Screensaver History

[Colonel Mustard]

Hi Everyone,

I am posting this on behalf of a PhD student who contacted me seeking help with her research studying the history of screensavers. Thank you for any advice/help.

Dag

++++++

"I am researching default wallpapers/desktop pictures and screensavers, which hopefully can be traced back to the early to mid-1970s/beginnings of the microcomputer. Through my preliminary research, I have found some repositories online of more recent operating systems. Even these, however, are incomplete. For example, it is difficult to tell if all of the default images are included; sometimes, the specific OS for which the image would be associated is unclear. Ideally, I would have a relatively comprehensive purview of images and be able to properly date and locate them (re: OS). In the case of photographic wallpapers, I am also wondering if there is accessible metadata of photographers (for example, we all know Charles O’Rear is the photographer for “Bliss”). This research informs a chapter of my dissertation, which focuses on representations of place, space, and landscape in relation to early computer and internet cultures."

Thank you!

 

[syzygy]

I would hope that a PhD candidate would have the resourcefulness to post on their own and explain to whatever detail is needed; what is being proposed as the dissertation, and where it is at in the process (e.g., has a committee accepted the proposal).

That being said, I would advise a candidate, who was considering such a topic area, to begin by focusing on the word screensaver. Learn exactly why screens were in need of saving and when the culture noticed and decided they needed saving...and then, hit the books...or the magazines. Looking for metadata does not warm my heart, and I have been on PhD dissertation committees before.

Just my two cents.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

I would hope that a PhD candidate would have the resourcefulness to post on their own and explain to whatever detail is needed; what is being proposed as the dissertation, and where it is at in the process (e.g., has a committee accepted the proposal).

That being said, I would advise a candidate, who was considering such a topic area, to begin by focusing on the word screensaver. Learn exactly why screens were in need of saving and when the culture noticed and decided they needed saving...and then, hit the books...or the magazines. Looking for metadata does not warm my heart, and I have been on PhD dissertation committees before.

Just my two cents.

Thanks for the snark. Not helpful in the least.

 

[VERAULT]

Thanks for the snark. Not helpful in the least.

I agree with his question. Why wouldn't a PhD candidate do their own research instead of using you as a proxy?

 

[syzygy]

See, @Colonel Mustard when you post...

Thank you for any advice/help.

You get my advice and it is right here..

I would advise a candidate, who was considering such a topic area, to begin by focusing on the word screensaver. Learn exactly why screens were in need of saving and when the culture noticed and decided they needed saving...and then, hit the books...or the magazines.

You, not the candidate, deciding it is a "snark" and "not helpful", is irrelevant.

 

[Colonel Mustard]

I agree with his question. Why wouldn't a PhD candidate do their own research instead of using you as a proxy?

 

[stepleton]

Why wouldn't a PhD candidate do their own research instead of using you as a proxy?

I dunno, maybe this person wanted to have a well-established voice make an intro for them rather than barging into a community as a newcomer? "Who are you and why do you want us to do all of your research?!?!" CHM senior curator seems like it might have done the job; guess not!

If I could help, I would, but all I have to offer are the Apple Lisa (dimmed the screen elegantly by ramping down the brightness under software control) and the Tektronix 4000-series terminals and computers (chopped the brightness after a period of idleness). I don't know if these count as screensavers; they're certainly not much to look at when they're active.

It seems like it's a good thing that scholars are trying to tap the knowledge of this community. A lot of what we know isn't written down or easily accessible (this helps answer "why do you want us to do all of your research" type questions --- reaching out like this is research).

 

[krebizfan]

I would be more inclined to render assistance if the scholar had at the very least opened up the matching Wikipedia article to have a rough idea of what the major milestones were. Not that I would be of much help; I can't remember if the terminal I saw with automatic blanking was from the 70s or the 80s.

 

[cjs]

I dunno, maybe this person wanted to have a well-established voice make an intro for them rather than barging into a community as a newcomer?

Newcomers step into this community all the time, and we were all newcomers once. There's never been an issue there that I've seen, unless you consider excessive "Welcome to the forum!" messages as an issue.

If someone thinks that help on a topic is available here, the obvious first thing to do is to search the forum and see what's already available here, which can be done without even setting up an account. Then, having read a bit and gotten some sense of the culture, post a message in a manner that, as best you can, matches that culture.

Dive-bombs through other users essentially saying, "Hey, does someone have a list of all this stuff for my thesis?", especially when someone writing a thesis is supposed to be able to do research, comes across about as well as "Can someone do my homework for me?" questions on StackExchange.

 

[VERAULT]

I dunno, maybe this person wanted to have a well-established voice make an intro for them rather than barging into a community as a newcomer? "Who are you and why do you want us to do all of your research?!?!" CHM senior curator seems like it might have done the job; guess not!

I didnt ask the question I just agreed it was a good question! Why did you only single me out?

And as @cjs stated this place welcomes new members everyday...

 

[vwestlife]

It wasn't always called a "screen saver". The Atari 2600 console had an "attract mode" that reduced the brightness and cycled the colors after a period of inactivity to prevent phosphor burn-in. This feature carried over to their home computers:

AtariWiki V3.1: ATRACT

Page version 2, last modified by Florian Dingler, on

atariwiki.org

 

[stepleton]

Why did you only single me out?

And as @cjs stated this place welcomes new members everyday...

Nothing personal, you were just easy to quote.

It's true, this community is pretty welcoming most of the time, although it doesn't seem to have a lot of patience for Dag trying to do someone a solid. If I read this thread, I'm not sure I'd be eager to jump in anymore either. And random Internet forums are not exactly known for being universally friendly places --- I think we suffer for the behaviour of other communities.

(We also can't be certain that this person didn't have a look at our discourse and say "nah".)

Dive-bombs through other users essentially saying, "Hey, does someone have a list of all this stuff for my thesis?", especially when someone writing a thesis is supposed to be able to do research, comes across about as well as "Can someone do my homework for me?" questions on StackExchange.

This is where we part ways. The initial message says the researcher was able to find some information, but I rather doubt that there has been "Joe Bloggs's Compleat Historical Compendium of Screensavers and Photographic Desktop Backgrounds", even though this sounds like the kind of webpage someone might have made in the late 1990s. It's probably not going to be easily retrievable that (made-up example) the CDC 6600 running some early internal-only edition of SCOPE had a "bouncing line" display on the console as an idle task. Asking a knowledgeable community is research IMO.

I note that this person supposes that screensavers got started during the early days of the microcomputer. My hunch is that this isn't so and that it goes back further than that, dating to when glass TTYs with cursor control started making the scene. Does anyone know of an example from that timeframe?

 

[VERAULT]

lets stop making excuses for people and let them speak for themselves. This whole "the world can be a cruel cruel place" argument is laughable. But lets just leave it at that as it just becomes pointless conjecture.


The forum is a nice place for the most part... It is full of different walks of people with different opinions. They will never all agree and they dont have to. We welcome new folks every single day. done....





I like the idea of the history of crt screen savers but I dont see how wallpaper fits into that. Thats simply just Command line interface vs GUI isnt it?

 

[cjs]

Asking a knowledgeable community is research IMO.

When you ask in a way that you can interact with that community, yes. But this, especially with a pretty clear "I can't be bothered to talk directly with the community" approach, is not that. Especially not when you are basically just asking for a list in a way that sounds like, "do my homework for me."

I note that this person supposes that screensavers got started during the early days of the microcomputer. My hunch is that this isn't so and that it goes back further than that, dating to when glass TTYs with cursor control started making the scene.

Exactly. It's not clear exactly what she's looking for, even, because "default wallpapers/desktop pictures and screensavers, which hopefully can be traced back to the early to mid-1970s/beginnings of the microcomputer" doesn't even make sense at first blush. The pre-1977 microcomputers often didn't even have screens, which makes me think she doesn't really understand what she's talking about. Perhaps she is investigating non-microcomputer systems, but that question doesn't sound like it.

This is all stuff that could be worked out if she were here, and were willing to give a little more initial information on exactly what she's looking at, but she's not here, is she?

 

[seaken]

As I read it Dag was entering a "quote" from the student on their behalf. Presumably the student does not know how the forum works, which would not be unusual for youngsters these days. Maybe they had already tried and came up empty. Anyway, we could just offer our help and let him report back to the student instead of blasting the OP with complaints about his approach.

I was not computing with mini computers and my first micro was a NorthStar CP/M machine and I don't rememebr any screen saver at all. A few years later I worked in a shop that had terminals to a server and they did blank out, but no pictures.

The first screen saver I remember was in PC Tools. I later learned that Norton Commander also had a screen saver. I don't remember there being any photographs being used, just images of some kind, like the flying toasters. When I started using Windows 3.0 I played with the screen savers and usually ended up settling on the moving star field. By Windows XP then we started getting photographic type screen savers and wall papers.

Seaken

 

[cjs]

As I read it Dag was entering a "quote" from the student on their behalf. Presumably the student does not know how the forum works, which would not be unusual for youngsters these days.

I think it would be very unusual; a forum like this is little different from the comments on posts on many social media sites, and is not even all that different from text chat.

It also may be worth clarifying that this person isn't really a "student" in the sense one normally think of that; she's already graduated from university with at least one degree and is currently working to produce a Ph.D. thesis, which is expected to be original academic research as rigorous as that produced by any university professor.

I was not computing with mini computers and my first micro was a NorthStar CP/M machine and I don't rememebr any screen saver at all. A few years later I worked in a shop that had terminals to a server and they did blank out, but no pictures.

Right; which makes the '70s thing a bit odd. It all depends on the definition of "picture," of course (does a line printer Snoopy calendar have a "picture" at the top of it?), but I would think that the first place you'd ever see a screensaver with pictures would be on a Mac, the first of which was released a decade after the time period in question. I don't ever recall any screensavers for DOS or CP/M or similarly limited operating systems, and those were usually run in text mode anyway. (DOS/V being a notable exception, but that didn't come out until 1990, and I doubt it was ever used outside of Japan.)

 

[syzygy]

I just want to say that, in my professional opinion, it was done by Miss Scarlett, in the conservatory, using a candlestick.

Regards,

Professor Plum

PS: Did you know that there was no Colonel Mustard in the original board game Clue (from Cluedo, from Murder, the original title). There was, however, a Colonel Yellow [according to bard.org]

OK, enough snarky humor. My guess is that there is a candidate (possibly genetically related to the the good Colonel), at some bona fide university (hopefully not Reddit U) in either a History or Art department. I suspect the latter based on the quote and reference to the XP picture with "(for example, we all know Charles O’Rear is the photographer for “Bliss”) [please don't tell me that only Prof. Plum had to look that up].

So @Colonel Mustard , pretty please with sugar on top, have the candidate write for themselves. Hopefully they will be regaled with stories of burned out screens, dimming features and obscure references to favorite and exciting screensavers of yesterday. In that way, they can matriculate, get a job and pay into the SS system to keep people like me in capacitors and keyboards.

I remember in the days of the PC and DOS, many (including myself) would take a stab at writing a screensaver that would tell you the time and would periodically change the position on the screen to avoid ruining the monitor. Then some hippie/artist/programmer/anti-authoritarian came out with this stunning EGA rendition of a Rolex. It didn't change position but it was a running timepiece...on your screen..whoa. I went to go find my copy and couldn't. Then I searched online and all I found were numerous offers where you could download the "Top 500 Rolex screensavers and wallpapers".

Ahh for the days of Dancing Demon. life was so simple back then. Yet I bet I am many years too late with my "first screensaver" - there was probably one made by some nerd at MIT to keep the model train club's Tektronix scope from burning or some such thing.

 

[stepleton]

Well, just to sum it all up for you, anonymous researcher: Your practices seem lousy/substandard, the fact that you're not here suggests you're snobby, we suppose you probably don't really know what a screensaver is, your apparent conflation of them with desktop backgrounds is random and dubious, you're standoffish and lazy by wanting us to do your homework/not learning our culture and venturing a post, and if you aren't immediately trusting of an unfamiliar online space, even though we have absolutely no idea what your online experience has been like, your caution would be "laughable".

But we're super nice over here, just drop in anytime!

Let's assume this person's premise really is ill-conceived: it's not altogether uncommon for academic research for this to be so in the early stages. Does this thread make a good case for someone waiting in the wings to join us for a nice scholarly discussion leading to a richer understanding?

/me waves at future visitors checking this thread to get "some sense of the culture"...

 

[VERAULT]

Hello to all the members 10 years from now rehashing fond memories of their core 2 duo system from whence they were yet to be weened...

 

[seaken]

I did use screen savers in DOS (With PC Tools as mentioned earlier) but I never ran across any when using CP/M. But that doesn't mean there weren't any. Wall papers, or desktop back grounds, are more associated with MAC or Windows. But in Windows you can choose to turn off the wall paper and just have a single colored screen. You can also choose not to use a screen saver.

Seaken