Anda di halaman 1dari 15

Plugging in: a brief history of some

audio connectors
Paul Graves-Brown

Abstract
Electrical and electronic connectors are an archetypal example of Machine Age artefacts. In this article I focus on
two such connectors, the jack plug and DIN plug, which have played a key role in the history of music
technology. Their development, and that of cognate technologies, serves as a graphic illustration of the processes
of standardization and miniaturization that have shaped the material culture of the contemporary world.

Keywords
Standardization; miniaturization; music technology; connector; style; function.

Introduction
Temporarily relocating my home recording studio, I found myself sorting through a mass of tangled
cables and leads, some of which I have owned for more than thirty years. This started me thinking
again about the huge variety of connectors electronic, electrical and otherwise that pervade our
society. Some persist over long periods; others, such as the SCART video connector, have a much
shorter vogue, but in one way or another they all contribute to the story of the Machine Age (or
ages), of the development of technology, mass production and, most obviously, the role of
standardization (Banham 1960; Besen and Farrell 1994; Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom
1992; Myers 2010; Schroeder 1986). In fact I would hazard that the connector or plug is an
archetype of mechanical reproduction; connectors, above all, require standards, that A, for example,
should always t with B, in order to function,. It is no accident that the very term connector is rst
used in 1795 in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Ever since Samuel Colt displayed his
revolvers at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the progress of a technological society has depended on
the interchangeability of parts (Rolt 1965; Woodbury 1973), and at times, in a capitalist society, this
has led to prolonged battles between competing standards (see, e.g., Besen and Farrell 1994;
Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom 1992).

World Archaeology Vol. 46(3): 448461 Music and Sound


2014 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2014.909099

Plugging in 449
Connectors, as we shall see, are as much the product of isochrestic variation as any other
material culture (Lemonnier 1991, 2012; Sackett 1982). However, there is what Lemonnier
(1991), following Leroi-Gourhan, calls a tendance in the fact that most, if not all, adopt the
trope of male and female where, for practical reasons, a projection or projections is/are inserted
into a corresponding socket. Indeed, technically this is often termed mating one with another
(but the broader psycho-social implications of this trope are beyond the scope of this article).
Moreover, connectors are almost invariably intended to be manipulated by the human hand and
hence the affordances (sensu Gibson 1979) that they offer must reect this aspect of the human
scale (Pirsig 1974). Such affordances constitute what Gibson called invariance: an embodied
xity around which cultural variation revolves and which, as I shall discuss later, may explain the
constraints that have shaped the development of connectors in our era of miniaturization.
In this article I shall discuss two of the most important connectors in the history of music
technology: the -inch jack plug (aka phone plug or TRS jack) and the DIN plug (Fig. 1), albeit
neither had its origins in a musical context. Although other technologies, such as the XLR or the RCA
Phono will be mentioned, these two stand out in the gradual electrication of sound over the last
century. Moreover, they illustrate quite different trajectories in the process of invention, which is
hardly ever as simple as we tend to think (Winston 1986). I begin, at the beginning, with the jack plug.

Jack plug
Unless you are a musician or a sound engineer, you will be most familiar with the more recent
3.5mm variant of what is probably the oldest type of audio connector still in use. These are more
or less ubiquitous as plugs for headphones, etc., on laptops, MP3 players and smart phones. The
3.5mm plug is a true TRS in that it has three points of connection: tip, ring and sleeve. On the
iPod this carries the stereo signal on tip and ring with the sleeve being common to both. But we
should note that jack plugs began with only tip and sleeve, such as the standard used for electric
guitars and other musical instruments (Fig. 5 below). The jack is almost always used as an audio
connector, although on occasion it is deployed to carry control signals: in the form of foot
switches and pedals for guitars and ampliers and as patch cables on modular synthesizers such
as those produced by Robert Moog in the 1960s (Pinch 2004).
The etymology of jack is not at all clear, the most popular account being that early variants
resembled a jack knife, which is to a certain extent true (see Fig. 2). As with most inventions, the
origin of the plug is shrouded in the mysteries of claim and counter-claim. What is certain is that its
origin lies in telegraphy and the transition to telephony in the United States in the 1870s and 80s.
Here it should be noted that, when telephony crossed the Atlantic and eventually became, in the UK,
the remit of the General Post Ofce, a different standard of plug was adopted: the Post Ofce jack or
PO jack. This has the same basic form, with tip, ring and sleeve, but different dimensions (Fig. 1).
During my sojourn with the BBC (see Graves-Brown 2013a) the PO jack was the standard, as it still
is in many recording studios. In the control room where I worked there were numerous bays of 19inch racks with endless rows of PO jack sockets (c. 15,000), some of which had had the same leads
connected to them for years (Fig. 3; see also Beckwith 2013).
The rst thing to bear in mind with the origin of the jack plug is that early telephones, like
telegraph before them, used a single wire to carry the signal, the circuit or return being
completed by an earth connection. The earliest plugs, then, had to connect a single wire.

450 Paul Graves-Brown

Figure 1 a) jack Western Electric catalogue 1908; b) 3.5mm TRS jack and RCA Phono; c) Regency
TR-1 earphone jack; d) Post Ofce jack; e) ve-pin DIN, mini DIN and male Cannon XLR; f) comparison,
DIN and XLR pin assemblies; g) Tuchel connector drawn from Sennheiser MD421-2; h) Standard, mini
and micro USB.

While this system had been entirely adequate for the essentially binary telegraph signal, it soon
proved too prone to noise and electromagnetic interference to be suitable for sound, and in 1881
Alexander Graham Bell patented a two-wire twisted pair cable which became the standard for
telephony (US Patent No. 244426). The jack plug has its origins in switchboards, the simplest of
which were pegboards or button switches, used in telegraph stations to connect local apparatus
to the (single) line. The plugs or pegs were simple brass rods with a handle, inserted into a

Plugging in 451

Figure 2 Snell switchboard and jack.

Figure 3 The main jackeld in the control room, BBC Broadcasting House, London, late 1970s. This part
of the building no longer exists since the post-2006 redevelopment (image courtesy of Phil Hughes).

shaped slot between two contacts. The rst telephone exchange is attributed to the Hungarian
engineer Tivadar Pusks, then (1878) working for Edison. A year later the rst public exchange
was built by George W. Hoy in New Haven, Connecticut (appropriate location), apparently a
rather Heath Robinson affair constructed from odds and ends (Deland 1907). However this was
soon rened with the aid of a Mr Snell, whose switchboard jacks do hint at the knife origin for
the term. But here it seems, from the illustrations, that connections were made by turning the
jack such that the knife guard element connected the two adjacent terminals (Fig. 2).
Around the same time, one George F. Durand of St. Louis used what was described as a
jump jack switchboard, but perhaps most signicantly Thomas B. Doolittle of Boston also
developed a switchboard which appears to have used plugs and cables to make the connections
(Deland 1907). Here the cables were counterweighted to draw them back into the board to avoid

452 Paul Graves-Brown


tangles a feature evident on many later manual switchboards. Finally, in 1881, Western
Electric (originally part of Western Union but subsequently owned by Bell) developed its
Standard switchboard, which appears to be the prototype of all subsequent types, using the
plug and cord method (Fig. 4). This type may or may not be the Gilliland switchboard
illustrated in Popular Science Monthly (Deland 1907, 240), Ezra Gilliland being an inventor
and colleague of Thomas Edison. Although several other plug boards are cited as the origins of

Figure 4 Western Electric Standard switchboard, 1908.

Plugging in 453

Figure 5 Extract from US Patent application No. 2089171: jack connection for George Beachamps 1931
design for the frying pan guitar.

the jack plug, such as that of Milo G. Kellogg, (US Patent No.385863, 1888) and Charles E.
Scribner (US Patent No.293198, 1884), both appear to be intended for use with a single wire, at
a time when Bell had already introduced the use of a twisted pair of wires. Illustrations from the
1908 Western Electric catalogue (Fig. 1) indicate that at this stage the jack had only a tip and
sleeve. I imagine that the ring was introduced only when circuits were either balanced or carried
a stereo signal.1
From this point, the jack then became a standard which other technologies could appropriate.
Thus, George Beachamps 1931 design for the frying pan guitar (US Patent No.2089171, Fig. 5),
the rst truly electric guitar, includes a mono (i.e. tip and sleeve) double-ended jack lead to connect
the instrument to an amplier. This instrument was a lap steel guitar aimed at the growing fashion for
Hawaiian music in the 1930s. Made of solid aluminium, it was eventually marketed as the
Rickenbacker Electro A-22 from 1932 to 1939. This jack-to-jack conguration is found on just
about every electric guitar to this day. Around the same time, the Radio Corporation of America
(RCA), which had purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company (the largest manufacturer of
phonographs) in 1929, started to manufacture what has become known as the Phono plug, not to be
confused with phone plug which is often an alternative appellation for the jack. Initially the Phono
served a similar purpose to the guitar jack lead, connecting phonographs (hence Phono) to the
ampliers of valve radios.
Size will be a recurrent theme of this paper, and hence it is no surprise that in the 1950s we
begin to see the emergence of mini jacks, usually of approximately inch, i.e. half the diameter
of the standard jack. I assume that the 3.5mm jack in use today is a metrication of this standard.
Miniaturization of plugs comes with the general pattern of reduction in scale (see Edgeworth
2013) of products that accompanied the invention of the transistor, developed by William
Shockley and colleagues at Bell Labs in 1947 (for which they received the 1956 Nobel Prize
for Physics).2 By the mid-1950s, companies such as Raytheon and particularly Texas
Instruments were mass producing transistors and already in 1953 these found their way into
the rst transistor hearing aid, the Maico Model O (Transist-Ear, see Bauman 2013). Indeed,
hearing aids, with their requirement for discretion and portability, can be seen as a principal
driver of miniaturization (Mills 2011). In the following year a joint enterprise between Texas

454 Paul Graves-Brown


Instruments and Regency Electronics produced the Regency TR-1, the rst transistor radio. In
addition to an internal speaker, the TR-1 had a -inch break jack3 socket for an earphone
(Steven E. Reyer 2013 and personal communication; Fig. 1). These became commonplace on
portable radios from then on, although hi- equipment, then and now, tended to use a -inch
jack for headphones (rst developed by Nathaniel Baldwin for the US Navy in 1910). It is
probably the case, though again hard to prove, that the currently ubiquitous 3.5mm jack owes its
popularity to the Sony TPS-L2 Walkman introduced in 1979 (Japan) and 1980 (USA) which
had two such mini jack sockets to allow shared listening (Du Gay et al. 1997).

DIN plug
The DIN plug or DIN connector is another familiar item among my collection of cables,
generally in the ve-pin version, although there have been numerous others from three to
nine pins in various congurations. I think my rst encounter with these was when, sometime
in 19712, my Dad brought home our rst cassette recorder, a Philips EL3302 (their rst ever
machine being the 3300 released in 1964). This mono recorder had three- and ve-pin sockets
on the side, which were initially used to connect a microphone incorporating a remote switch to
stop and start recording. This reects the fact that Philips conceived of the cassette as a kind of
dictation machine, a curious echo of the fact that Thomas Edison originally had similar ideas for
the phonograph or speaking machine (US Patent 200521, 1878).
I should say that at this time these connectors were not a DIN standard. In the service manual
for the EL3302 (in Dutch) the sockets are simply labelled BD1, BD2, and the associated plugs
described as Steker 3-polig and Steker 5-polig. The standard for three- and ve-pin plugs
was established in 1974 as DIN 41524:197403, and [a]t this time it needed about 15 years
from starting the work till the publication was issued (Rainer Difipp, personal communication,
21 October 2013). In comparison, the rst Sony cassette machine, the TC-110 of 1971, has mini
jack socket connections (see above) as did many other devices at the time. Yet by the mid1970s, DIN connectors were becoming the standard, at least in Europe, for the interconnection/
connection of audio devices with, in particular, the ve-pin connectors being a standard for
stereo audio.
As for the jack plug, so the exact origin of the DIN plug remains obscure: the Deutsches
Institut fur Normung has disposed of all of its records more than ten years old (Rainer Difipp,
personal communication, 21 October 2013). It seems probable that it originated around 1959
60, since it rst appears at this time on radio equipment and microphones. Yet, like the jack, it
had several predecessors. Cannon Electric Co. had been founded in 1915 by James H. Cannon,
initially manufacturing electrical power connectors (ITT Cannon n.d.; cf. Schroeder 1986).
However, in the late 1920s Cannon began to concentrate on producing connectors for the
emerging talkies in the movie industry, producing its P series (P for Paramount) for studio
microphones. The rst X series was introduced in the 1930s, a miniature connector in
comparison to its predecessors, followed by the XL and XLR series in the 1940s. The L and
R refer respectively to the incorporation of a latch to hold the connector in place and the
production of a more resilient connector that used polychloroprene (neoprene) in the female
connector. Later versions were, strictly speaking, the XLP (using plastic instead of neoprene)
although the XLR name has stuck. Indeed, in terms of second-order signication (Barthes

Plugging in 455
[1957] 1993), it is notable that: a) when I rst encountered these connectors in the late 1970s
they were always known as Cannons (as in Biro or Hoover); and b) although most have
subsequently been manufactured by companies such as Neutrik and Switchcraft, their designs
are actually based on the XL, rather than the XLR (Fig. 1).
Certainly, if we compare the design of the DIN plug and XLR they are very similar, with the
pins of the male connector in a circular arc contained within a tubular metal screen or skirt
(Fig. 1). The obvious difference is that XLRs were cast metal and the DIN of plastic, with a
imsier pressed metal screen and wire pins. However, there is a second origin candidate in the
Tuchelstecker (Fig. 1). Invented by Tuchel GmbH in 1936, this connector resembles the DIN
plug except that it is larger (19mm diameter as opposed to 13.2mm) and has rectangular rather
than round pins arranged in a Y formation. These were intended to mate with high-pressure
connectors in the socket, making them self-cleaning. By 1943 the Tuchel connector had become
the standard in German broadcasting. Around 195960 there was a transitional phase in the use
of connectors, as is well illustrated by Sennheisers iconic MD421 microphone of 1960. Still
made to this day, the MD421 can be found in three variants: the MD421-N (3-pin DIN), the
MD421-2 (Tuchel connector) and MD421-U (XLR). More recently manufactured examples are
all of the latter type.

Origins
The present Deutsches Institut fr Normung has its origins in 1917, when the Imperial government set up the Kniglichen Fabrikationsbro fr Artillerie which soon became
Normalienauschu fr den Maschinenbau and ultimately Normenausschu der deutschen
Industrie. The standards that it published were Deutschen Industrie-Normen (abbreviated to
DIN). Given the date, the context is obvious, but the origin of the desire for standardization in
German industry goes back to 1907 and the gure of Herman Muthusius, who founded the
Deutsche Werkbund. Together with Peter Behrens, Muthusiuss ideas were to inuence generations of architects and designers, including Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le
Corbusier. Initially a follower of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Muthusius (a Prussian civil
servant) stressed the importance of uniformity over individualism (Banham 1960) and this is
what DIN came to represent, both practically and stylistically, as can be seen in the work of the
Bauhaus and the Functionalist designs of the post-Second World War era (Dormer 1993).
The early decades of the twentieth century were the time for standards. According to the
British Standards Institute website (BSI 2013): Sir John Wolfe-Barry the man who designed
Londons Tower Bridge instigated the Council of the Institution of Civil Engineers to form a
committee to consider standardizing iron and steel sections on 22 January 1901.4 Similarly:
In 1916, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) invited the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),
the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers (AIME) and the American
Society for Testing Materials (now ASTM International) to join in establishing an impartial
national body to coordinate standards development, approve national consensus standards,
and halt user confusion on acceptability.
(ANSI 2013)

456 Paul Graves-Brown


Initially this was the American Engineering Standards Committee (1919), which ultimately
became the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Efforts at standardization in the US
car industry had begun around 1910 (Thompson 1954) and the UK equivalent of the Deutsche
Werkbund, the Design and Industries Association, was founded in 1915 (DIA 2013).
Making a din
All this being said, the DIN plug would now be one of the many residual technologies (Acland
2007) if it had not found some other uses (and its nal demise may not be far off). First, DIN
connectors were commonly used on computers, such as the Acorn BBC B (1981) and particularly the IBM PC (1981) where the keyboard was (initially) connected using a ve-pin DIN.
IBMs team, headed by Don Estridge, chose to use off-the-shelf components for the PC of
which, presumably, the DIN plug was one, which ultimately helps to explain the success of the
PC format off-the-shelf parts and an open source BIOS rapidly led other companies to clone
the PC. Ultimately the DIN connector was replaced on IBMs third generation PC, the PS/2
(1987), which had smaller 9.5mm mini DIN connectors (Fig. 1) although this was never a DIN
standard (Rainer Difipp, personal communication. 21 October 2013). These mouse and keyboard connectors are still in use today (albeit rapidly being replaced by USB).
Meanwhile, Dave Smith of Californian synthesizer manufacturer Sequential Circuits, had
used the ve-pin DIN as a basic component for a universal synthesizer interface which, after
much negotiation between manufacturers, was launched as the Musical Instrument Digital
Interface (MIDI) in 1982 (Chadabe 2000; Huber 1991). This remains in use to this day,
probably the last major eld in which DIN plugs are deployed, albeit that here too DIN is
being superseded by USB on synthesizers, keyboards and other controllers. It should be noted
that Smith probably chose the DIN plug because it had already been used on a number of
Rolands devices which went on sale in 1981, particularly the CSQ 600 sequencers, the
legendary TR808 (drum machine) and TB303 (synthesiser) which I owned at one time
(apart from the TB303, see Fig. 6). In Rolands case the DIN plugs carried their proprietary
sync twenty-four signals that were a kind of prototype MIDI. Also, I should note that the MIDI
interface, unlike the other electrical connectors discussed here, used an internal optical connection, the idea being that, even when connected together, devices were electrically isolated from
each other to avoid one faulty device damaging another.

Standardization and miniaturization


The DIN plug and the mini DIN are now becoming obsolete; both in computing and in music
technology they have largely been replaced by USB. Yet the jack plug and XLR show no sign of
a decline. Why? Let us consider the history of standards. While Eli Whitney produced
standardized muskets for the US government in the late eighteenth century, standardization is
largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. This can be seen as the result of the increased scale of
mass production, but it also has to do with the decreasing scale in precision. The process of
miniaturization might be said to have begun with the microlith, and it is perhaps no accident that
one of the rst examples of miniaturization and mechanization, movable type, was invented by
Gutenberg who began his career working with gem stones. Subsequently, until the nineteenth

Plugging in 457

Figure 6 My studio, c. 1987. Top left Roland TR808 with DIN sync 24. Bottom Cheetah MK5 MIDI
controller keyboard. Bottom right Canon MSX computer with Yamaha SFG05 synthesizer (DIN MIDI in
and out). Somewhere just out of shot is an old Philips EL3320, which I used as a data recorder for the
computer (DIN connections). All other instruments were connected by jacks.

century, the principal driver for precision and miniaturization lay in clock- and watchmaking,
yet from the time of Boulton and Watt onward it became apparent that even large machines
required a degree of precision in order to function efciently (Rolt 1965).
Even before the rst standards organizations began, Joseph Whitworth had developed
standard screw threads in the UK (which are still in use) and the US motor industry had
begun to negotiate standards, which is hardly surprising given that the internal combustion
engine required unprecedented levels of precision (Rolt 1965). To have workable standards you
must have precision, and having precision implies working on smaller and smaller scales.
Although the drive for miniaturization is generally seen as a phenomenon of the post-Second
World War period, and particularly that period since the formulation of Moores Law (1965),5
the advantages of more compact and hence more personal and portable devices are ubiquitous to
material culture (e.g. the internal combustion engine is a more portable alternative to the steam
engine, especially in aviation). Improvements in machining precision at the beginning of the
twentieth century led to a general development of more compact devices throughout the century,
be this in terms of hearing aids, radios or weapons.
The history of connectors largely follows this pattern of precision and miniaturization, from
jack to mini jack, DIN to mini DIN, Cannon P-series to the XLR. In the case of the DIN plug, it
is now being superseded by USB (Fig. 1). This, unlike the jack or DIN, was an agreed standard
developed in 1994 by seven companies led by Intel (Wikipedia 2013). And, indeed, USB has
itself undergone a process of miniaturization with the mini USB connector introduced with USB
2.0 (2001), which itself is now being superseded by micro USB (since 2007). As the name
implies, Universal Serial Bus aims at a more or less universal connectivity, but notably its

458 Paul Graves-Brown


connectors are a little more robust than DIN/mini DIN, reecting, at least in computing, the fact
that USB can be hot plugged whereas, for example, PS/2 mini DIN had to be connected and
remain so when a computer was powered on.
According to Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom:
Interface standards for innovative products...can be established by various means: government regulation (the Federal Communications Commission for television), formal agreement
among a large number of producers of the primary product (CD players), or implicit
acceptance by producers reecting the market power of a sponsor (IBM PC).
Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom (1992, 64)
Yet, both the jack and DIN were initially ad hoc standards, unlike most successful standards
which emerge from an agreement. Only later, as in the case of MIDI, were they incorporated
into consensual standards. Standardization often arises from the inventor or originator of a
standardized system agreeing (willingly or otherwise) to freely share it with others. Philips, for
example, were forced to share the compact cassette (premiered in my Dads EL3302) with other
manufacturers, IBM chose an open standard for the PC, the HTML protocol was, from the start,
freely shareable, while the inventors of the shipping container decided at its inception to waive
their patent rights (Graves-Brown 2013b). The frequently cited battle between Sonys Betamax
video standard and JVCs VHS seems to have been resolved not because the latter technology
was superior (it was not), but because JVC freely shared its developments with other manufacturers (Besen and Farrell 1994; Cusumano, Mylonadis, and Rosenbloom 1992). It remains to
be seen whether the same pattern will play out between Apples proprietary iOS and Googles
Android.
There is, however, one factor that stands against all the foregoing, and thus explains the
resilience of the XLR and especially the jack plug. While George Moore was no doubt right
to see miniaturization as a key to more personal, individualized technologies, others were
already considering the physical limitations of such a trajectory (Keyes 1988) and indeed,
short of the development of quantum computing, microelectronics have now reached the
limits of scale at about 2040nm. As noted in my introduction, the human scale (Pirsig
1974) represents what Gibson (1979) calls an invariant. Miniaturization has facilitated a
convergence between advancing technologies and the personal, but to go beyond the
invariant of the human body starts to look like divergence. While at one time cell phones
got smaller and smaller, and their connectors continue to do so, smart phones have got
larger due to their need to afford the human scale (ngers and visual eld). Similarly, I
suggest, connectors have to respect this scale to be both useful and robust. The jack plug
and XLR t these criteria perfectly; in the context of the studio or live music they are robust
and easily graspable.6 In its life a jack or XLR will be connected and disconnected
thousands of times and must enable this to be done with ease and rapidity. The pattern of
connector types reects the kind of niche segregation that often follows the introduction of
new media (sensu McLuhan 1964); the jack plug and XLR t a particular niche in music
technology that is not enveloped by that of USB or 3.5mm jack connectors. For these
reasons they persist and, in my view, will continue to do so.

Plugging in 459
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Neil Bauman, Rainer Difipp (Deutsche Kommission Elektrotechnik), Adrian Myers
and Steven E. Reyer for their assistance. Thanks also to Andy Bantock, Tom Cullis, Carolyn
Graves-Brown, Mike Schiffer and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the text.
Thanks to Phil Hughes, via Roger Beckwith, for his permission to use the image of BH Control
Room, Steven E. Reyer for the image of the TR-1 headphone jack and Andy Bantock for the
image of the PO jack.
Paul Graves-Brown
Honorary Senior Research Associate, Institute of Archaeology, UCL
p.graves-brown@ucl.ac.uk

Notes
1 A balanced connection, as used in broadcast and recording studios, uses the tip and ring for
signal and the sleeve connected to a screening mesh which is earthed. The tip and ring wires
are connected at each end to a 1:1 transformer or rep coil which cancels out any interference
along the cable.
2 Although it should be noted that the miniaturization of hearing aids and radios had begun
well before this with the development of miniature and sub-miniature thermionic valves from
the late 1930s onward.
3 A break jack is distinguished from a listen jack. In the former case, as in the TR-1, inserting
the jack breaks the signal connection to the speaker.
4 This is not strictly true Wolfe Barry designed the neo-Gothic exterior of Tower Bridge; its
steel skeleton was the work of Horace Jones, the architect to the City of London.
5 Moores law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of
transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.
6 No doubt some people also have an affection for particular cables, but in my experience,
unlike the case of guitars, standardised leads are impersonal and disposable.

References
Acland, C. R. 2007. Residual Media: Residual Technologies and Culture. Mineapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
ANSI. 2013. Historical Overview. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.ansi.org/about_ansi/introduction/history.aspx?menuid=1
Banham, R. 1960. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: The Architectural Press.
Barthes, R. 1993[1957]. Mythologies. London: Vintage.
Bauman, N. 2013. The Hearing Aid Museum. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.hearingaidmuseum.com/
Beckwith, R. 2013. Old BBC Radio Broadcasting Equipment and Memories. Accessed December 3,
2013. http://www.orbem.co.uk/

460 Paul Graves-Brown


Besen, S., and J. Farrell. 1994. Choosing How to Compete: Strategies and Tactics in Standardization.
Journal of Economic Perspectives 8 (2): 11731. doi:10.1257/jep.8.2.117.
BSI. 2013. Our History. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.bsigroup.co.uk/en-GB/about-bsi/ourhistory/
Chadabe, J. 2000. Part IV: The Seeds of the Future. Electronic Musician 16 (5). http://www.emusician.
com/gear/0769/the-electronic-century-part-iv-the-seeds-of-the-future/145415
Cusumano, M. A., Y. Mylonadis, and R. S. Rosenbloom. 1992. Strategic Maneuvering and Mass-Market
Dynamics: The Triumph of VHS over Beta. The Business History Review 66 (1): 5194. doi:10.2307/
3117053.
Deland, F. 1907. Notes on the Development of Telephone Service. Popular Science Monthly 70: 4854,
229242.
DIA. 2013. Nothing Need Be Ugly. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.dia.org.uk/page/AboutUs/
Nothing_Need_be_Ugly
Dormer, P. 1993. Design since 1945. London: Thames and Hudson.
Du Gay, P., S. Hall, L. Janes, H. Mackay, and K. Negus. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the
Sony Walkman. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Edgeworth, M. 2013. Scale. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World,
edited by P. Graves-Brown, R. Harrison, and A. Piccini, 37994. Abingdon: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifin.
Graves-Brown, P. 2013a. Dreaming of BH. Kuriosum Kammer. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://
slightlymuddy.com/kuriosum/?p=144
Graves-Brown, P. 2013b. The Box and the Encinal Terminal: An Archaeology of Globalization. PostMedieval Archaeology 47 (1): 2529. doi:10.1179/0079423613Z.00000000033.
Huber, D. M. 1991. The MIDI Manual. London: Focal Press.
ITT Cannon. n.d. Interconnect Solutions History. (Pdf document). Accessed April 15, 2014. http://www.
ittcannon.com/p/648/interconnect-solutions-history
Keyes, R. W. 1988. Miniaturization of Electronics and Its Limits. IBM Journal of Research Development
32 (1): 848. doi:10.1147/rd.321.0024.
Lemonnier, P. 1991. Bark Capes, Arrowheads and Concorde: On Social Representations of Technology.
In The Meaning of Things, edited by I. Hodder, 15671. London: HarperCollins.
Lemonnier, P. 2012. Mundane Objects. Materiality and Non-verbal Communication. Walnut Creek: Left
Coast Press.
McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media. New York: McGraw Hill.
Mills, M. 2011. Hearing Aids and the History of Electronics Miniaturization. IEEE Annals of the History
of Computing 33: 2445. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2011.43.
Moore, G. E. 1965. Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits. Electronics April 19: 11417.
Myers, A. T. 2010. Telling Time for the Electried: An Introduction to Porcelain Insulators and the
Electrication of the American Home. Technical Briefs in Historical Archaeology 5: 3142.
Pinch, T. 2004. Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Pirsig, R. 1974. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. New York: William
Morrow and Co.
Reyer, S. E. 2013. Regency TR-1 Transistor Radio History. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://www.
regencytr1.com/

Plugging in 461
Rolt, L. T. C. 1965. Tools for the Job. London: Batsford.
Sackett, J. R. 1982. Approaches to Style in Lithic Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
1: 59112. doi:10.1016/0278-4165(82)90008-3.
Schroeder, F. 1986. More Small Things Forgotten: Domestic Electrical Plugs and Receptacles, 1881
1931. Technology and Culture 27 (3): 52543. doi:10.2307/3105384.
Thompson, G. V. 1954. Technical Standardization in the Early American Automobile Industry. The
Journal of Economic History 14 (1): 120.
Wikipedia. 2013. USB. Accessed December 3, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb
Winston, B. 1986. Misunderstanding Media. London: Routledge.
Woodbury, R. S. 1973. Studies in the History of Machine Tools. Boston: MIT.

Paul Graves-Brown studied prehistory for his PhD but switched to the study of modern
material culture in the mid-1990s. Before becoming an archaeologist he worked as an engineer
in BBC radio, and has performed and composed electronic music since the late 1970s. Principal
publications include Matter, Materiality and Modern Culture (Routledge 2000) and The Oxford
Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World (with Rodney Harrison and Angela
Piccini, Oxford University Press, 2013).

Copyright of World Archaeology is the property of Routledge and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.

Anda mungkin juga menyukai