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Bicycle Built For Two
"Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)" is a song written in 1892 by British songwriter Harry Dacre with the well-known chorus "Daisy, Daisy / Give me your answer, do. / I'm half crazy / all for the love of you", ending with the words "a bicycle built for two". The song is said to have been inspired by Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, one of the many mistresses of King Edward VII. It is the earliest song sung using computer speech synthesis by the IBM 704 in 1961, a feat that was referenced in the film ''2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968). Also referenced in the movie ''Robots (2005 film), Robots'' (2005) by Blue Sky Studios. History "Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. As David Ewen writes in ''American Popular Songs'': The song was originally recorded and released by Dan W. Quinn in 1893. In technology and culture Computing and technology * In 1961, an IBM 704 at Bell Labs was programmed to sing "Daisy Bell" in the earliest demon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Dacre
Harry Dacre was the pen-name of Frank Dean (September 1857–16 July 1922), a British songwriter best known for his composition "Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built For Two)". Biography Dean was born on the Isle of Man, where he was baptised on 6 September 1857. He moved to Manchester, and then to Preston, Lancashire around 1882. He decided to make a career in songwriting, and used the pseudonyms Harry Dacre and Henry Decker (which some sources state was his birth name). He later claimed to have sold some 600 songs in the first two years of his career, but his first popular success was with the song "The Ghost of Benjamin Binns", which was first sung by Harry Randall in Brighton in 1885. Claiming that the stress of constant songwriting was affecting his health, he emigrated to Australia, where he stayed for four years before returning to England and then leaving for America in 1891. He took with him an early version of the song "Daisy Bell", and a bicycle on which he had to pay import ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wax Cylinder
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to give low viscosity liquids. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in nonpolar organic solvents such as hexane, benzene and chloroform. Natural waxes of different types are produced by plants and animals and occur in petroleum. Chemistry Waxes are organic compounds that characteristically consist of long aliphatic alkyl chains, although aromatic compounds may also be present. Natural waxes may contain unsaturated bonds and include various functional groups such as fatty acids, primary and secondary alcohols, ketones, aldehydes and fatty acid esters. Synthetic waxes often consist of homologous series of long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons (alkanes or paraffins) that lack functional groups. Plant and animal waxes Waxes are synthesized by ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Space Odyssey
''2001: A Space Odyssey'' is a 1968 science fiction novel written by Arthur C. Clarke and the 1968 film directed by Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove .... It is a part of Clarke's '' Space Odyssey'' series, the first of four novels and two films. Both the novel and the film are partially based on Clarke's 1948 short story " The Sentinel", an entry in a BBC short story competition, and " Encounter in the Dawn", published in 1953 in the magazine '' Amazing Stories''. Resources After deciding on Clarke's 1948 short story "The Sentinel" as the starting point, and with the themes of man's relationship with the universe in mind, Clarke sold Kubrick five more of his stories to use as background materials for the film. These included " Breaking Strai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur C
Arthur is a common male given name of Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. Another theory, more widely believed, is that the name is derived from the Roman clan '' Artorius'' who lived in Roman Britain for centuries. A common spelling variant used in many Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages is Artur. In Spanish and Italian it is Arturo. Etymology The earliest datable attestation of the name Arthur is in the early 9th century Welsh-Latin text ''Historia Brittonum'', where it refers to a circa 5th to 6th-century Briton general who fought against the invading Saxons, and who later gave rise to the famous King Arthur of medieval legend and literature. A possible earlier mention of the same man is to be found in the epic Welsh poem ''Y Gododdin'' by Aneirin, which some scholars assign to the late 6th century, though this is still a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cortana (software)
Cortana is a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that uses the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for the user. Cortana is currently available in English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the software platform and region in which it is used. Microsoft began reducing the prevalence of Cortana and converting it from an assistant into different software integrations in 2019. It was split from the Windows 10 search bar in April 2019. In January 2020, the Cortana mobile app was removed from certain markets, and on March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app was shut down globally. History Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft Build developer conference in San Francisco in April 2014. It was launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows. It is named after Cortana, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BonziBuddy
BonziBuddy ( , stylized as BonziBUDDY) was a freeware desktop virtual assistant created by Joe and Jay Bonzi. Upon a user's choice, it would share jokes and facts, manage downloads, sing songs, and talk, among other functions, as it used Microsoft Agent. BonziBuddy was described as spyware and adware, and discontinued in 2004 after the company behind it faced lawsuits regarding the software and was ordered to pay fines. Bonzi's website remained open after the discontinuation of BonziBuddy, but was shut down at the end of 2008. Design The software used Microsoft Agent technology similar to Office Assistant, and originally sported Peedy, a green parrot and one of the characters available with Microsoft Agent. Later versions of BonziBuddy in May 2000 featured its own character: Bonzi, the purple gorilla. The program also used a text-to-speech voice to interact with the user. The voice was called Sydney and taken from an old Lernout & Hauspie Microsoft Speech API 4.0 package. It is o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore 1541
The Commodore 1541 (also known as the CBM 1541 and VIC-1541) is a floppy disk drive which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 (C64), Commodore's most popular home computer. The best-known floppy disk drive for the C64, the 1541 is a single-sided 170-kilobyte drive for 5¼" disks. The 1541 directly followed the Commodore 1540 (meant for the VIC-20). The disk drive uses group coded recording (GCR) and contains a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, doubling as a disk controller and on-board disk operating system (DOS) processor. The number of sectors per track varies from 17 to 21 (an early implementation of zone bit recording). The drive's built-in disk operating system is CBM DOS 2.6. History Introduction The 1541 was priced at under at its introduction. A C64 plus a 1541 cost about $900, while an Apple II with no disk drive cost $1,295. The first 1541 drives produced in 1982 have a label on the front reading VIC-1541 and have an off-white case to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for . Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware. The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s. For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two mil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stereophonic
Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration of two loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing. Because the multi-dimensional perspective is the crucial aspect, the term ''stereophonic'' also applies to systems with more than two channels or speakers such as quadraphonic and surround sound. Binaural sound systems are also ''stereophonic''. Stereo sound has been in common use since the 1970s in entertainment media such as broadcast radio, recorded music, television, video cameras, cinema, computer audio, and internet. Etymology The word ''stereophonic'' derives from the Greek (''stereós'', "firm, solid") + (''phōnḗ'', "sound, tone, voice") and it was coined in 1927 by Western El ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dichotic Pitch
Dichotic pitch (or the dichotic pitch phenomenon) is a pitch heard due to binaural processing, when the brain combines two noises presented simultaneously to the ears. In other words, it cannot be heard when the sound stimulus is presented monaurally (to one ear) but, when it is presented binaurally (simultaneously, to both ears) a sensation of a pitch can be heard. Cramer, E. M., & Huggins, W. H. (1958). Creation of Pitch through Binaural Interaction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 30(5), 413–417. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1909628 The binaural stimulus is presented to both ears through headphones simultaneously, and is the same in several respects except for a narrow frequency band that is manipulated. The most common variation is the Huggins Pitch, which presents white-noise that only differ in the interaural phase relation over a narrow range of frequencies. For humans, this phenomenon is restricted to fundamental frequencies lower than 330 Hz and extremely l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hearing (sense)
Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sounds through an organ, such as an ear, by detecting vibrations as periodic changes in the pressure of a surrounding medium. The academic field concerned with hearing is auditory science. Sound may be heard through solid, liquid, or gaseous matter. It is one of the traditional five senses. Partial or total inability to hear is called hearing loss. In humans and other vertebrates, hearing is performed primarily by the auditory system: mechanical waves, known as vibrations, are detected by the ear and transduced into nerve impulses that are perceived by the brain (primarily in the temporal lobe). Like touch, audition requires sensitivity to the movement of molecules in the world outside the organism. Both hearing and touch are types of mechanosensation. Hearing mechanism There are three main components of the human auditory system: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. Outer ear The outer ear in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
