a214  1108  14 Nov 77
AM-Captain Video, Bjt - 2 takes,480-760
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - Like a pair of Sumo wrestlers, two Japanese
industrial giants have squared off in what may become the biggest
battle of the electronics industry since the development of color
television.
    Most major American manufacturers already have lined up in the
corner of their favorite, angling for authority to distribute the
Japanese systems under U.S. brand names.
    At the center of the dispute are different versions of the home
videotape recorder - the devices which allow television viewers to
watch one program while recording another for future viewing.
    These versions are incompatible - they function in a slightly
different fashion and tapes from one cannot be used on the other.
Thus, the winner of the contest could reap millions, not only in sales
of the original machines, but in years of continuing sales of tape
cartridges - both those pre-recorded with movies or other events and
those left blank for home recording.
    The industry is hoping that the recorders will live up to their
promise as the hottest thing since color television sales exploded in
the early 1960s.
    According to AudioVideo International magazine, sales of the units
are expected to total 250,000 this year and a half-million in 1978. An
average growth rate of 50 percent is predicted in 1979 and 1980.
    The recorders are a high-priced item, with listed prices ranging
from $1,000 to $1,300 plus accessories. The tapes aren't cheap either
at $15 to $20 each. And extras such as a black-and-white camera can
add as much as $500 to the cost.
    The tapes can be reused, although dealers report that many people
are buying many tapes in order to save some of their favorite shows.
    While various firms have experimented in the field, the sets
appearing in volume on pre-Christmas U.S. store shelves are virtually
all made by two Japanese electronic giants - Sony and Matsushita.
    Fortune magazine has likened the possible battle between the two
videotape systems to the ''costly pitched battles between William
Paley of CBS and the late David Sarnoff of RCA over which phonograph
record, the 33 1-3 or the 45, would dominate the multibillion-dollar
record business and later which color TV system would become standard
for the U.S.''
    Sony's Betamax is perhaps the best known of the brands because of
its extensive advertising campaign. That company's product also is
being marketed under various other names by Zenith, Sears, Sanyo and
Toshiba.
    Matsushita sells its machines in the United States under three
companies it controls - Panasonic, JVC (Japan Victor Company) and, in
a slightly different version, Quasar. Its videotape version also is
marketed here by RCA, Magnavox, Sylvania and Curtis Mathes.
    In addition to the Sony, Matsushita and Quasar machines, Sanyo is
reportedly working on a fourth type of its own.
    MORE
    
1409pES 11-14
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n114  2202  27 Nov 77
 
BC-TELESCOPE Addatend
KITT PEAK, Ariz.: velocity.
 
    Traditionally, observations of the most distant galaxies and what
seem the even more distant quasars are made by long photographic
exposures in which a high-precision tracking system keeps the
telescope aimed squarely at the object.
    Photographic emulsions, however, are not a reliable indicator of
relative brightness. The system in use here records numerically the
brightness of each spot or ''pixel'' of the image, making the latter
amendable to computer manipulation, much like pictures transmitted by
the Viking landers on Mars.
    The system is so sensitive that it could be matched only by
photographic exposures eight to 10 times longer. One computer digests
the dta for subsequent analysis - again with computer aid - at the
Tucson offices of the observatory. The other computer processes the
impulses for direct television display.
    On this night at the Kitt Peak observatory, with the observational
devices again functioning, William Halbedel, the telescope operator,
types instructions onto a keyboard to swing the scope and dome into
position for the first observation. Stellar images streak like
shooting stars across the televised acquisition screen in front of
him as the field of view moves across the sky.
    To remove the effects of twinkle, caused by atmospheric turbulence,
a star is repeatedly observed at the same time as the galaxy. The
star is assumed to be a point source of light, jumping around the
field of view because of atmospheric effects.
    The repated observations, through a process called deconvolution,
make it possible to narrow the stellar image to a point, and the same
corrections can then be applied to the galaxy, whose light has been
passing through similar turbulence.
    Normally a star showing in the same field of view is used, but the
vidicon field is so narrow that sometimes there is no suitable star
withing it. The telescope is then automatically swung back and forth
very slightly between a galaxy and a star still close enough for
twinkle correction.
    Each recording period or ''read'' lasts 1.6 seconds, and recordings
are made successively through as many as four filters passing red,
green, blue and visible light. For each filter there are 32 ''reads''
on the star and 128 of them on the galaxy.
    With each superposition, images of the stars and galaxies become
more intense, whereas spurious spots, lacking reinforcement, fade
away.
    The stars being observed alongside galaxies are a few hundred
light-years away - nextdoor neighbors on the scale of the universe.
Some of the galaxies, almost starlike in appearance, are billions of
light-years away. That is, their light has taken that long to reach
the telescope and they are being seen when the universe was
relatively young.
    Once the galactic images have been fully processed, it is hoped that
analysis of their brightness, from midpoint of the image to its
faintest outer edge, will reveal any systematic differences between
the very distant ones (observed in their youth) and those close at
hand.
    The first hint of dawn washes out the observations, but for later
elimination of distortions across the field of the recording system
the scope must be aimed at a flat, uniform field of view, namely the
inside of the dome. It is 7:30 a.m. when Lynds calls it a day, and
takes another meal in the mess hall.
    He notes that some scientists, like Sandage, insist of working in
the daylight hours on developing films exposed the night before. But,
he says, in this time of year, when nights are long, ''you end up
getting very little sleep.''
    
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a301  1901  29 Nov 77
AM-Astronomy Satellite,490
By HOWARD BENEDICT
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A new U.S. astronomy satellite has discovered 15
new sources of powerful X-rays as far away as ''halfway to the edge of
the universe,'' scientists reported Tuesday.
    The satellite also is giving science its best look yet at a ''whole
world of bursting, exploding phenomena'' in hidden areas that cannot
be seen from earth.
    The observations were made as researchers reported on the first 100
days of the High Energy Astronomy Observatory - HEAO-1, launched Aug.
12 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
    The satellite is studying some of the most intriguing mysteries of
the universe - pulsars, quasars, exploding galaxies and black holes.
Its instruments primarily are recording high energy X-rays emitted by
these and other stellar radiation sources. They also are collecting
gamma and cosmic ray data.
    ''HEAO is giving us a very remarkable look at our univerp↓p¬,'' said
Dr. Herbert Friedman of the Naval Research Laboratory, who is
principal investigator on the satellite's large X-ray survey
experiment.
    Because X-rays are blocked by the atmosphere from reaching earth,
they can be studied only by instruments positioned above the
atmosphere.
    Friedman said the first X-ray sources in space were identified in
1970 by a U.S. astronomy satellite named Uhuru. It recorded about 170
sources and later satellites have raised the total of known sources
to about 200.
    ''HEAO has identified 15 new sources in the small section of the sky
it has studied so far - that's about one twentieth of the total
sky,'' Friedman stated. ''We're now seeing sources halfway to the edge
of the universe through their X-ray emissions.''
    How far is that?
    ''About 8 billion light years,'' he replied. One light year is the
distance light travels in one year in a vacuum, or 5,878 trillion
miles.
    Friedman estimated that HEAO should locate an additional 800 to
1,000 sources by the time it completes mapping the entire sky over the
next year or more.
    He said preliminary examination indicates the newly discovered
sources are distant clusters of galaxies, which emit X-rays from gases
heated to one million degrees Fahrenheit.
    ''In X-ray astronomy we find a whole world of bursting, exploding
phenomena which we can't see from earth,'' Friedman said. He said some
bursts of energy are measured in tenths of seconds, others continue
for minutes like a string of firecrackers while others pop like a
camera's flashbulb.
    Scientists hope that X-ray and gamma ray astronomy, along with the
study of visible light and radio waves, will increase man's knowledge
of these puzzling phenomena. Ultimately, they hope it will lead to
advances in energy production, because stars are far more efficient
generators of energy than anything made on earth.
    
2202pED 11-29
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a063  0426  30 Nov 77
PM-Astronomy Satellite,490
By HOWARD BENEDICT
Associated Press Writer
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A new U.S. astronomy satellite is giving science
its best look yet at a ''whole world of bursting, exploding
phenomena'' in the hidden sky the eye cannot see.
    Among its early discoveries are 15 new sources of powerful X-rays as
far out as ''halfway to the edge of the universe.''
    The disclosures were made Tuesday as scientists reported on the
first 100 days of the High Energy Astronomy Observatory - HEAO-1 -
launched Aug. 12 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
    The satellite's instruments are recording high energy X-rays, gamma
and cosmic rays emitted by some of the most intriguing mysteries in
the universe - pulsars, quasars, exploding galaxies and black holes in
space.
    ''HEAO is giving us a very remarkable look at our universe,'' said
Dr. Herbert Friedman of the Naval Research Laboratory, chief
investigator on the satellite's large X-ray survey experiment.
    He said the first X-ray sources in space were identified in 1970 by
another U.S. astronomy satellite. Since then, space payloads have
located about 200.
    ''HEAO has identified 15 new sources in the small section of sky it
has studied so far - that's about 1-20th of the total sky,'' Friedman
said. ''We're seeing sources halfway to the edge of the universe
through their X-ray emissions.''
    How far is that?
    ''About 8 billion light years,'' he estimated. One light year is the
distance light travels in one year in a vacuum, or 5,878 trillion
miles.
    Friedman said he expects HEAO to locate 800 to 1,000 new sources by
the time it completes mapping the entire sky over the next year or
more.
    He said preliminary study indicates at least some of the newly
discovered sources are distant clusters of galaxies, which emit X-rays
from gases heated to one million degrees Fahrenheit.
    Friedman also referred to the sky we barely know, one that is
different from the familiar panorama of stars and planets.
    ''In X-ray astronomy we find a whole world of bursting, exploding
phenomena which we can't see from earth,'' he said. Some bursts of
energy are measured in tenths of seconds, others for longer periods
and others pop like a string of firecrackers.
    There are exploding galaxies and supernova, dying stars whose final
collapse is a cataclysmic event in which a violent explosion hurls
the innards of the star out into space.
    Objects called pulsars emit powerful radio beams that switch on and
off with uncanny regularity. Black holes, believed to be the final
stage of a dying star which was very massive, sucks in matter and
light with gravity of such force that the laws of physics are twisted
to extremes.
    Scientists hope that X-ray and gamma ray astronomy, along with the
study of visible light and radio waves, will increase man's knowledge
of the cosmos.
    
0727aED 11-30
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n018  0925  04 Dec 77
 
BC-ROBOT 2takes
(ART MAY BE AVAILABLE)
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
c.1977 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - It resembles a five-foot-two aerosol can on wheels. It is
said to be a highly intelligent being, unlike anything seen before.
It can speak 250 words and understand 50. It can vacuum the house,
serve dinner, babysit with the little ones and answer the door.
''Well, how do you do?'' it might say.
    But is it for real, or isn't it?
    ''May God help me if it isn't,'' says Anthony Reichelt. He is the
president of Quasar Industries Inc. Quasar insists it will start
selling a household robot, a sort of mechanical butler, within 20
months. Put down $4,000, and you can take one home.
    ''I think it's a preposterous fraud,'' says John McCarthy. He is the
director of Standford University's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. ''The state of the art is nowhere this - not in
voice recognition, vision recognition or motion.''
    Along with quite a few others in the robot field, he doesn't think a
household robot is possible for many years, and certainly not at such
a low cost.
    So the controversy goes. The artificial intelligence community has
spent many millions of dollars since about 1960 trying to produce a
sophisticated robot. Industrial robots that execute repetitive tasks
have come into being, but nothing close to what Quasar claims it has.
Thus, when the company proclaimed its development during the summer,
everyone wondered what Quasar was.
    Quasar is a small company based in Rutherford, N.J., that doesn't
have a listed phone number. It was founded 10 years ago by eight
technicians committed to creating a household robot. To keep the
company afloat while they invented it, they have leased promotional
androids to companies to clatter through department stores answering
questions.
    Now, however, the company claims it has struck gold. It says it has
a working prototype of the household robot. It gave the press a look
at it last summer, and says a more refined version will be displayed
next March. Starting in mid-1979, Quasar says it will be churning out
125 a day, 45,000 a year.
    The mechanical butler has attracted voluminous news coverage. Quasar
has been flooded with thousands of inquiries. It says a Chinese man
appeared one day with $20,000 cash stuffed in a suitcase, wondering
if he could please have five robots. It says spies from other
companies have shown up at the company's headquarters, posing as
reporters to try to wrest away Quasar's secrets.
    Meanwhile, some vigorous criticism has been directed at the robot.
    ''I don't think there's a ghost of a chance that a mad scientist
could come up with this, no less Quasar,'' says Marvin Minsky, a
science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who
has been on getting machines to see since 1963.
    ''What happens if I sell a thousand robots and they don't work?''
retorts Quasar's Reichelt. ''I'll be in jail. I'll be sued to high
heaven. I tell you I've got the finished robot to prove our claims.
I've got the goods.''
(MORE)
    
1204 1215pes
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n018  0927  04 Dec 77
 
BC-ROBOT 2takes
(ART MAY BE AVAILABLE)
By N. R. KLEINFIELD
c.1977 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - It resembles a five-foot-two aerosol can on wheels. It is
said to be a highly intelligent being, unlike anything seen before.
It can speak 250 words and understand 50. It can vacuum the house,
serve dinner, babysit with the little ones and answer the door.
''Well, how do you do?'' it might say.
    But is it for real, or isn't it?
    ''May God help me if it isn't,'' says Anthony Reichelt. He is the
president of Quasar Industries Inc. Quasar insists it will start
selling a household robot, a sort of mechanical butler, within 20
months. Put down $4,000, and you can take one home.
    ''I think it's a preposterous fraud,'' says John McCarthy. He is the
director of Standford University's Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory. ''The state of the art is nowhere near this - not in
voice recognition, vision recognition or motion.''
    Along with quite a few others in the robot field, he doesn't think a
household robot is possible for many years, and certainly not at such
a low cost.
    So the controversy goes. The artificial intelligence community has
spent many millions of dollars since about 1960 trying to produce a
sophisticated robot. Industrial robots that execute repetitive tasks
have come into being, but nothing close to what Quasar claims it has.
Thus, when the company proclaimed its development during the summer,
everyone wondered what Quasar was.
    Quasar is a small company based in Rutherford, N.J., that doesn't
have a listed phone number. It was founded 10 years ago by eight
technicians committed to creating a household robot. To keep the
company afloat while they invented it, they have leased promotional
androids to companies to clatter through department stores answering
questions.
    Now, however, the company claims it has struck gold. It says it has
a working prototype of the household robot. It gave the press a look
at it last summer, and says a more refined version will be displayed
next March. Starting in mid-1979, Quasar says it will be churning out
125 a day, 45,000 a year.
    The mechanical butler has attracted voluminous news coverage. Quasar
has been flooded with thousands of inquiries. It says a Chinese man
appeared one day with $20,000 cash stuffed in a suitcase, wondering
if he could please have five robots. It says spies from other
companies have shown up at the company's headquarters, posing as
reporters to try to wrest away Quasar's secrets.
    Meanwhile, some vigorous criticism has been directed at the robot.
    ''I don't think there's a ghost of a chance that a mad scientist
could come up with this, no less Quasar,'' says Marvin Minsky, a
science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who
has been on getting machines to see since 1963.
    ''What happens if I sell a thousand robots and they don't work?''
retorts Quasar's Reichelt. ''I'll be in jail. I'll be sued to high
heaven. I tell you I've got the finished robot to prove our claims.
I've got the goods.''
(MORE)
    
1204 1215pes
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n020  0942  04 Dec 77
 
BC-ROBOT 1stadd
NEW YORK: goods.''
    At any rate, Quasar doesn't seem to have scored many points in robot
circles with its promotional androids. There are 32 of them. Quasar
claims they can speak 4,800 words and recognize 250. They are able to
roll around and pass out literature. They travel to their appearances
in first-class airline seats, and, according to Quasar, they tend to
scoot after stewardesses.
    However, a number of robot researchers (including some from
Carnegie-Mellon University and from General Motors' Research
Laboratories) say they have attended appearances and found these
robots to be run by remote-control by two men who try to remain
inconspicuous. One man handles the voice, the other the android's
motion. The robots themselves, they say, are rather crude.
    Quasar is hazy about this. The company says it sometimes uses remote
control for certain purposes, but insists it doesn't have to. It says
that the promotional androids are in some ways similar to the
household robot, and can be programmed to do many of the same chores,
but they're not really the same.
    ''With the promotion robot, what we're doing is putting on a magic
show and entertaining the public,'' Robert Doornick, Quasar's
marketing director, says cryptically. ''Whether we have simply a
magic act or a true technological development is not important.
That's got nothing to do with our domestic android.''
    Besides the mechanical butler, Quasar says it will also turn out in
the next couple of years a mannequin robot that will move and talk, a
paramedic robot intended as a therapeutic tool for mental patients
and a surveillance robot that will act as an artificial night
watchman.
    Meanwhile, everyone waits to see what happens.
    ''They put Marconi down,'' says Reichelt. ''They put Newton down.
Every major scientist has been put down. To everyone who has put us
down, I say, 'Just wait and see, buddy.'''
    
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n025  1006  11 Dec 77
 
BC-OIL 2takes
c. 1977 N.Y. Times News Service
    SALT LAKE CITY - These are the echoes of the Old West: Boom town.
Cattlemen fighting the railroad over land. Men roaming the Western
slope of the Continental Divide seeking a fortune hidden in the earth.
    But instead of prospectors with pack mules and pickaxes in search of
gold, today's pioneers drive trucks and explore the depths of the
earth with giant drills in the search for oil and gas.
    The search is yielding new discoveries in the ''overthrust belt'' -
a geologically complex area caused by a subterranean shift of layers
of rock which form necessary ''structure'' for gas and oil
reservoirs. Although the belt runs from the Bering Sea to Mexico,
most of the current drilling is along the Utah, Wyoming, Idaho,
Montana border.
    American Quasar Petroleum of Fort Worth is considered the big winner
to date. The company touched off a flurry of activity in 1975 when
the Pineview field northeast of here began producing oil.
    But the jackpot appears to be a new gas well at the tip of Bear
Lake, six miles North of the tiny village of Randolph, Utah. Known as
the Hogback Ridge site, the well has an open flow of more than 100
million cubic feet of natural gas per day from two depths, 10,900 and
9,450 feet. An American Quasar geologist, W. H. Dunlap, says the well
will produce more than 20 million cubic feet a day when the flow is
choked for production.
    Conveniently, a pipeline passes within seven miles of the well. A
second well is being drilled a mile away to confirm the first find.
    ''The gas is coming from two distinctly different levels in the same
hole,'' said American Quasar's president, R. L. Lowe, who formed the
company in 1969 with four other independent oilmen.
    ''We decided the easy oil had been taken, and the cost of drilling
was from $2 to $6 million per well, so we formed the company and went
public to get capital,'' said Lowe.
    Most of American Quasar's wells are ''limited partnerships'' -
arrangements which enable the public to invest in a specific well.
Under the system, American Quasar provides the equipment and the
investors pay the other costs of drilling. The investors are to
receive 60 percent of profits if the well eventually produces.
    Lowe was enthusiastic in describing the potential of the region,
saying, ''It's the best onshore area in the lower 48 states for
exploration.''
    His enthusiasm was echoed by Pat Driscoll, chief petroleum engineer
for the Utah Department of Natural Resources. ''No question about
it,'' Driscoll said of the region's high potential.
    The oil companies and landholders are not the only ones to profit by
the oil boom. Utah imposes a 2 percent tax on the gross value of
production at the wellhead and local counties are permitted by state
law to charge local taxes based on the mil levy in the county. It
usually amounts to about a quarter of 1 percent. Wyoming also charges
the 2 percent tax.
    About 175 wells have been drilled in the overthrust belt so far and,
says Driscoll, that is a small number for the amount of gas and oil
being produced. The petroleum fields are remote. Once only the
silhouettes of cattle and cowboys broke the horizon of the rolling
hills, but today drilling rigs are seen throughout the treeless
spaces.
(MORE)
    
    
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