Seeking Info about, and Pics of, Offner's EEG's
Hello all, I'm doing a bit of historical research with a writer from Smithsonian Magazine, whose doing a piece on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of R.E.M. and it's association with dreaming. The questions that remain open have to do with the nature of the EEG equipment used in the lab of Eugene Aserinsky. We're talking about 1951--1953. The setting was the U of Chicago, Physiology Dept. The project was a Ph.D. Thesis, and as was not unusual had about $1.98 for its budget. Franklin Offner had been an advanced student himself at Chicago a bit earlier on, and apparently had built his own version of the device made by Berger and others. This was prior to "The War". It was this machine that Aserinsky dragged up from the basement. It has been referred to as as a "Dynagraph", but I'm not sure that's correct if it was built as a one-off for the U of C lab, before there was even a Dynagraph company, which I think was created AFTER he left the University. Those of you who go back far enough might be able to offer some impressions of the old vacuum tube machines. When, for instance, did standardized paper for multichannel pen-writers come into being. And what kind kind of size are we talking about--for both machines and paper. Were they tough to manage. Cranky, Temperamental? I'll be very grateful for any information, speculation, photos and so on. It's amazing how quickly the facts fade. The investigator I'm talking about is my father, who is now deceased. His advisor, who was remarkably long-lived, has also unfortunately passed on rather recently. The number of people with first-hand or even contemporaneous second-hand knowledge of what took place in that lab is dwindling very quickly. I was there, and very much a participant, but there are limits to both my current memory and my youthful understanding when things were taking place. Because I was pretty bright (way back when), I understood a lot more than people might expect. On the other hand, "bright" isn't the same as as being Leonardo Da Vinci or Mozart. So let's say that the original data, my impressions, were a tad rough. If I can return the favor, by providing information to anyone in this group I'd be pleased to. Armond Aserinsky, Ph.D. North Wales, PA 19454