenkins Laboratories Incorporated.
Vladimir Zworkin patents a color television system.
1926 30 Lines of Resolution
John Baird operates a television system with 30 lines of resolution system running at 5 frames per second.
John Logie Baird is remembered as being an inventor of a mechanical television system. In the 1920’s, John Logie Baird and American Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using arrays of transparent rods to transmit images for television and facsimiles respectively. Baird’s 30 line images were the first demonstrations of television by reflected light rather than back-lit silhouettes. John Logie Baird based his technology on Paul Nipkow’s scanning disc idea and later developments in electronics.
The television pioneer created the first televised pictures of objects in motion (1924), the first televised human face (1925) and a year later he televised the first moving object image at the Royal Institution in London. His 1928 trans-atlantic transmission of the image of a human face was a broadcasting milestone. Color television (1928), stereoscopic television and television by infra-red light were all demonstrated by Baird before 1930
1927
Bell Telephone and the U.S. Department of Commerce conduct the first long distance use of television that took place between Washington D.C. and New York City on April 9th. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover commented, “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown.”
Philo Farnsworth, files for a patent on the first complete electronic television system, which he called the Image Dissector.
Philo Farnsworth was the first inventor to transmit a television image comprised of 60 horizontal lines. The image transmitted was a dollar sign. Farnsworth developed the dissector tube, the basis of all current electronic televisions.
1928
The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television station license (W3XK) to Charles Jenkins in Wheaton Maryland. The short-wave radio station began transmitting across the Eastern U.S. in 1928, regularly scheduled telecasts of radiomovies produced by Jenkins Laboratories Incorporated.
1929
Vladimir Zworkin demonstrates the first practical electronic system for both the transmission and reception of images using his new kinescope tube.
John Baird opens the first TV studio, however, the image quality was poor.
1930
Charles Jenkins broadcasts the first TV commercial.
The BBC begins regular TV transmissions using the Baird 30-line system. It was the first simultaneous sound and vision telecast.
July, 1930 – the first British Television Play was transmitted, “The Man with the Flower in his Mouth.”
1933
Iowa State University (W9XK) starts broadcasting twice weekly television programs in cooperation with radio station WSUI.
1936
About 200 hundred television sets are in use world-wide.
The introduction of coaxial cable, which is a pure copper or copper-coated wire surrounded by insulation and an aluminum covering.
These cables were and are used to transmit television, telephone, and data signals.
The first experimental coaxial cable lines were laid by AT&T between New York and Philadelphia in 1936. The first regular installation connected Minneapolis and Stevens Point, WI in 1941.
The original L1 coaxial-cable system could carry 480 telephone conversations or one television program. By the 1970’s, L5 systems could carry 132,000 calls or more than 200 television programs.
1937
CBS begins its TV development.
The BBC begins high definition broadcasts in London.
1939
Vladimir Zworkin and RCA conduct experimentally broadcasts from the Empire State Building.
Television was demonstrated at the New York World’s Fair and the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition.
RCA’s (Radio Corporation of America) David Sarnoff used his company’s exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair as a showcase for the 1st Presidential speech (Roosevelt) on television and to introduce RCA’s new line of television receivers, some of which had to be coupled with a radio if you wanted to hear sound.
The Dumont company starts making tv sets.
1940
Peter Goldmark invents a 343 lines of resolution color television system.
1941
The FCC releases the NTSC standard for black and white TV.
1943
Vladimir Zworkin developed a better camera tube called the Orthicon. The Orthicon had enough light sensitivity to record outdoor events at night.
1946
Peter Goldmark, working for CBS, demonstrated his color television system to the FCC. His system produced color pictures by having a red-blue-green wheel spin in front of a cathode ray tube.
This mechanical means of producing a color picture was used in 1949 to broadcast medical procedures from Pennsylvania and Atlantic City hospitals. In Atlantic City, viewers could come to the convention center to see broadcasts of operations. Reports from the time noted that the realism of seeing surgery in color caused more than a few viewers to faint.
Although Goldmark’s mechanical system was eventually replaced by an electronic system he is recognized as the first to introduce a broadcasting color television system.
1948
Cable television formerly known as Community Antenna Television or CATV is introduced in Pennsylvania as a means of bringing television to rural areas.
Community antenna television (now called cable television) was started by John Walson and Margaret Walson in the spring of 1948. The Service Electric Company was formed by the Walsons in the mid 1940s to sell, install, and repair General Electric appliances in the Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania area. In 1947, the Walson also began selling television sets. However, Mahanoy City residents had problems receiving the three nearby Philadelphia network stations with local antennas because of the region’s surrounding mountains. John Walson erected an antenna on a utility pole on a local mountain top that enabled him to demonstrate the televisions with good broadcasts coming from the three Philadelphia stations.
Walson connected the mountain antennae to his appliance store via a cable and modified signal boosters. In June of 1948, John Walson connected the mountain antennae to both his store and several of his customers’ homes that were located along the cable path, starting the nation’s first CATV system.
John Walson has been recognized by the U.S. Congress and the National Cable Television Association as the founder of the cable television industry. John Walson was also the first cable operator to use microwave to import distant television stations, the first to use coaxial cable for improved picture quality, and the first to distribute pay television programming (HBO).
One million homes in the United States have television sets.
1950
The FCC approves the first color television standard which is replaced by a second in 1953.
1956
Ampex introduces the first practical videotape system of broadcast quality.
1956
Robert Adler invents the first practical remote control called the Zenith Space Commander. It was preceded by wired remotes and units that failed in sunlight.
1960
The first split screen broadcast occurs on the Kennedy – Nixon debates.
1962
AT&T launches Telstar, the first satellite to carry TV broadcasts – broadcasts are now internationally relayed.
1967
Most TV broadcasts are in color.
1969
July 20, first TV transmission from the moon and 600 million people watch.
1972
Half the TVs in homes are color sets.
1973
Giant screen projection TV is first marketed.
1976
Sony introduces betamax, the first home video cassette recorder.
1978
PBS becomes the first station to switch to all satellite delivery of programs.
1981 1,125 Lines of Resolution
NHK demonstrates HDTV with 1,125 lines of resolution.
1982
Dolby surround sound for home sets is introduced.
1984
Stereo TV broadcasts approved.
1986
Super VHS introduced.
1996
The FCC approves ATSC’s HDTV standard.
A billion TV sets world-wide.

Video Cassette Recorder (VCR)

The videocassette recorder (or VCR, more commonly known in the British Isles as the video recorder), is a type of video tape recorder that uses removable videotape cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later. Many VCRs have their own tuner and a programmable timer (for unattended recording of a certain channel at a particular time).

History
Early machines and formats
The history of the videocassette recorder follows the history of videotape recording in general. Ampex introduced the first commercially successful videotape recorder in 1956. It was referred to as the 2″ Quadruplex format, using two-inch (5.1 cm) tape. Due to its US$50,000 price, 2″ Quadruplex could be afforded only by the television networks and the largest individual stations. Sony marketed in 1963 the first reel-to-reel VTR intended for business, medical, airline, and educational use. The Sony model CV-2000 in 1964 was the world’s first VTR intended for home use. Ampex and RCA followed in 1965 with their own reel-to-reel monochrome VTRs priced under US$1,000 for the home consumer market.

The late 1970s: Mass-market success
It was not until the late 1970s, when European and Japanese companies developed more technically advanced machines with more accurate electronic timers and greater tape duration, that the VCR started to become a mass market consumer product. By 1980 there were three competing technical standards, with different, physically incompatible tape cassettes.

VHS vs. Betamax: The format war
The two major standards were Sony’s Betamax (also known as Betacord or just Beta), and JVC’s VHS, which battled for sales in what has become known as the original and definitive format war.
Betamax was first to market in November 1975, and was argued by many to be technically more sophisticated. The first machines required an external timer, and could only record one hour. (A “Betastacker” was later introduced to load up to four more tapes automatically.) The timer was later incorporated within the machine as a standard feature.
However, the rival VHS format (introduced in the United States in September 1976 by RCA) boasted a longer two-hour recording time. Sony halved the tape speed to allow two hours; RCA copied the change to allow four hours. Sony made thinner tape and still slower speed to allow over five hours, while RCA, which now had licensed the VHS format to many other manufacturers, copied the move and enabled six-hour recording time. Ultimately, VHS offered nine-hour recording with T-180 tapes, but never had any kind of automatic tape-changing technology, although some would argue that for VHS this was never truly needed.
Beta was arguably superior in picture quality, but VHS, because of wide licensing, was easier to get hold of, particularly in the rental market. One feature still not seen today on VHS VCRs, or DVD players, was Beta’s “speed play”, which allowed the viewing of programs at twice normal, but with clipped rather than “chipmunk” voices.

Various reasons are given for the failure of the Beta consumer format:
• Some accounts claim that VHS won because it initially allowed for twice the recording time — the original Beta format was limited to one hour, but this was soon replaced by the two-hour Beta II version. Beta I was obsolete by the time Betamax reached Europe, in 1978
• Others attribute the success of VHS to the greater availability of pornography on that medium, reflecting the long standing tradition of pornography being the driving force for the takeup of new media (the Internet being another obvious example).
• JVC and Sony used different marketing models for their technology: JVC licensed their VHS technology to consumer electronics companies like Zenith and RCA, which then produced low-cost VCRs, enriching JVC through royalties paid under its license. Fewer companies were licensed to produce Beta machines.
• The VHS camp had access to high-street TV rental chains (in the UK) like DER and MultiBroadcast. With a VCR costing about a month’s wages, two competing standards, and a reputation for expensive repair bills, rental was considered the more attractive option at the time.

Video CD

Video CD (aka VCD, View CD, Compact Disc digital video) is a standard digital format for storing video on a Compact Disc. VCDs are playable in dedicated VCD players, nearly all personal computers, most modern DVD-Video players, and some video game consoles.The VCD standard was created in 1993 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC and is referred to as the White Book standard.
Commercial VCDs are very popular throughout Asia (except Japan) because of the low price of the players, their tolerance of high humidity (a notable problem for VCRs), and the lower-cost media. Ease of duplication and the negligible cost of the media gave rise to widespread unauthorized copying in these areas.
Due to relative small storage capacity, feature-length films sold on VCD are usually divided into two or three discs and television series may come in a box set package with multiple discs. In both cases, most films run at roughly 60 minutes per VCD, before viewers are prompted to change discs. In many Asian movies, subtitles are not removable on standard VCDs, unlike DVDs.
VCD is gradually being replaced by DVD, which offers most of the same advantages to Asian buyers as VCD, as well as a much better quality picture (higher resolution with less digital compression artifacts) and sound (often in Dolby Digital and/or DTS), due to its larger storage capacity.

VCD does however have a few points in its favor:
• Like VHS and unlike DVD-Video, the VCD format has no region coding. Many VCD players are capable of compensating for the different frame rate and pixel count between NTSC and PAL TV systems, which means that discs can be played on any compatible machine worldwide.
• Some titles available on VCD may not be available on DVD and/or VHS in the prospective buyer’s region.
• They are much cheaper than DVDs. The DVD of a film may cost anywhere from three to nine times as much as the VCD. On the other hand, VCDs do not come with the bonus features like that of DVDs, such as choice of language, (removable) subtitles, chapters, deleted scenes, theatrical and television previews, interviews, outtakes and production notes.

DVD

DVD (also known as “Digital Versatile Disc” or “Digital Video Disc”) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. DVDs resemble compact discs as their physical dimensions are the same (120 mm (4.72 inches) or occasionally 80 mm (3.15 inches) in diameter) but they are encoded in a different format and at a much higher density. The official DVD specification is maintained by the DVD Forum.

History
In the early 1990s two high density optical storage standards were being developed: one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc (MMCD), backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc (SD), supported by Toshiba, Time-Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM’s president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.
Philips and Sony abandoned their MMCD format and agreed upon Toshiba’s SD format (not to be confused with secure digital cards) with two modifications that are both related to the servo tracking technology. The first one was the adoption of a pit geometry that allows “push-pull” tracking, a proprietary Philips/Sony technology. The second modification was the adoption of Philips’ EFMPlus (Eight-to-Fourteen Modulation). EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than Toshiba’s SD code, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to SD’s original 5 GB. The great advantage of EFMPlus is its great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. The result was the DVD specification Version 1.5, announced in 1995 and finalized in September 1996. In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum , which is open to all companies.
“DVD” was originally an initialism for “Digital Video Disc.” Some members of the DVD Forum believe that it should stand for “Digital Versatile Disc” to reflect its widespread use for non-video applications. Toshiba, which maintains the official DVD Forum site, adheres to the latter interpretation, and indeed this appeared within the copyright warnings on some of the earliest examples. However, the DVD Forum never reached a consensus on the matter, and so today the official name of the format is simply “DVD”; the letters do not officially stand for anything.
The first DVD players and discs were available in November 1996 in Japan, March 1997 in the United States, 1998 in Europe and in 1999 in Australia. The first pressed DVD release was the film Twister in 1996. The film had the first test for 2.1 surround sound. The first titles released in the U.S., on March 19, 1997, by Lumivision, authored by AIX Entertainment, were IMAX adaptations: Africa: The Serengeti, Antarctica: An Adventure of a Different Nature, Tropical Rainforest, and Animation Greats.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Television and Movies

Advantages:
• Television is highly effective no matter what its contents may be because its power springs in large part from the fact that it combines the wonders of sight and sound.
• A source of entertainment and a wide range of information
• Advertising on television can give a product or service instant validity and prominence
• Can easily reach very large audiences

Disadvantages:
• Imaginative element especially among children is largely stripped away, leaving a slack-jawed mind completely immersed in what it is being fed.
• Subjects are often openly discussed on television about which even adults hardly used to know. As a result of this exposure, children can come to accept these things.
• People who spend hours watching television are more likely to have a poor attention span, poor brain development and become desensitized to violence.
• New research out of the archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine shows that watching television really is not relaxing. In fact, excessive television viewing interrupts sleep, causing nightmares, problems falling asleep, and morning irritability.

Modern Facilities of Entertainment – Play/Theater

A. HISTORY OF THEATERS

Easier – A play is a story that is written to be acted on a stage or in a theater. A skit is a short play that is usually performed in a more informal setting like a club meeting or a classroom. Skits are often funny. Acting is to perform, to play a part, to pretend to be a character in a play for theater, a movie, television or radio. The written text for a skit or play is called the script.
Harder – Theater happens when an actor or actors perform on a stage while an audience is watching. These four essentials – - actors, audience, space (stage), and performance – - are theater. It is a live performance before an audience. The actors present a story about some aspect of human experience. The performance is usually a type of play – - a tragedy,
comedy, or musical, where the actors follow or interpret a script. But theater performances can also be a circus, vaudeville, puppetry,pantomime, or other forms of entertainment.
The word theater means a “place for seeing,” but theater is more than just a building where plays are performed. It’s the whole idea behind what happens there. Theater is where playwrights write scripts, directors supervise rehearsals, set designers and technical crew work behind-the-scenes, and the actors perform on stage. All of these people have an important role in the theater, but it is not true theater until an audience is there to experience it.
Exactly when theater began is a mystery. Prehistoric hunters acted out stories about their hunting expeditions. Ancient Egyptians performed sacred songs and danced for their gods in religious ceremonies, but the idea of theater as dramatic entertainment came later. Use the time line above to learn about some of the important periods and events in theater history.
Primitive Theater
Theater long ago was quite different than the theater we see today. Theater first came from the cultures of primitive societies through dance. It is thought that the members used dances to calm the supernatural powers they thought controlled their lives. The supernatural powers were believed to have power over the events needed for their survival. Other dances were thought to get rid of evil spirits that caused disease and also to make the souls of the newly dead, depart the world of the living. The performers in these dances wore masks, which represented the spirits. They also wore costumes made of animal skins, rushes, and bark from a tree.

ANCIENT THEATER ( 600 B.C – 410 A.D )
The first recorded form of European theater began in Ancient Greece around 600 B.C. with a religious festival to honor Dionysus (Di-on-i-sus), the god of wine and fertility. It has been said that a poet named Thespis (Thes-pis) won a dramatic play competition at the festival. Because he is considered to be the first actor, people sometimes refer to actors as thespians. Thespis also introduced the use of masks in Greek theater. Masks were designed to show the age and emotion. Women were not allowed to perform, so men wore female masks and played their parts. In Greek theater, the tragedy is the most admired type of play.
In 300 B.C., Romans were inspired by Greek art, culture and theater and wrote Latin versions of Greek plays. Comedy plays were more popular than tragedies. In the Roman theater, slaves served as actors. Unlike Greek theater, women were permitted to appear on stage but they did not play important roles. The Roman theater competed for the audiences that attended chariot races, gladiator contests and public executions. This brought about the need for impressive public theaters. For the next two centuries, Romans built about 125 structures. Eventually, plays included stage violence and crude humor. Christians disapproved and closed down all of the theaters.

MEDIEVAL THEATER ( 500 -1200 )
Theater buildings were not permitted throughout Europe during medieval times, but traveling players, known as minstrels, kept the theater alive along with acrobats, puppeteers, jugglers and storytellers. They created a stage by raising a simple platform wherever they performed in halls, market places and at festivals. Christians thought this kind of entertainment was a sin, so they started their own kind of theater. During an Easter Sunday service, priests acted out the meaning of the holy day to help teach people who could not read. These “miracle” plays became so popular that there was not enough room to perform in the church and they moved outside. They were still considered religious events and not entertainment.
In early medieval times, around the seventh century, the church played a large part in stopping theater performances. The church was also responsible for the rebirth of the theater during the Middle Ages. The dramatic performances, which were based on the story of the Resurrection, were first introduced into the Easter service. These little performances were originally done by priests and monks. They were the beginning of great period of mystery plays, which dramatized almost every part of biblical history.

RENAISSANCE THEATER ( 1300 -1600 )
In the Renaissance (Re-nais-sance) period, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, an interest in classical Greek and Roman art, culture and theater returned. Two major theater design traditions were developed at this time in Italy: the proscenium (pro-scen-i-um) arch that frames and divides the stage from the audience and the art of painting cloths as backdrops for scenery.
Another major influence from this region was the commedia dell’ arte (com-med-i-a dell’ art-e’), which means comedy of the profession. This form of theater was an improvised, quick-witted performance by wandering players. They wore masks to portray a regular cast of characters and made up their lines as they went along. The daughters and wives of the players were some of the first women to perform in theater.
In England, Queen Elizabeth I strongly supported the theater. During Elizabethan times, as they are known, the most famous playwright in history began his career. Born in 1564, William Shakespeare was an actor and poet, who wrote plays for his company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to perform. Many of his plays, such as “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” are still studied and performed all over the world today.
In the 16th century, the medieval religious plays were beginning to decline. More worldly (secular), plays were performed in inns, hotels, and halls, and slowly moved to theaters of their own. The first “theater” called, “The Theatre”, was built just outside of London in 1576. Many other theaters soon followed such as, the Curtain, the Rose, and the very famous Globe theater. These theaters were a frame, often three story structure, built around on open courtyard and most were circular. The first audience sat in boxes or in galleries within the frame. At the end of the stage, where the audience couldn’t see, there was the “tiring” house where the actors stored their props and changed costumes. During these times, the Elizabethan actors (all male), formed guilds and became master actors. One of the most famous of these playwrights and actors was William Shakespeare.

KABUKI THEATER ( 1600 )
Kabuki (ka-bu-ki) is a form of theater in Japan that began in the early 1600s and is still performed today. This traditional theater uses extravagant makeup and costumes, a unique kind of music and an all-male cast. A woman named Okuni (O-kun-i) created Kabuki Theater, but shortly after it became popular, women were banned from performing.
The plays, based on legends, open and close with the sound of wood clapping together. The style of music in Kabuki Theater is named for a three-stringed instrument called a shamisen (sham-i-sen). The music enhances the actors’ movements and voices, making them almost like dancing and singing. During climactic moments in the play or at the end of a scene, the actor freezes in place, stares and then crosses his eyes. This is called mie (mi-e) . Each Kabuki character wears colorful costumes and has thick makeup that looks like a mask. The color red on a character’s face signifies a “good” character and blue suggests a “bad” character. All of these elements have made Kabuki Theater a traditional art form that has entertained audiences for over 400 years.
Asian theater had little influence on Western theater. Asian theater has had a long and famous history. Western theater has often had a more realistic style of presentation. The theater in the East has been, and still often is, symbolic. Which means the actors wear masks or wear artificial make-up. The actors wearing masks represent a character, and if an actor had a whip in his hand it would represent a man on horseback. The realistic style means actors play exactly who they are and what they are doing. They don’t wear masks and they ride real horses (when possible). The first acting areas were raised platforms with a curtain. Western audiences are more familiar with the historical Japanese theater known as Kabuki. Kabuki can still be seen today. In Kabuki theater, dance and heavy makeup is used. Traps in the stage floor were made to raise and lower actors. They also introduced the revolving stage which eventually became part of Western theater.

19th Century Theater
Many changes began to take place in 19th century Europe. Due to the Industrial Revolution, many classes of people moved into the cities and theater began to change. New forms of theater were created for these working people such as Vaudeville (acts like song-and-dance routines), Burlesque (dramatic works that make a subject appear ridiculous), and the melodrama (the exaggeration of charters in conflict-heroine/hero vs. the villain). Romantic plays and revivals of the classics were performed at major theaters during this time. The United States still depended on Europe for it’s drama and theater styles. In 1820, candles and oil lamps were replaced by gas lights in many 19th century theaters. The opening of the Savoy Theater in London, 1881, was the first stage lit by electricity. The plays of Shakespeare were being performed. By the last decades of the 19th century, audiences were getting tired of revivals and were ready for a change.

20th Century Theater
The theater has changed over the past centuries! Modern stages have newer technology and special effects. People not only come to theaters for drama, but they come for music, entertainment, education, and to learn something new! Stage designs included the arena staging, or what we call today, Theater in the Round. Today, some ways to express different characters in performances (besides the tone of the voice) can be through music, settings, lighting, and electronic effects. Realistic and experimental styles of performances are found in the American theater today. Boy, how time has changed some things, yet it can also take us back to our past! What will the new century will hold for theater?

B. ORIGIN OF COMEDY

The evolution of comedy is much simpler than that of its sister art, though as to its origin and earlier development there is little exact information. All that Aristotle can tell us is that it first took shape in Megaris and Sicyon, whose people were noted for their coarse humor and sense of the ludicrous, while Susarion, the earliest comic poet, was a native of a Megarian town. Add to this that it arose from the Phallic processions of the Greeks, as did tragedy from the dithyramb, and we have about all that is known as to the inception of the lighter branch of the drama.
At country festivals held in celebration of the vintage it was the custom for people to pass from village to village, some in carts, uttering the vile jests and abuse unjustly attributed to the tragic choruses; others on foot, bearing aloft the Phallic emblem and singing the praises of Phales, the comrade of Bacchus. In cities it was also the custom, after an evening banquet, for young men to roam around the streets with torches in their hands, headed by a lyre or flute-player. Such a band of revellers was called a comus, and a member of the band a comoedus or comus-singer, the song itself being termed a comoedia, or comedy, just as a song of satyrs was named a tragoedia, or tragedy.
The Phallic processions were continued as late as the days of Aristotle, and we learn from one of the orations of Demosthenes that the riotous youths who infested the streets of Athens delighted in their comic buffooneries. Pasquinades of the coarsest kind were part of the exhibitions, and hence, probably, it was that comedy found a home at Athens during the time of Pericles, for it furnished the demagogues with a safe and convenient means of attacking their political opponents. When formally established as a branch of the drama it had its chorus, though less numerous and costly than the dithyrambic choir, and the actors, at first without masks, disguised their features by smearing them with the lees of wine.
By Plato comedy is defined as the generic name for all exhibitions which have a tendency to excite laughter. Though its development was mainly due to the political and social conditions of Athens, it finally held up the mirror to all that was characteristic of Athenian life. By a consensus of authorities comedy has been arranged in three divisions, or rather should they be termed variations in form–the old, the middle and the new–and these it will here be convenient to follow.

NEW COMEDY
The new comedy lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers, ending about 260 B.C. It may be studied to better advantage in the Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence than in the few Greek fragments that have come down to us [1], nor did it differ essentially from the comic drama of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Congreve and Wycherley. For the first time love became the principal element in the drama, but it also was seldom an honest love. The heavy father also makes his appearance, as still we know him, and is often led into the vices and follies which he has reproved in his son. With these exceptions the characters were very much as in the middle comedy, but with the addition of the mercenary soldier newly returned from the wars, with noisy tongue, full purse and empty head. There can be little doubt that the new comedy represented faithfully the most salient features of Athenian society; but it made no attempt to improve it, presenting only in attractive colors the lax morality of the age.

OLD COMEDY
The old comedy, dating from the establishment of democracy by Pericles, about 450 B.C., arose, as we have seen, from the coarse jests of Dionysian revellers, to which was given a political application. In outward form these comedies were the most extravagant of burlesque, in essence they were the most virulent of abuse and personal vilification. In its license of word and gesture, on its audacious directness of invective, no restriction was placed by the dramatist, the audience or the authorities, this license running to an excess that to modern play-goers would seem incredible. The satire and abuse were directed against some object of popular dislike, to whom were not only applied such epithets as coward, fool and knave, but he was represented as saying and doing everything that was contemptible, as suffering everything that was ludicrous and degrading. But this alone would not have won for comedy such recognition as it recognition as it received from the refined and cultured community of the age of Pericles. The comic dramatist who would gain a hearing in Athens must borrow from tragedy all its most attractive features, its choral dances, its masked actors, its metres, its scenery and stage mechanism, and above all the chastened elegance of the Attic language–for this the audience required from the dramatist, as from the lyric poet and the orator. Thus comedy became a recognized branch of the drama, often presenting a brilliant sparkle in dialogue and a poetic beauty in the choral parts not unworthy of the best efforts of the tragic muse. Thus, also, it became a powerful engine in the hands of a skillful and unscrupulous politician.
It was upon this stock that the mighty genius of Aristophanes grafted the Pantagruelism, which, ever since it was reproduced by Rabelais, has had among European writers, as in Cervantes, Swift, Voltaire and others, some adequate representation. Though the word Pantagruelism is applied by Rabelais to the characters sustained by court fools, he made a free use both of the spirit and mechanical appliances of old Greek comedy, adopting the disguise of buffoonery to attack some prevailing form of cant and hypocrisy. And this is precisely what Aristophanes did, the term invented by the great French master accurately describing the chief characteristics of his prototype.

C. SHORT PLAYS

SHORT PLAYS
The history of the short play can be traced back to the very origins of the Theatre. In ancient Greece, dramatists traditionally included a short satyr play with their trilogy of tragedies presented at the dramatic competitions. A short burlesque treatment of the classic myths, satyr plays generally poked fun at the gods or heroes in their mythical adventures and allowed for a bit of light fun after the heavy tragedies. Pratinus is usually credited with having invented the genre sometime before 501 B.C. However, some historians argue that the satyr plays were, in fact, the very first form of drama to develop and that tragedy and comedy actually emerged from these simple burlesques. The only satyr play to survive in its entirety is Euripides’ Cyclops which tells the tale of Odysseus and his crew being captured and eaten by the one-eyed monster. A large fragment of Sophocles’ The Trackers, which details Apollo’s quest to locate a herd of cattle stolen by Hermes, is also extant.
When drama reemerged in the middle ages, it was in the form of short liturgical plays that were gradually incorporated into church services and festivals. The Easter trope, for example, also known as Quem Quaeritis, originally consisted merely of the short exchange between the three Marys and the angel when they visit Christ’s tomb. These short biblical reenactments were so popular, however, that they were gradually elaborated on to the delight of the masses. Additional dialogue, characters, and scenarios were added until these short dramatic pieces eventually grew into much longer Mystery and Miracle plays. Similar plays were developed for the birth of Christ and other popular biblical events.
As the biblical drama continued to flourish, short secular pieces also began to emerge—farces such as The Boy and the Blind Man and morality plays such as Everyman. By Shakespeare’s time, dramatic literature had developed to the point that it could challenge Greek drama in sophistication and power. Full-length plays made up the vast majority of dramatic offerings, but short plays still retained a place in popular culture—notably, for instance, the court masques of Ben Jonson, including such works as The Hue and Cry after Cupid.
Many of the greatest dramatists to follow would try their hand at the short dramatic form, some of them producing works that rival their longer masterpieces in power and popularity. Some notable short plays produced over the last five hundred years include Molière’s The Pretentious Young Ladies, Anton Chekhov’s The Boor, Oscar Wilde’s Salomé, Eugene O’Neill’s Thirst, Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Intruder, Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, Kobo Abe’s The Man Who Turned into a Stick, Beth Henley’s Am I Blue, Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, Christopher Durang’s The Actor’s Nightmare, and Harold Pinter’s Mountain Language.
In 1977, the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays took the short play a step further when it founded a brand new genre—the 10-minute play. This new format was an immediate and explosive hit with audiences, allowing them to enjoy an entire buffet of theatre in one sitting. Since that time, the 10-minute play has solidified its place in the canon of dramatic literature, and many theatres now include an evening of 10-minute plays in their production season.

Introduction to Entertainment

I. Definition of Entertainment

• something that entertains
• the act of entertaining
• amusement or recreation

II. History of Entertainment

A. ANCIENT TIME
Entertainment in Ancient Rome
Romans worked from dawn until about noon ever day of the week. After the noon hour, and on holidays (there were over 120 public holidays throughout the year), they often looked for entertainment. In their free time, Romans could have gone to a public bath, visited the theater, saw a gladiator fight at the Coliseum or a chariot race at the Circus Maximus. Most of these events were free for the common Roman. In the economic good times of the empire, wealthy Romans sponsored the events to gain public prestige. Later, the cost was picked up by the government to keep the people of the city in good spirits. Seating at many of the events was segregated by social class. For example, at the Coliseum seating was divided by classes. The Imperial court sat in the lower tier and behind them sat the aristocratic families. The next set of seats were occupied by the commoners. Finally, women were seated at the very top tier. From most accounts, very few women attended the events. Gladiators were trained warriors who fought in contests to entertain the Romans. They were usually recruited from slaves or prisoners of war. The fighting was very dangerous and often resulted in death. Because of this, reluctant gladiators were forced into the arena with whips or hot irons. The fights pitted different types of gladiators against each other. Three types of gladiators were the samnite, the secutor, and the retiarius. The saminte were very heavily armed. The retiarius used a trident (three-pronged spear) and a net. They would attempt to catch their opponent in the net and then stab them with the trident. The secutor had a specialized helmet and equipment to fight their opponents.

Entertainment in Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was known as the “Cradle of Western Civilization.” From this mountainous peninsula and scattered group of islands came the first democracy, epic stories, and advancements in math, science, medicine, and philosophy.
The ancient Greeks enjoyed brightly painted items. Evidence suggests that most of their marble statues were originally painted; however, the paint has worn off the few statues that have survived. Greeks also decorated walls with fresco paintings. Fresco painting mixed paint with wet plaster to make a wall mural. There are a very limited number of wall paintings that have survived from early Greek times. Greeks also used tiles and rocks of different colors to create floor mosaics. One mosaic found at Olynthus reportedly cost 3,500 drachmas, or the equivalent of ten years of wages for the average worker. Because of the great expense, mosaic floors were only used by the wealthiest of Greeks.
Theater in ancient Athens was performed at the agora. Later, the theatrical events became so big that they were moved to an open-air auditorium below the Athenian Acropolis. Open-air auditoriums were built in most Greek cities, some holding as many as 15,000 spectators. Theater performances became part of the religious festival to Dionysus, the god of wine. The festival lasted five days and had as many as three full dramas performed in one day. The dramas were sponsored by rich citizens know as choregoi. Three types of plays were developed in ancient Greece, the tragedy, the comedy, and the satire. A tragedy was about Greek heroes and gods. Comedies were often politically-based stories, or they featured conflicts between men and women. Satires were often witty, cutting, and ironic stories that mocked human vice and folly. Actors performed plays as a form of worship to the god Dionysus. Early in Greek theater only one actor would perform with a chorus which sang a dialogue. Later, three actors would perform in plays. The actors took on multiple roles using masks so the audience could tell the characters apart. Actors were always males, although they did play female parts. Clothing in ancient Greece was loose fitting, unlike the tight-fitting outfits worn by those people the Greeks considered barbarians. Both men and women typically wore sleeveless tunics. The women’s tunics were usually ankle length, while the men’s were shorter. For the common person, the color of cloth was plain. Those with the financial resources had their clothing dyed in various colors. During the winter, a heavy wool cloak was worn for warmth. Greeks went barefoot or wore sandals outside the home. Inside the home, they went barefoot.
Early Greek sculpture was very rigid and block shaped during the period known as Archaic (660 – 480 B.C.). During the Classical period (480 – 333 B.C.), sculptures took on a lifelike appearance depicting gods or famous people. During the Hellenistic period (330 – 300 B.C.), everyday people and events were often the subjects of the sculptures.

Entertainment in Ancient Egypt
Different people liked to do different things. They didn’t have a TV or video games to play so they had to do something else.
Hunting- Most men liked to hunt. Even the pharaoh would go hunting. The pharaoh would hunt with his nobles and a few professionals. This group would go down to the water hole in chariots with bows in hand and would sit and relax until they saw an animal. Some animals had to be hunted different ways. With birds, they would throw sticks. With hippos, they would lasso them and then use a harpoon to stab them.
Children’s Games- The children liked to play leapfrog and tug of war. They also played with Egyptian toys such as dolls. It was fun to go down to the river and have a picnic, fish, or try to catch water birds.
The most amazing thing about the work of the Ancient Egyptian painters, potters, weavers, and many others is how their artwork survived until today. Scraps of linen have been found that are up to 6,000 years old. The best-preserved Egyptian pictures have been found on walls of pyramids.
Potters- The Potters made their clay pots out of river clay. First they made a bottom to their pot. Then they made long clay rope and coiled it into the shape they wanted their pot to be. The coils were then smoothed down to where you couldn’t see that they were separate anymore. Then special techniques were used to make the pot unique.
Painters- Painters had a very important job. They had to paint pictures of people, maybe even a picture for the Pharaoh’s pyramid if they got lucky. The hard part about the painter’s job was that they had to make it so the person had something about them that was instantly recognizable. They always drew in profile because that made it easier to recognize their subject. Men were usually drawn with dark skin working out in the sun. Women were usually shown with fair skin inside of a house. Different things were used to make different colors.
Weavers- Weavers had to supply the city with fabric not only to make clothes but for other things like canopies for boats. Weaving was a very important Egyptian craft and the weavers had to carry on the tradition. Linen was a very important fabric because it was what most of the Egyptians’ clothes were made from. Linen was made by soaking flax plant stems in water until only fibers were left. Then the fibers were combed into fine strands and spun together making string to weave into linen.

B. MEDIEVAL TIME
Art and music were critical aspects of medieval religious life and, towards the end of the Middle Ages, secular life as well. Singing without instrumental accompaniment was an essential part of church services. Monks and priests chanted the divine offices and the mass daily.
Some churches had instruments such as organs and bells. The organistrum or symphony (later known as a hurdy gurdy) was also found in churches. Two people were required to play this stringed instrument–one to turn the crank and the other to play the keys.
Medieval drama grew out of the liturgy, beginning in about the eleventh century. Some of the topics were from the Old Testament (Noah and the flood, Jonah and the whale, Daniel in the lion’s den) and others were stories about the birth and death of Christ. These dramas were performed with costumes and musical instruments and at first took place directly outside the church. Later they were staged in marketplaces, where they were produced by local guilds.
Most people in the Middles Ages wore woolen clothing, with undergarments made of linen. Brighter colors, better materials, and a longer jacket length were usually signs of greater wealth. The clothing of the aristocracy and wealthy merchants tended to be elaborate and changed according to the dictates of fashion. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, men of the wealthy classes sported hose and a jacket, often with pleating or skirting, or a tunic with a surcoat. Women wore flowing gowns and elaborate headwear, ranging from headdresses shaped like hearts or butterflies to tall steeple caps and Italian turbans.

C. RENAISSANCE TIME
Polyphony, in use since the 12th century, became increasingly elaborate with highly independent voices throughout the 14th century: the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music—in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them. Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale spirituale, and the laude.
Renaissance literature is European literature, after the Dark Ages over an extended period, usually considered to be initiated by Petrarch at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, and sometimes taken to continue to the English Renaissance and into the seventeenth century. The impact of the Renaissance varied across the continent: countries where Catholicism and emergent Protestantism were, or became, dominant experienced the Renaissance in a different manner to areas where the Orthodox Church was the dominant culture and those areas of Europe under Islamic rule.
The creation of the printing press encouraged authors to write in the local vernacular rather than in the classical languages of Greek and Latin, widening the reading audience and promoting the spread of Renaissance ideas.
Some famous authors of the literary movement of the Renaissance are Dante (writer of The Divine Comedy), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus (who compiled the Textus Receptus), Sir Thomas More (writer of Utopia), Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Montaigne, Miguel de Cervantes, Luís de Camões and Shakespeare.

D. BAROQUE TIME
In the arts, Baroque is a period as well as the style that dominated it. The Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. In music, the Baroque applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.
A defining statement of what Baroque signifies in painting is provided by the series of paintings executed by Peter Paul Rubens for Marie de Medici at the Luxembourg Palace in Paris (now at the Louvre) [1], in which a Catholic painter satisfied a Catholic patron: Baroque-era conceptions of monarchy, iconography, handling of paint, and compositions as well as the depiction of space and movement.
In theater, the elaborate conceits, multiplicity of plot turns, and variety of situations characteristic of Mannerism (Shakespeare’s tragedies, for instance) are superseded by opera, which drew together all the arts in a unified whole.
Theater evolves in the Baroque era and becomes a multimedia experience, starting with the actual architectural space. It is during this era that most of the technologies that we currently see in current Broadway or commercial plays were invented and developed. The stage changes from a romantic garden to the interior of a palace in a matter of seconds. The entire space becomes a framed selected area that only allows the users to see a specific action, hiding all the machinery and technology – mostly ropes and pulleys.

E. 20th CENTURY
As the century begins, Paris is the artistic capital of the world, where both French and foreign writers, composers and visual artists gather. By the end of the century, the focal point of global culture had moved to the United States, especially New York City and Los Angeles.
Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques women became more independent throughout the century.
Rock and Roll and Jazz styles of music are developed in the United States, and quickly become the dominant forms of popular music in America, and later, the world.
Turd art developed new styles such as expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.
Modern architecture evolved within Europe with a radical departure from the excess decoration of the Victorian era – streamlined forms inspired by machines became more commonplace. Developments in building material technologies furthered this shift. European architects moved to the United States prior to World War II, where modern archiectural theory continued to blossom.
The automobile provided vastly increased transportation capabilities for the average member of Western societies in the early to mid-century, spreading even further later on. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car. The car became a leading symbol of modern society, with styles of car suited to and symbolic of particular lifestyles.
Sports became an important part of society, becoming an activity not only for the privileged. Watching sports, later also on television, became a popular activity.
Mass media technologies such as film, radio, and television allow the communication of political messages and entertainment with unprecedented impact
Mass availability of the telephone and later, the computer, especially through the Internet, provides people with new opportunities for near-instantaneous communication
Applied electronics, notably in its miniaturized form as integrated circuits, made possible the above mentioned rise of mass media, telecommunications, ubiquitous computing, and all kinds of “intelligent” appliances; as well as many advances in natural sciences such as physics, by the use of exponentially growing calculation power
Inventions such as the washing machine and air conditioning led to an increase in both the quantity and quality of leisure time for the middle class in developed countries.

F. 21st CENTURY
2006- 80% of world land surface has coverage by cellular networks for mobile phone use.
Mobile phone usage approaches 100% in developed countries.
Technology developments show no sign of ending. Communications and control technology continues to augment the intelligence of individual humans, collections of humans, and machines. Cultures are forced into the position of sharply defining humanity and determining boundaries on desire, thought, communication, behavior, and manufacturing. Some predict that by the middle of this century there will be a Technological Singularity if artificial intelligences are created that are smarter than humans. If these then create even smarter AI’s technological change will accelerate in ways that are impossible for us to foresee.