A Tiptoe through the Tulips...
and with a snip, snip, snip.. a reaping of the garden.
"Norris: Well, getting the lower frequencies was an early problem we had. Initial prototypes we made a couple years back could only get 1.5KHz. That’s pretty high up. But we found some tricks. By fooling around with the cue of our emitter, by the way we manipulate the side bands when we modulate, and also the size of the emitter. If you have an emitter that’s 10 or 12 inches in diameter but very, very thin, you can extend down to . . . we’re down to 90Hz right now, which is a good low end. We expect to be down to 40 or 50Hz, which is lower than most speakers really go, regardless of what you read on the label. Most people hear 100Hz, and they think it is 50 or 20. "
......
"We showed it a couple years back, and we couldn’t do low-frequency notes, and we couldn’t get low distortion, which you would need to go after real home audio and such. But now we can do those things, and we are working with a couple of companies, both in the United States and in Asia, that have woke up (awakened) to it. We realize if we’re not going to get stomped on here, we need a goliath partner or two to embrace this and put it into the marketplace. We’re not against licensing. "
...
"For instance, one of the companies we’re talking to plans to leave in place the left, center, and right conventional speakers and then mount right on your TV console, when you buy it, the two surround gadgets that would be adjusted once to aim at each of the two side walls. Then you have your surround channels without having to plug anything in or string any wires or add any ugliness anywhere else in the room. The next step would be to graduate and have all the channels be HyperSonic, and there are some terrific benefits to that we’re now exploring. One of them is you can actually move the placement of the image of sound without mechanically moving the emitter. By phasing the signal that goes into it properly, you can actually walk the signal around the room without any mechanical movement and place left, center, right, and surrounds right where you want them. And you can do it on the fly. "
...
"You can adjust it to spread it out to say, fill the couch, or a group of listeners. It doesn’t have to be that tight. Once you’ve overcome the issues of being able to control the tightness of the beam, or the directivity, you can always open it to cover a specific audience. *Note, 'bubble' of sound."
...
"Now go the next step, and you think about aiming this at a source of noise you want to cancel. It holds much greater potential for noise cancellation if you can control your sound instead of just using speakers the way they’re used today"
...
WVW "Were you college educated?"
*Note. Woody, the answer to that is YES, you were college educated. You just didn't get a degree..not that a degree is germane to the process of invention...it isn't, of course. In fact, the ritualized process of degree-ism can be a deterrent to thinking outside of the box, as well as using up quite a bit of life's most precious commodity...Time. So many egos to stroke and so little Time in the Universe of Universities. Of course, egos abound.... Everywhere...eh? Oh, the Humility!
"Norris: No, I found I was not disciplined enough and that I was learning a lot of things that I kept questioning what good they were going to be. So I said, ‘I don’t care about the credits, I care about the knowledge. I’m going to take what I want to.’ I took electronics, calculus, accounting, philosophy of religion. I worked at the University of Washington for 11 years, so I got to take classes for free, except I’d buy my own books. So I have an education that’s a little different. I never worried about a degree. But you can’t invent and not be educated. I just didn’t get mine in the regular way."
...
"Let me give you a statistic I have to credit to a friend of mine, Joel Barker, in a book that’s coming out. If you take the complete energy consumption level of the United States, which is the highest in the world per capita, and then you triple the Earth’s population, 5% of the deuterium dissolved in ocean water with fusion would power the entire world at that level for 1 million years. We’re not short of energy; we just don’t know how to get it."
*Note..let's apply that 'upside down thinking' (I call mine 'right side UP thinking'....It would be far better to REDUCE the world's population, by.. let's say, 2/3. That would obviate, or at least ameliorate, the need for such a tremendous increase in energy consumption, and therefore some of that additional generation. Not to mention the most important factor....it would conserve the resources that the current, over abundant world's populace is depleting at such an astonishing and unsustainable rate....just a Thought, mind you.
...
"They say an invention is an accident observed."
*Note..And I say... An invention is an accident observed, and the end result of that observation having been acted upon.
And as to the parentage? I say...Laziness, more so than necessity, is the mother of invention.
*In retrospect, maybe "Laziness is the Father of Invention" would be closer to the truth..not a few of the fairer sex might agree with that notion. And thinking about that...since when has the 'fairer' sex...been 'fair'? Ah, the canoodling of the mind one can engage in, on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Chuckles.
Best,
Savant
Excerpts from an interview by William Van Winkle,
with comments by your 'humble' servant, S.
PS, And speaking of inventions....perhaps it's time to invent a way...to turn a dime? |
