Reporter's Notebook: Robin Williams in 1996
Friday, August 22, 2014
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Robin Williams with children at Mt. Sinai Hospital on February 8, 1996 (Gregory Heisler/Courtesy of "24 Hours in Cyberspace")
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In 1996, when the digital revolution was still in its infancy, a team of photographers published a book called 24 Hours in Cyberspace: Painting on the Walls of the Digital Cave.
More than 150 journalists were hired to make a "digital snapshot" on
Feb. 8 documenting how people's lives were being transformed by online
technology at work and at play.
My assignment: recording Robin Williams using an early version of video conferencing with children at Mount Sinai Hospital. Even though it was a photo book, the editors wanted some audio to complement the images for a CD-ROM.
I had forgotten all about the project until Williams' death this month. Photojournalist Rick Smolan, who organized the project (as well as the "Day in the Life" photo books), was kind enough to send me a copy of the book and the CD.
Smolan knew Williams. He arranged for the actor to visit Mount Sinai with Stephen Spielberg's Starbright Foundation, which was using video conferencing and games to connect seriously ill children at different hospitals around the country. The actor showed up in a black T-shirt and funky glasses. He loved meeting the children and treated them like real people, not like sick patients. They bonded over their shared love of the word "coinkydinks" whenever they found something in common.
The video-conferencing technology was like an early version of Skype. You can hear in the first clip (in the player above) how Williams and the kids cracked up as they tried to connect with children in another hospital and had trouble getting a clear image. "You're a little fuzzy, like in a witness protection program," he told the kids on the other end. There was also a funny echo effect. They played some video games.
Then one of the children on the other end of the video conference
used the word "coinkydinks" — without any prompting whatsoever. Williams
and the kids in New York began laughing uncontrollably.
You can hear the joy Williams brought to the children in these brief clips we retrieved from the CD. I recorded everything with standard broadcast equipment, but it now sounds more like 1966 than 1996. There's a reason. Even though CD-ROM was state of the art in 1996, this was still before the modern Internet. Those old audio files no longer play on our modern computers. WNYC's Director of Broadcast Applications and Infrastructure, Gregg Gasperino, had to play a digital forensics expert in transferring these brief clips to a format we can listen to today.The files lost some of their sound quality in the process, but Williams' electric personality still comes through loud and clear.
There's also an interview I conducted with a doctor who must have been working with the Starbright Foundation about using digital games with hospitalized children. I don't know his name, so please let us know if you recognize his voice.
My assignment: recording Robin Williams using an early version of video conferencing with children at Mount Sinai Hospital. Even though it was a photo book, the editors wanted some audio to complement the images for a CD-ROM.
I had forgotten all about the project until Williams' death this month. Photojournalist Rick Smolan, who organized the project (as well as the "Day in the Life" photo books), was kind enough to send me a copy of the book and the CD.
Smolan knew Williams. He arranged for the actor to visit Mount Sinai with Stephen Spielberg's Starbright Foundation, which was using video conferencing and games to connect seriously ill children at different hospitals around the country. The actor showed up in a black T-shirt and funky glasses. He loved meeting the children and treated them like real people, not like sick patients. They bonded over their shared love of the word "coinkydinks" whenever they found something in common.
The video-conferencing technology was like an early version of Skype. You can hear in the first clip (in the player above) how Williams and the kids cracked up as they tried to connect with children in another hospital and had trouble getting a clear image. "You're a little fuzzy, like in a witness protection program," he told the kids on the other end. There was also a funny echo effect. They played some video games.
Play
00:00 / 00:00
You can hear the joy Williams brought to the children in these brief clips we retrieved from the CD. I recorded everything with standard broadcast equipment, but it now sounds more like 1966 than 1996. There's a reason. Even though CD-ROM was state of the art in 1996, this was still before the modern Internet. Those old audio files no longer play on our modern computers. WNYC's Director of Broadcast Applications and Infrastructure, Gregg Gasperino, had to play a digital forensics expert in transferring these brief clips to a format we can listen to today.The files lost some of their sound quality in the process, but Williams' electric personality still comes through loud and clear.
There's also an interview I conducted with a doctor who must have been working with the Starbright Foundation about using digital games with hospitalized children. I don't know his name, so please let us know if you recognize his voice.
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Beth Fertig
Beth Fertig is WNYC’s Contributing Editor for Education. She previously covered politics, which included City Hall during the Giuliani administration, and the U.S. Senate campaigns of Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. She also covered transportation and infrastructure.
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