Voyager Company
Encyclopedia
The Voyager Company was a pioneer in CD-ROM
production in the 1980s and early 1990s, and published The Criterion Collection
, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on Laserdisc
. It was founded in 1984 by four partners: Jon Turell, Bill Becker, Aleen Stein and Robert Stein. The firm took its name from the Voyager
space craft.
In 1994 the partnership was diluted by selling 20% of it to the von Holzbrinck Publishing Group
, a German holding company. In 1997, the Holzbrinck Group withdrew with its 20%, the name of "Voyager" and half the CD-ROM rights - Robert Stein took half the other CD-ROM rights, and the Toolkit rights.
This left the Criterion Collection and three of the original partners: Aleen Stein (1/3), the Becker family (1/3), and the Turell family (1/3). See The Criterion Collection
for further information.
Expanded Books
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
production in the 1980s and early 1990s, and published The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
, a pioneering home video collection of classic and important contemporary films on Laserdisc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
. It was founded in 1984 by four partners: Jon Turell, Bill Becker, Aleen Stein and Robert Stein. The firm took its name from the Voyager
Voyager program
The Voyager program is a U.S program that launched two unmanned space missions, scientific probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment of the late 1970s...
space craft.
In 1994 the partnership was diluted by selling 20% of it to the von Holzbrinck Publishing Group
Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck is a Stuttgart-based publishing holding company which owns publishing companies worldwide. Holtzbrinck has published everything from Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses to classics by Agatha Christie, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway and John Updike...
, a German holding company. In 1997, the Holzbrinck Group withdrew with its 20%, the name of "Voyager" and half the CD-ROM rights - Robert Stein took half the other CD-ROM rights, and the Toolkit rights.
This left the Criterion Collection and three of the original partners: Aleen Stein (1/3), the Becker family (1/3), and the Turell family (1/3). See The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
for further information.
Laserdiscs
- De Italia
- The Great Quake of '89 (in partnership with ABC News Interactive)
- The National Gallery of Art
- The ResidentsThe ResidentsThe Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
: Twenty Twisted Questions (Part 1/2) - LouvreLouvreThe Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
- To New Horizons: Ephemeral FilmsSponsored filmSponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited time...
1931-1945 - The Vancouver Disc
- Vienna
- You Can't Get There From Here: Ephemeral FilmsSponsored filmSponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited time...
1945-1960 - The Voyager Videostack
CD-ROMS
- A Hard Day's NightA Hard Day's Night (film)A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
(Demo) - A World Alive (Demo)
- All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis By Morton SubotnickMorton SubotnickMorton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...
(Demo) - Amanda Stories (Demo)
- American Poetry The Nineteenth Century (Demo)
- AmnestyAmnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
Interactive (Demo) - Baseball's Greatest Hits (Demo)
- The Beat Experience
- The CD Companion to Beethoven's Ninth SymphonySymphony No. 9 (Beethoven)The Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, is the final complete symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the best known works of the Western classical repertoire, and has been adapted for use as the European Anthem...
CD-ROMBeethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROMBeethoven's Ninth Symphony CD-ROM was one of the first titles to couple a computer with an audio CD. This title was developed in 1989 by The Voyager Company in Apple Computer's HyperCard, using custom audio XCMDs developed at Voyager...
(Demo) - The CD Companion To MozartWolfgang Amadeus MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's Dissonant QuartetString Quartet No. 19 (Mozart)The String Quartet No. 19 in C Major, KV. 465 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, nicknamed "Dissonance" on account of its unusual slow introduction, is perhaps the most famous of his quartets...
(Demo) - The CD Companion to DvorakAntonín DvorákAntonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
The New World SymphonySymphony No. 9 (Dvorák)The Symphony No. 9 in E Minor "From the New World", Op. 95, B. 178 , popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 during his visit to the United States from 1892 to 1895. It is by far his most popular symphony, and one of the most popular in the modern repertoire...
(Demo) - The CD Companion to StravinskyIgor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's "The Rite of SpringThe Rite of SpringThe Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...
" (Demo) - Circus!: An Interactive Cartoon (Demo)
- Comic Book ConfidentialComic Book ConfidentialComic Book Confidential is an American/Canadian documentary film, released in 1988. Directed by Ron Mann and written by Mann and Charles Lippincott, the film is a survey of the history of the comic book medium in the United States from the 1930s to the 1980s, as an art form and in social...
(Demo) - The Complete MausMausMaus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a biography of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of...
(Demo) - Criterion Goes to the Movies (Demo)
- The Day After TrinityThe Day After TrinityThe Day After Trinity is a 1980 documentary film directed and produced by Jon H. Else in association with KTEH public television in San Jose, California. The film tells the story of J...
(Demo) - Dazzleoids
- Ephemeral FilmsSponsored filmSponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, is film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited time...
1931-1960 (incorporating two previously-released titles, To New Horizons and You Can't Get There From Here) (Demo) - First Emperor of ChinaQin Shi HuangQin Shi Huang , personal name Ying Zheng , was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 246 BC to 221 BC during the Warring States Period. He became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 BC...
(Demo) - First Person: "Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine" Donald NormanDonald NormanDonald Arthur Norman is an academic in the field of cognitive science, design and usability engineering and a co-founder and consultant with the Nielsen Norman Group. He is the author of the book The Design of Everyday Things....
, three Norman books and a number of technical papers (Demo) - First Person: Mumia Abu-JamalMumia Abu-JamalMumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death. He has been described as "perhaps the world's best known death-row inmate", and his sentence is one of the most debated today...
, Live from Death RowLive from Death RowLive from Death Row, published in May 1995, is a collection of memoirs by American death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. Publishers Addison-Wesley gave Abu-Jamal a $30,000 advance for the novel, prompting Maureen Faulkner, the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the Philadelphia Police Officer whom Abu-Jamal...
(Demo) - First Person: The Society of Mind, starring Dr. Marvin MinskyMarvin MinskyMarvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
(Demo) - For All MankindFor All MankindFor All Mankind is a 1989 documentary film documenting the Apollo missions of NASA. It was directed by Al Reinert.Music for the film was originally composed in 1983 by Brian Eno and released as an album entitled Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks...
(Demo) - If Monks Had Macs... (Demo)
- Invisible Universe, starring Dr. Fiorella TerenziFiorella TerenziFiorella Terenzi is an Italian astrophysicist, author and musician who is best known for taking recordings of radio waves from galaxies and turning them into music...
- Last Chance to SeeLast Chance to SeeLast Chance to See is a 1989 BBC radio documentary series and its accompanying book, written and presented by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine. In the series, Adams and Carwardine travel to various locations in the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction...
- Laurie AndersonLaurie AndersonLaura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
's Puppet Motel (Clip) - MacbethMacbethThe Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
(Demo) - Mystery Science Theater 3000Mystery Science Theater 3000Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....
:The CD-Rom (Cancelled) - Our Secret Century: The Darker Side of the American Dream (12 discs, 2 unreleased, of films and collateral material from Prelinger ArchivesPrelinger ArchivesThe Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...
- Painters PaintingPainters PaintingPainters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970 is a 1972 documentary directed by Emile de Antonio. It covers American art movements from abstract expressionism to pop art through conversations with artists in their studios...
(Demo) - People Weekly - 20 Amazing Years Of Pop Culture (Demo)
- Poetry in MotionPoetry in Motion (film)Poetry in Motion is a 1982 documentary directed by Ron Mann featuring contemporary North American poetry and music. Featured are some of the Black Mountain poets, Beats, minimalist poets, and avante-garde poets.-Featured artists:*Helen Adam...
(Demo) - The ResidentsThe ResidentsThe Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
Freak ShowFreak Show/Freak Show SoundtrackFreak Show marked the beginning of The Residents' obsession with emerging computer technology in the 1990s. Much of the music was made with various MIDI devices. "Freak Show" also served as the name for a CD-ROM that was released in 1994, a stage performance by a theater company at the Archa...
(Demo) - Rodney's Wonder Window
- Silly Noisy House
- So I've Heard: A Collector's Guide to Compact Discs
- Stephen Jay GouldStephen Jay GouldStephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
On Evolution (Demo) - Theatre of the Imagination: Radio Stories by Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
and The Mercury Theatre - This Is Spinal TapThis Is Spinal TapThis Is Spinal Tap is an American 1984 rock musical mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner about the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap...
- The Trout QuintetTrout QuintetThe Trout Quintet is the popular name for the Piano Quintet in A major by Franz Schubert. In Otto Erich Deutsch's catalogue of Schubert's works, it is D. 667...
- Understanding MacLuhan (Demo)
- The Voyager Audiostack
Expanded BooksExpanded BooksThe Expanded Books Project was an undertaking at The Voyager Company during 1991, that investigated ideas on how a book could be presented on a computer screen in a way that would be both familiar and useful to regular book readers...
Series
- Jurassic Park - Crichton, MichaelMichael CrichtonJohn Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
- The Complete Hitch Hiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
- Adams, DouglasDouglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
(EB2) - The Complete Annotated Alice in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in WonderlandAlice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures...
- Carroll, LewisLewis CarrollCharles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, Intro & notes by Gardner, Martin (EB1) - Virtual LightVirtual LightVirtual Light is the first book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Virtual Light is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations...
- Gibson, WilliamWilliam GibsonWilliam Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
(EB52) - NeuromancerNeuromancerNeuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Gibson, a seminal work in the cyberpunk genre and the first winner of the science-fiction "triple crown" — the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy...
/ Count ZeroCount ZeroCount Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a canonical example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.Count Zero was serialized by Isaac...
/ Mona Lisa OverdriveMona Lisa OverdriveMona Lisa Overdrive is a cyberpunk novel by William Gibson published in 1988 and the final novel of the Sprawl trilogy, following Neuromancer and Count Zero. It takes place eight years after the events of Count Zero and is set, as were its predecessors, in The Sprawl...
- Gibson, WilliamWilliam GibsonWilliam Gibson is an American-Canadian science fiction author.William Gibson may also refer to:-Association football:*Will Gibson , Scottish footballer...
(EB15) - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceZen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a 1974 philosophical novel, the first of Robert M. Pirsig's texts in which he explores his Metaphysics of Quality.The book sold 5 million copies worldwide...
and Lila: An Inquiry into MoralsLila: An Inquiry into MoralsLila: An Inquiry into Morals is the second philosophical novel by Robert M. Pirsig, who is best known for his classic text, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Lila: An Inquiry into Morals was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992...
- Pirsig, RobertRobert M. PirsigRobert Maynard Pirsig is an American writer and philosopher, and author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals .-Background:...
(EB8) - Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman - Glick, JamesJames GleickJames Gleick is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology...
- Who Built America
- The Criterion CollectionThe Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...