On Thu, 01 Feb 2001 10:33:19 -0500 (EST) Stephen Black
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Hey, Ken! Wasn't it at USND at Hoople that the early work was done on the
> > > PDQ Bach effect, in which rats listened to his Concerto for
> > > Horn and Hardart<snip>
> >
> > Anyway, it was at Hoople that we learned about Skinner's visit to
> > a certain Philadelphia institution and the true story behind the design
> > of the operant chamber.
>
> All of this tongue-in-cheek insider joke stuff is getting to me.
> Could someone please explain what this is all about? Or do I
> have to alert the Relevance Police?
>
To continued with Jim Dougan's explanation...
Track 1 of "An evening with PDQ Bach" is a concerto to Horn & Hardart.
Horn & Hardart developed the first automat, or waiterless restaurant,
in the US and it is the ancestor of the fast food retaurant. The first
restaurant was located in Philadelphia, and the Horn & Hardart automat
was the inspiration for the song "Let's have another cup of coffee..."
Here is a link to pictures from an H & H...
http://www.theautomat.com/inside/history/history.html
Scroll down to the picture with Doris Day. That picture and the
picture above give you an appreciation of the interior of an H & H.
The interior walls were lined with little glass doors through which you
could retrieve sandwiches, pie slices, and other food items.
When Robert Herdegen made the reference to Horn & Hardart, I remembered
vividly a visit to a Horn & Hardart Automat in Phildelphia, to which I
had gone to have [sentimentally] a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.
That experience was one of stepping back in time to the 1940s, and it
looked just like the pictures discussed above. I hadn't thought of an H
& H in years. The reference in the context of discussing a rat
experiment made me suddenly realize that the arrangement looked like an
operant conditioning lab where the chambers were stacked, one on top of
another.
And so in my testimony to the relevance police, I would point out that
this type of memory experience should be discussed in class. It has a
name... but I forgotten it at the moment.
Ken
----------------------
Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Psychology
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
