Anybody who reads this blog regularly (is there really anybody who does?) will know that I like to come up with some strange facts on occasions. Today felt like one of those occasions.
So, instead of commenting about the sudden change in weather and the fact that the temperatures are climbing into the eighties, I will drop two names into the discussion - Robert Moog and Eugene Polley. One of those gentlemen invented something we cannot do without, the other invented something that changed the history of music.
Perhaps Mr Moog is more obvious. Today would have been his 78th birthday excpet for one fact - he died in 2005. Mr Moog created the Moog Synthesiser - a rather unfathomable keyboard instrument based I believe on tape looping and apparently very difficult to play. He created the Moog for musical experimentalists but it soon became a staple of the progressive (prog) rock scene.
It produced that swelling, swirling, wonderful wall of sound soon adopted by some of (in my humble opinion) the greatest rock bands and individuals of all time - the likes of Brian Eno, David Bowie, Ultravox, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Barclay James Harvest, Kraftwerk, Yes and Genesis to name just a few. So I doff my hat (or I would if I had one) to Mr Moog and the delights he has brought me over the years.
Eugene Polley, on the other hand, wanted to create something to make us lazy. So he invented the remote control, which he called the Flash-Matic. The first of these devices was used on televisions and looked more like a hairdryer than what we have been accustomed to. It shot out a beam of light capable of changing a channel or changing the volume. In those days there would probably have been only a couple of channels anyway but who cares. In addition other beams of light could affect the channel as well. So imagine hubby coming home at the end of a hard day at the office, switching on the room light and the TV changes from Mr Ed to Quatermass just like that. Eugene was obviously a visionary who could see the possibility of hundreds of channels and the need to cut back young people's concentartion spans to a minimal level (i.e a few seconds). He probably saw computer games consoles, stereo systems and many digital applications. I'm sure he also realised that there needed to be evolution that allowed the hairdryer to become a minute hand held gizmo and for the name to change from Flash-Matic to remote control. Early American adverts for the Flash-Matic heralded its ability to cut the volume of loud annoying adverts whilst keeping the picture. Can't quite see why you would want to watch a commercial without sound though but we must remember that these were very different days when relatively mundane things gave pleasure and I'm sure the inventor didn't want to suggest missing out the adverts altogether - that would have been a step too far. I wonder what he made of the present day when you can pause live TV and quite easily skip the adverts.
I did think at one point of writing a biography of the man and calling it The History of Mr Polley only to find HG Wells had beaten me to it! Anyway Eugene died today, but his invention will live on for decades.
Tried to get some of the new Olympic tickets that went on sale today. Failed miserably and wasted quite some time. So far we must have applied for up to 20 sets of tickets and have received absolutely zero.
Can't finish today without mentioning the One Show yet again. Good old Matt Baker. Last night they had our very own Englebert Humperdinck (who incidentally was born plain old Arnold Dorsey in Madras, India, which probably makes him a shoe in for our national cricket team which is full of people born in South Africa) live from the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, which you will remember from prvious blogs has the world's second tallest flagpole. Old Englebert (and I use the word as a reflection of his age and not as a term of endearment) clutched a microphone and uttered a few words of wisdom which had Matt B salavating: "This is remarkable. Englebert is even reporting for us now" he enthused. Awesome Matt just awesome.
So, instead of commenting about the sudden change in weather and the fact that the temperatures are climbing into the eighties, I will drop two names into the discussion - Robert Moog and Eugene Polley. One of those gentlemen invented something we cannot do without, the other invented something that changed the history of music.
Perhaps Mr Moog is more obvious. Today would have been his 78th birthday excpet for one fact - he died in 2005. Mr Moog created the Moog Synthesiser - a rather unfathomable keyboard instrument based I believe on tape looping and apparently very difficult to play. He created the Moog for musical experimentalists but it soon became a staple of the progressive (prog) rock scene.
It produced that swelling, swirling, wonderful wall of sound soon adopted by some of (in my humble opinion) the greatest rock bands and individuals of all time - the likes of Brian Eno, David Bowie, Ultravox, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Barclay James Harvest, Kraftwerk, Yes and Genesis to name just a few. So I doff my hat (or I would if I had one) to Mr Moog and the delights he has brought me over the years.
Eugene Polley, on the other hand, wanted to create something to make us lazy. So he invented the remote control, which he called the Flash-Matic. The first of these devices was used on televisions and looked more like a hairdryer than what we have been accustomed to. It shot out a beam of light capable of changing a channel or changing the volume. In those days there would probably have been only a couple of channels anyway but who cares. In addition other beams of light could affect the channel as well. So imagine hubby coming home at the end of a hard day at the office, switching on the room light and the TV changes from Mr Ed to Quatermass just like that. Eugene was obviously a visionary who could see the possibility of hundreds of channels and the need to cut back young people's concentartion spans to a minimal level (i.e a few seconds). He probably saw computer games consoles, stereo systems and many digital applications. I'm sure he also realised that there needed to be evolution that allowed the hairdryer to become a minute hand held gizmo and for the name to change from Flash-Matic to remote control. Early American adverts for the Flash-Matic heralded its ability to cut the volume of loud annoying adverts whilst keeping the picture. Can't quite see why you would want to watch a commercial without sound though but we must remember that these were very different days when relatively mundane things gave pleasure and I'm sure the inventor didn't want to suggest missing out the adverts altogether - that would have been a step too far. I wonder what he made of the present day when you can pause live TV and quite easily skip the adverts.
I did think at one point of writing a biography of the man and calling it The History of Mr Polley only to find HG Wells had beaten me to it! Anyway Eugene died today, but his invention will live on for decades.
Tried to get some of the new Olympic tickets that went on sale today. Failed miserably and wasted quite some time. So far we must have applied for up to 20 sets of tickets and have received absolutely zero.
Can't finish today without mentioning the One Show yet again. Good old Matt Baker. Last night they had our very own Englebert Humperdinck (who incidentally was born plain old Arnold Dorsey in Madras, India, which probably makes him a shoe in for our national cricket team which is full of people born in South Africa) live from the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, which you will remember from prvious blogs has the world's second tallest flagpole. Old Englebert (and I use the word as a reflection of his age and not as a term of endearment) clutched a microphone and uttered a few words of wisdom which had Matt B salavating: "This is remarkable. Englebert is even reporting for us now" he enthused. Awesome Matt just awesome.
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