John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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His daughter was a neighbor for a while, she introduced herself by name and I immediately said you must be Claude's daughter due to the remarkable family resemblance.

EDIT - Sorry I meant granddaughter

They say humanity is moved forward by just a few geniuses.

I imagine you could select 10 or 15 such individuals, remove them from our collective history, and we'd be living the way we did 2000 or more years ago.
 
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Vonnegut comes to mind here, especially Cat's Cradle. When the famous guy Hoenikker starts to study turtles instead of bombs, the staff steals into his lab and replaces the tanks and so forth with bomb parts. The famous guy is a bit perplexed, but pretty soon starts playing with the new parts.

The point is, without some notion of values the brightest folk may do us a disservice.
 
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They say humanity is moved forward by just a few geniuses.

I imagine you could select 10 or 15 such individuals, remove them from our collective history, and we'd be living the way we did 2000 or more years ago.

I see that differently. Inventions come about when it's 'the right time' in a specific period. Many inventions are done almost simultaneously and one guy beats the other by a few months or so. So if A doesn't do it, B does it a few months later.

People are still fighting who exactly invented the telephone, the printing press, theory of evolution, etc, because it was 'in the air' so to speak, and unavoidable.

Technological progress is really a group dynamic process and it's almost accidental who becomes the point man.

Jan
 
when its time to railroad, everyone railroads

yes there is the more collective view, many geniuses are recognized for a synthesis firmly based in their time's current concerns, accumulated knowledge and math/logic tool base

many "named" theories turn out to be anticipated, sometimes in their entirety by less well connected workers, get attributed to "the greats" that already had achieved fame, influential positions - even anachronistic attributions to Euler, Gauss can be found

some speculate that Clifford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford could have scooped Einstein if he hadn't died in his 30's in 1879, if he had another 25 years to see, apply his mathematical techniques to the EM problems Lorentz et al were concerned with, possibly General Relativity too
 
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My view tends towards what Jan and jcx allude, especially now where opportunities for brilliant people to shine is better than ever (whereas much of prior genius remitted on right place at the right time). Sort of like how the average quality of professional sports and musicians had risen. Also interesting is that science tends to advance with the death of eminent scientists: Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?

I have a hard time seeing audio electronics as an industry driving stylistic differentiation rather than abject performance. And the bell curve of inaudibly good is moving down in price. (High end left hunting for unique rather than seeking to align with general population preferences)

Speakers and room are where it's at.
 
No, not complaining from my side - its genesis was at a university/college in Italy. I think it is a great tool for teaching coding.

The crippled C++ that the Arduino compiler promotes is IMO anything you want but educational. To quote Linus Torvalds, "if you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it".

The Atmel Studio is decent for the price (zero). Can be used to program the Atmel based Arduinos without any problems, but also the Atmel ARM Cortex A4 boards.
 
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some speculate that Clifford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford could have scooped Einstein if he hadn't died in his 30's in 1879, if he had another 25 years to see, apply his mathematical techniques to the EM problems Lorentz et al were concerned with, possibly General Relativity too

I hadn't heard of Clifford before. We learn something new every day :)
 
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Thanks Richard.
I searched for papers of his. I found this:
Method and apparatus evaluating auditory distortions of an audio system

See Figures 8 to 12
It seems he wasn’t implying to infin

George

Nice find. I liked it because it puts numbers/formula to what is talked about in general.

IMO the drop off in sensitivity above 10KHz is due to lack of hearing it. If our hearing went much higher, the curve would not fall off where it does. IMO.

Most music energy falls between 100 and 400Hz or so.... applying the cube 'rule' to aural harmonic sensitivity is still useful. Applicable still with SE and many tube electronic designs and loudspeakers, of course.

Maybe even some applicable with limiters and compressor designs and other affects devices.


THx-RNMarsh
 
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Anyone going to this AES event today? I am, I think.
 

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Well,

I stopped in my shop this evening (Sunday 7:15 PM LT) and find a band jamming in the shop. One of my guy's trucks is parked out front and a van I don't recognize. So should I:

Go in the back and start painting the stuff I came in to do.

Sit in the front, as they haven't noticed me and listen to them. (Not bad.)

Walk in and surprise them.

Leave them a bill for the parking?

ES
 
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