Design Device
   by Tom DeWitt, 1975 (part 1 of 18)

Historical Background

   In 1975, Tom DeWitt and Phil Edelstein spent a weekend in Poughkeepsie visiting with Tom's family. Retreating to the attic rooms, they sketched out a proposal for a video synthesizer. The setting must have been influenced to some extent by Tom's father, David DeWitt, an IBM Fellow whose lifetime of contribution to electrical and electronic engineering including basic work in radio, television, radar, computers, transisors and semi-conductors. His 40 foot ham antenna mast was visible from the room in which Tom and Phil feverishly sketched their synthesizer, and Tom decided that calling their instrument the Design Device would bless the project with his father's initials. 

  Returning to Albany, Tom put words to the sketches and dragged in documentation that had accumulated during his NEA Fellowship in Video over the course of a year. With graphic design help from his partner in art, Vibeke Sorensen, the sketches began to look legible to the eye of electronics engineers. Using the Electronic Music Studio at the University at Albany as a base, Tom and Phil phoned around the country to get price fixes for parts and interviewed potential allies in the proposed construction. The package was given a final draft and a pack of copies were sent to the New York State Council on the Arts under the aegis of the Capital District's PBS station, WMHT with the expectation of starting in Albany the kind of facility in which Tom and Phil had both participated in New York City, WNET's Television Labortory.

  There was a grant, but at half the proposed budget, the Design Device proved out of reach, and Pantomation was the born as a lower cost alternative. 

Tom Ditto
August 2000