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Musée Mécanique
The Musée Mécanique (, "Mechanical Museum") is a for-profit interactive museum of 20th-century penny arcade games and artifacts, located at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California. With over 300 mechanical machines, it is one of the world's largest privately owned collections. History The museum's original owner, Ed Zelinsky, began collecting at age 11. His games were exhibited in the 1920s at Playland. In 1972 Playland closed and Musée Mécanique became a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The museum moved into the basement of Cliff House, just a few blocks north and across the Great Highway from the Playland site. Zelinsky's son, Dan Zelinsky, took a temporary job in the 1970s maintaining the collection. The museum was featured in the 2001 film ''The Princess Diaries'' and in a 2011 episode of the Japanese television show ''GameCenter CX''. Move to Fisherman's Wharf In 2002, when renovations to the Cliff House had begun, the National Park Service ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedback mostly commonly is shown on a video display device, such as a TV set, monitor, touchscreen, or virtual reality headset. Some computer games do not always depend on a graphics display, for example text adventure games and computer chess can be played through teletype printers. Video games are often augmented with audio feedback delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes with other types of feedback, including haptic technology. Video games are defined based on their platform, which include arcade video games, console games, and personal computer (PC) games. More recently, the industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through smartphones and tablet computers, virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinball
Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed Arcade cabinet, cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with #Flippers, flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn (except during special multi-ball phases), and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Ele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diorama
A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle modeling, miniature figure modeling, or aircraft modeling. In the United States around 1950 and onward, natural history dioramas in museums became less fashionable, leading to many being removed, dismantled or destroyed. Etymology The word "diorama" originated in 1823 as a type of picture-viewing device, from the French in 1822. The word literally means "through that which is seen", from the Greek di- "through" + orama "that which is seen, a sight". The diorama was invented by Louis Daguerre and Charles Marie Bouton, first exhibited in Paris in July 1822 and at The Diorama, Regent's Park on September 29, 1823. The meaning "small-scale replica of a scene, etc." is from 1902. Daguerre's and Bouton's diorama consisted of a piece of mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photo Booth
A photo booth is a vending machine or modern kiosk that contains an automated, usually coin-operated, camera and film processor. Today, the vast majority of photo booths are digital. History The patent for the first automated photography machine was filed in 1888 by William Pope and Edward Poole of Baltimore. The first known really working photographic machine was a product of the French inventor T. E. Enjalbert (March 1889). It was shown at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. The German-born photographer Mathew Steffens from Chicago filed a patent for such a machine in May 1889. These early machines were not reliable enough to be self-sufficient. The first commercially successful automatic photographic apparatus was the "Bosco" from inventor Conrad Bernitt of Hamburg (patented July 16, 1890). All of these early machines produced ferrotypes. The first automatic photographic apparatus with negative and positive process was invented by Carl Sasse (1896) of Germany. The modern conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peep Show
A peep show or peepshow is a presentation of a live sex show or pornographic film which is viewed through a viewing slot. Several historical media provided voyeuristic entertainment through hidden erotic imagery. Before the development of the cinema in 1895, motion pictures were presented in peep boxes, such as the kinetoscope and the mutoscope. These remained relatively popular for erotic and pornographic films, such as '' What the Butler Saw''. In contemporary use, a peep show is a piecewise presentation of pornographic films or a live sex show which is viewed through a viewing slot, which shuts after the time paid for has expired. The viewing slots can be operated by a money box device, or paid for at a counter. Pornographic peep shows became popular in the 1970s as part of the developing pornography industry. Until home video became widespread, peep shows made up a major part of the way in which video pornography was accessed. In 1986 a US Presidential report into pornogr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Player Piano
A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home, in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined, as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production. History In 1896, Edwin S. Votey invented the first practical pneumatic piano player, called the Pianola. This mechanism came into widespread use in the 20th century, and was all-pneumatic, with foot-operated bellows providing a sour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love Tester Machine
A love tester machine (also called ''love meter'' or ''love teller'') is a type of amusement personality tester machine, which upon receiving credit tries to rate the subject's sex appeal, love abilities or romantic feelings for someone. Many love testers measure the moisture on the skin surface of the subject's hands by electrically testing the skin conductance and rates accordingly. Others measure the temperature of the skin. However, some machines just use a random generator. Love meters could be found in penny arcades, and can be seen in modern video arcades, amusement parks, in bars and restaurants. Such vending machines are for amusement purposes only and do not actually give a real result. Nintendo, before entering the video game industry, released their own handheld love tester. In media *In "The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase", an episode of the animated TV series ''The Simpsons'', Moe Szyslak receives dating advice from Abraham Simpson, whose ghost is possessing a love t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutoscope
The Mutoscope is an early motion picture device, invented by W. K. L. Dickson and Herman Casler and later patented by Herman Casler on November 21, 1894. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, it did not project on a screen and provided viewing to only one person at a time. Cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope, the system, marketed by the American Mutoscope Company (later the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company), quickly dominated the coin-in-the-slot peep-show business. Operation The Mutoscope works on the same principle as the flip book. The individual image frames are conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. The image on each card is made by contact printing each frame of the original 70 mm film. Rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards are attached to a circular core, similar to a huge Rolodex. A reel typically holds about 850 cards, giving a viewing time of about one minute. The reel with cards attached ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortune Teller
Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical with the practice of divination. The difference is that divination is the term used for predictions considered part of a religious ritual, invoking deities or spirits, while the term fortune telling implies a less serious or formal setting, even one of popular culture, where belief in occult workings behind the prediction is less prominent than the concept of suggestion, spiritual or practical advisory or affirmation. Historically, Pliny the Elder describes use of the crystal ball in the 1st century CE by soothsayers (''"crystallum orbis"'', later written in Medieval Latin by scribes as ''orbuculum''). Contemporary Western images of fortune telling grow out of folkloristic reception of Renaissance magic, specifically associated with R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Box
A music box (American English) or musical box (British English) is an automatic musical instrument in a box that produces musical notes by using a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc to pluck the tuned teeth (or ''lamellae'') of a steel comb. The popular device best known today as a "music box" developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and were originally called ''carillons à musique'' (French for "chimes of music"). Some of the more complex boxes also contain a tiny drum and/or bells in addition to the metal comb. History The Symphonium company started business in 1885 as the first manufacturers of disc-playing music boxes. Two of the founders of the company, Gustave Brachhausen and Paul Riessner, left to set up a new firm, Polyphon, in direct competition with their original business and their third partner, Oscar Paul Lochmann. Following the establishment of the Original Musikwerke Paul Lochmann in 1900, the founding Symphonion business contin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SF Weekly
''SF Weekly'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper founded in the 1970s in San Francisco, California. It was distributed every Thursday, and was published by the San Francisco Print Media Company. The paper has won national journalism awards, and sponsored the SF Weekly Music Awards. History ''SF Weekly'' was founded locally in the late 1970s by Christopher Hildreth and Edward Bachman and originally named ''San Francisco Music Calendar, the Magazine or Poster Art''. Hildreth saw a need for local artists to have a place to advertise performances and articles. The key feature was the centerfold calendar listings for local art events. The paper was bought by Village Voice Media (then New Times Media) in 1995. In September 2012, Village Voice Media executives Scott Tobias, Christine Brennan and Jeff Mars bought Village Voice Media's papers and associated web properties from its founders and formed Voice Media Group. Four months later, ''SF Weekly'' was sold to the San Francisco M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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