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Tech-Op-ed August, 2015
SOUNDING OFF
By Walter Salm Editor
Beware: Robo-Umpires Are Here
what you must believe when you root for a team that loses most of the time. Once in a while the Mets rise above their mediocre performance and manage to have a winning team. They have been in four World Series, winning all the marbles in 1969 and 1986. You remember 1969, don’t you? That’s the year that Neil Armstrong first
I
set foot on the moon. But the really big news that year was the Mets winning the World Series. At the time, I was managing editor of BM/E - Broadcast Management/Engineeringmagazine. We carried all kinds of stories about the color TV broadcasts that originated from inside the Apollo capsule, quite a feat since color TV cameras were awfully big and cumbersome in those days. And we had some fun with it. One of my favorite covers that year was a car- toon showing the moon lander descending with its landing rockets firing, and there on the Moon’s surface were two space-suited TV cameramen pointing their cameras at the spacecraft. Lettered on the backs of their spacesuits were the words “Network Pool”. I also got into trouble over another cartoon, one that I had commissioned to lead a feature article, but that’s another story for another time. During that 1969 World Series, I was manning a publications table at the
Audio Engineering Society’s (AES) annual expo at the New York Hilton hotel. No radios were allowed, but they hadn’t said anything about transistor radios with earplugs, so I kept abreast of the games with my pocket-size transistor radio and earplug, updating a tabletop easel which I filled in with the inning- by-inning score. People stopped and stared and commented in disbelief; the Mets were beating the powerful Baltimore Orioles. The last day of the AES expo also turned out to be the last day of the World Series. The show closed early. We packed up our table, and I strolled back to the office still listening to the ball game. It was the 9th inning; I stopped at a crowded bar and stood on tiptoe to see the TV screen over the crowd. Tommy Agee caught a fly ball for the final out to end the game and the World Series and the bar exploded in shouting and cheering. Everybody was a Mets fan that day. Back on the street, Sixth Avenue was suddenly a cacophony of bleating taxi horns. Sky- scraper windows opened and showers of ticker tape, shredded paper, toilet paper, and confetti swirled into the street — a veritable blizzard of paper. People formed circles and danced in the streets. The impossible had hap- pened! Later, walking across 42nd Street to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, I pushed through accumulated paper that was up to my knees. The street sweepers were not there because no one had anticipated this spontaneous cel- ebration. Now something new has been added to baseball. It’s called technology. A
minor league professional baseball team in San Rafael, California, has used a robotic umpire to call balls and strikes for the first time. It simply uses tri- angulation of 3 TV cameras to determine whether or not the ball is in the strike zone. The strike zone boundaries have long been a bone of contention between the home plate umpire and the players, and various umpires vary the strike zone according to their own taste. The contentious arguments and player ejections that often result are part of the fabric of this sometimes com- plex and always enthralling sport. TV sports coverage often uses this same technology to show exactly where the pitched ball went. Now the cameras are also calling the balls and strikes. The human umpire is still behind home plate to call foul and fair balls. But the robo-ump is someone you just can’t ar- gue with. I’m not sure how soon this new use of existing technology will be permit-
ted by Major League Baseball, but I have to believe that it will happen. When I worked at a rocket test station in the Summer of 1952, I didn’t believe I would live long enough to see men walk on the moon. For that matter, I nev- er thought I would ever see the Mets win a World Series. But robo-umpires?
have been an avid baseball fan most of my life, in particular a NY Mets fan. When asked about it, I simply tell people that being a Mets fan re- quires a great deal of patience and lots of strength of character. This is
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
By Jacob Fattal Publisher
It’s Show Time Again
Summer is winding down and it’s Fall (almost) — a time of relief (we hope) from the blistering hot summer that has been plaguing the entire country. This is the time of year that signals the start of a new round of international trade shows for U.S. Tech. In August, it’s Nepcon South China with three very filled, very hectic days while we catch up with old friends, meet some new peo- ple, and try out the local cuisine. Shenzhen is China’s pre-eminent manufac- turing and electronic assembly center, so this show is always a big draw. Back stateside, September will take us to SMTAI in Rosemont, next to
Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where we will meet a number of prominent U.S. EMS providers. Then take a deep breath and head for Orlando, Florida for IMAPS. And because of some really super advance planning, The Assembly Show takes place the exact same week in Rosemont, so we have to split our staff. Then comes the ATX in Philadelphia, in our own back yard on October 7-
8. Nice thing about this event is that we get to go home to sleep in our very own beds each night. Thanks to UBM’s method of co-locating several related shows in the same venue, we will also be able to participate in MD&M, Philly PACK, Design & Manufacturing, PLASTEC, and Quality Expo. A similar combining of co-located shows from UBM comes to Minneapolis on November 4-5 with MD&M, Minnesota PACK, PLASTEC Minneapolis, Design & Manu- facturing, ATX, Quality Expo Showcase, and Embedded Systems Conference. Overlapping this is Autotest in Washington, DC, November 2-5, and then pro- ductronica in Munich on November 10-13. For this show in Germany, by far the largest show of the year for us, we will combine our efforts with Scoop Communications. The November/December holidays create a difficult problem for us: many
companies simply close down for two weeks or more, and in those that remain open, many key people take extended time off for the holidays. This makes it very difficult for us to publish, so once again, we will combine November/De- cember into a single issue. It’s a hectic time of the year, and it gives us all an opportunity to look back and reflect on all we have done. r
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