The code behind the New York Times interactive for Errol Morris's Did My Brother Invent E-Mail with Tom Van Vleck?
Visit the interactive feature here, at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/20/opinion/20110620-who-invented-email.html
The final interactive is composed in Multics.fla, a Flash CS5 project file.
Multics.as is the "theatrics" code. This is where the actions of the interactive are staged.
Typewriter.as contains the code for the stop-motion typewriter animation and utility code for driving the text reading and writing engine.
ProgrammingGame.as and EmailGame.as contain the two activities for the interactive.
Left Comp_2.flv and Right_Comp_2.flv are specially compressed sequences of images. The left composition is all the stop motion positions of the fingers striking keys on the typewriter. The right composition contains the stop motion positions of the typewriter striking the paper.
Typewriter Images.aep contains the After Effects CS5 composition with the typewriter and hand images. It also has a mockup of the button layout.
In order for the typewriter to appear in front of the paper, green paper was used, then keyed out in After Effects.
The original photographs are not available in this repository.
Benjamin S. Berman is the author of the work. All rights are reserved. The hand model is David Braun. Whitney Dangerfield provided invaluable feedback. Errol Morris wrote the essay and provided feedback.
The code contained in this work is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 3. The images, video, sound and embedded graphic elements in the Flash project (the "art") are licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA.
Code license: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt
Art license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode.txt