A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing

Robert Borski · 05 Jul 1998, 22:04 · from urth-v0015.mbox · original

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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at coredcs.com>
Subject: (urth) A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing
Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 22:04:21
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While I think William Ansley's rebuttal of my tv-as-labyrinth theory was
well argued, and I enjoyed prion's alternate intrepretation, I still feel
compelled to quote the following from Gene Wolfe's Introduction to STOREYS
FROM THE OLD HOTEL:

"'A Solar Labyrinth' is another favorite. Labyrinths seem to fascinate just
about everyone, and for a while I was almost equally interested in what
used to be called dialing."

"Dialing," for those who of us who first came to tv in the late 40s/early
50s, involved the manual tuning in of a television station, which in those
days, before the advent of remotes and solid-state electronics and
broadcasting standards, had to be done by hand on a station-by-station
basis--very similar to how radio still is on occasion, when you have to
nudge the selection dial to pick it up better. Sometimes as well the
channels would drift, and you would have to retune them, and sometimes you
just plain couldn't dial them back in at all, so you'd often miss the end
or beginning of your program.

We don't call it dialing it any more (although the construction of sun
dials is *still* called that), because it's been made obsolete by
technology.=20

Not that I'd expect any of you "kids" to know that, of course.

Grampa Scolex (who, yes, still misses the old days)

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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