Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text Stuff from dot com.
Speaker 1: Say everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Lauren bob Obam And today we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about a particular person who was very influential in technology,
Speaker 1: someone whom we lost last year in two thousand and thirteen.
Speaker 1: Ray Dolby and Dolby. You know the name. If you're
Speaker 1: at all familiar with audio equipment, the name just jumps
Speaker 1: out at you. I mean, even if you are, you're not.
Speaker 1: Even if you've seen a movie in a theater basically
Speaker 1: ever or maybe watched one on a DVD. If you've
Speaker 1: ever owned a stereo in the history of ever, you've
Speaker 1: probably seen the Dolby logo, which is that Yeah, certainly
Speaker 1: in the history of the past thirty years. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I think for most of our listeners that that qualifies. Uh.
Speaker 1: I know that we have some listeners who maybe have
Speaker 1: owned stereos that are older than thirty years. We appreciate
Speaker 1: you as well, of course. So Dolby, who was this guy?
Speaker 1: What did he do? While he was an electrical engineer,
Speaker 1: famous for his work in developing audio technology, which was
Speaker 1: used in everything from movies to uh, to studio equipment,
Speaker 1: to the stuff that you could buy like consumer electronics.
Speaker 1: And he has absolutely no relation to the musician Thomas
Speaker 1: Dolby known for us. She blinded me with science, right.
Speaker 1: Apparently Thomas Dolby took that stage name based on Dolby. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: his his actual name is Thomas Robertson, but his stage
Speaker 1: name is Thomas Dolby, presumably taking the name because of
Speaker 1: Dolby Laboratories and Dolby himself, Ray Dolby, Ray, by the way,
Speaker 1: had still has a son named Tom so also a
Speaker 1: little confused and confusion there, um. But apparently and and
Speaker 1: you uncovered this little tidbit that that Thomas are Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Thomas Dolby, the musician stage name person, had an agreement
Speaker 1: laid out that he would not name any electronics equipment
Speaker 1: under the Dolby brand, right right, He could not he
Speaker 1: you know, there was some initial um tension between Dolby
Speaker 1: Labs and Thomas Dolby, but that eventually got kind of
Speaker 1: settled down in the agreement essentially was kind of a
Speaker 1: gentleman's agreement. It was that Thomas Dolby could perform and
Speaker 1: and record under the name Thomas Dolby as long as
Speaker 1: he didn't put out like the Dolby Stereo, because I
Speaker 1: could be confused with the actual Dolby Labs brand. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about Tom, not Thomas Dolby. That's a totally
Speaker 1: different podcast that we could do, because Thomas Dolby has
Speaker 1: been very active in digital distribution. But Ray Dolby. So,
Speaker 1: he was born back in nineteen three in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 1: His father was a salesman yep. Ray Delby as a
Speaker 1: kid got interested in electronics. He apparently, according to one
Speaker 1: report I read, at age nine, rigged up an electronic
Speaker 1: signaling system that would allow you to alert someone, similar
Speaker 1: to using something with Morse code. I imagine this is
Speaker 1: something similar, like like a simple switch and uh, something
Speaker 1: that either made noise or lit up. There weren't details
Speaker 1: about exactly what it was. Yeah, I think that this
Speaker 1: was from an interview that he had done with a
Speaker 1: member of the um I e. The I Tripolie back
Speaker 1: in the eighties at some point. So I didn't have
Speaker 1: extreme details, but I found that very charming. He was
Speaker 1: also fascinated as a child by the mechanics of music.
Speaker 1: As a kid, he apparently played clarinet and remembered being
Speaker 1: um just engrossed by the vibrations of the reds, and
Speaker 1: in fact, that fascination with music would go throughout his
Speaker 1: entire life. His sons would talk about how he was
Speaker 1: not just an engineer, nor did he ever wish to
Speaker 1: be seen that way. He was an adventurer at heart
Speaker 1: and a musician at heart, someone who truly appreciated the
Speaker 1: sound owned of talented artists making music. And that was
Speaker 1: part of what he was so interested in when he
Speaker 1: got into electronics, was being able to have a device
Speaker 1: that could record and play back such stuff without any
Speaker 1: other artifacts getting in the way. So in high school
Speaker 1: he uh joined the projectionist clubs. So clearly a big
Speaker 1: man on campus. Uh. Obviously these are the the kids
Speaker 1: who are really interested in cinema. They're interested in in
Speaker 1: all aspects of electronics technology. Yeah, you know, all of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And through that, in nine he
Speaker 1: met one um Alex Pantov excellent. Yeah, he was the
Speaker 1: founder of a company called Ampex Corps. Yep. And uh
Speaker 1: and so here's here's the deal. Here's the scenario. Alex
Speaker 1: Pontia comes to town and he's gonna have a meeting
Speaker 1: and in order. Part of this meeting involves showing a
Speaker 1: film and he needs to have someone to run the projectors,
Speaker 1: so he reaches out to the local school and says, hey,
Speaker 1: can you send me a kid who can run the projector,
Speaker 1: and Dolby volunteers. He says, this sounds like something I
Speaker 1: would really like to do, so he comes over and
Speaker 1: runs the projector and he and Poniatof hit it off.
Speaker 1: I mean they you know, it's clear that Dolby is
Speaker 1: truly interested in technology, and Ampex was really getting into
Speaker 1: building recording devices, both for UM industry, like geophysical recorders,
Speaker 1: and also for you know, entertainment industry as well eventually,
Speaker 1: so he Dolby shows this incredible interest in the subject matter,
Speaker 1: and Poniatof is obviously impressed and tells Dolbie, hey, you know, kid, listen.
Speaker 1: I know you're in school and all, but I tell
Speaker 1: you what, on weekends and on vacations, if you like,
Speaker 1: you can come and work for me, And Dolby says sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Delbie was only sixteen years old at the time and
Speaker 1: wound up working a little bit more than I think
Speaker 1: that they originally expected. Dolby said that he was far
Speaker 1: enough I had with his credits in high school that
Speaker 1: he wasn't really worried about getting into colleges. He figured
Speaker 1: he had it in the bag. So he wound up
Speaker 1: at a certain point spending like three hours a day
Speaker 1: at school and five hours a day at Ampex. It
Speaker 1: turns out that eventually Dolby's not so so concerned about
Speaker 1: staying in college either, at least initially. So. Yeah, his
Speaker 1: he was obviously really eager to get hands on experience
Speaker 1: with this. It was, you know, he didn't want to
Speaker 1: just learn theory. He wanted to actually be working, and
Speaker 1: he found it really exciting. By nineteen fifty one, he
Speaker 1: was attending San Jose State College in California and had
Speaker 1: picked the major of electrical engineering. Uh, and he was
Speaker 1: still working with Ampex at that time, and within the
Speaker 1: first year of his schooling, actually just after he was
Speaker 1: just about to start a sophomore year, Ampex began to
Speaker 1: develop something that would revolutionize the entertainment industry and the
Speaker 1: home entertainment market. Eventually, the video recorders, so videotaper orders
Speaker 1: were not a thing yet, right, this is a brand
Speaker 1: new technology, and he had the opportunity to work on
Speaker 1: an early implementation of that videotape had the potential to
Speaker 1: be a truly disruptive type of technology, which, of course,
Speaker 1: as we all know, that's what happened. I mean, you
Speaker 1: saw it happen again and again. But he had the
Speaker 1: chance to get in on the ground floor, and he
Speaker 1: was so excited by that that he made the decision
Speaker 1: to drop out of college and uh work full time
Speaker 1: at Ampex. But that also meant right, this was during
Speaker 1: during the Korean War was about to really ramp up,
Speaker 1: and he was He's spoken about being very aware at
Speaker 1: the time that this decision would make him eligible to
Speaker 1: be drafted, and being a little bit concerned about that,
Speaker 1: which would turn out to be a fair concern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he um, you know, by not being a college student,
Speaker 1: that made him eligible for the draft, and in fact,
Speaker 1: he was drafted and he went into the army on
Speaker 1: April first, nineteen fifty three. He was drafted into the army.
Speaker 1: And during this was during the Korean War. Delby later
Speaker 1: said that, uh, that was with it because he got
Speaker 1: to work on the video recorder. Meanwhile, even you know,
Speaker 1: Dolby was removed from the picture. He had to go
Speaker 1: and serve in the army. UH. Ampex ended up shelving
Speaker 1: the video recorder project, not because Dolby was removed from it.
Speaker 1: I mean, Dolby himself said, it's not because I wasn't there.
Speaker 1: That's not why they did it. They did it because
Speaker 1: the company itself was in financial trouble. There was a
Speaker 1: recession going on at the time, and the company was
Speaker 1: hit pretty hard by it, and so to to save
Speaker 1: money and and to cut back on things that were,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously big projects that could pay off, but
Speaker 1: it would be a long term gain, they decided to
Speaker 1: pull back on those. So this was one of the
Speaker 1: projects they shelved. So he goes off and he joins
Speaker 1: the army. While he's in the army, he teaches classes
Speaker 1: on electronics because why not. Yeah, he still hasn't completed
Speaker 1: college himself. But on January one, nineteen fifty five, he
Speaker 1: was discharged from the army and rejoined Ampex, which had
Speaker 1: started UH to decide go back and and launched the
Speaker 1: video recorder project again. So he was working on that.
Speaker 1: He also went back to college. This time. He did
Speaker 1: not go to San Jose State. He went to a
Speaker 1: little college called Stanford UM, and he completed his degree
Speaker 1: at Stanford. So by nineteen fifty six the video recorder
Speaker 1: goes into production. So this is a big deal. And Dolby,
Speaker 1: I think his name is even on one of the patents,
Speaker 1: at least one of the patents. Yeah, this is Ampex's
Speaker 1: specific video. Yes, and it's the first to go into production.
Speaker 1: So Dolby goes to then uh he he applies and
Speaker 1: is accepted to go to Cambridge University to work towards
Speaker 1: a PhD in physics. Um, he would finally receive that
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. Yeah, and uh, and of course
Speaker 1: you know, obviously PhD in physics, he's looking at acoustics, right,
Speaker 1: that was his main focus. No, that's not his main focus.
Speaker 1: His main focus actually was an X rays, long wavelength
Speaker 1: X rays. He was, yeah, he was. He was convinced
Speaker 1: that this was what he really he was going to
Speaker 1: do for the rest of his life. He was going
Speaker 1: to work in experiments and build things that worked with
Speaker 1: X rays. Apparently at the time, very popular guy in Cambridge,
Speaker 1: partially because he had access to professional recording equipment and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of musical groups in the area
Speaker 1: that wanted to be able to record stuff, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have access to professional recording equipment, you would get
Speaker 1: these really poor recordings. So he started getting invited to
Speaker 1: all sorts of events and he would have people over
Speaker 1: at his place to play music. Not keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is great stuff for Dolbie
Speaker 1: who loves music. You know, this is again him continuing this, uh,
Speaker 1: this keen interest in music. So I'm sure he found
Speaker 1: it to be a wonderful time of his life. Oh sure.
Speaker 1: He was also making a big impact on the community
Speaker 1: in general. He around the same time was consulting for
Speaker 1: the UK's atomic energy authorities, so getting some good stuff
Speaker 1: on his resume. Oh yeah, yeah, No, this for someone
Speaker 1: who was interested in making the first video recorder. He's
Speaker 1: already branching out quite a bit by this time. Also
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two, he meets Dagmar ballmert Uh in
Speaker 1: Cambridge and she would become the love of his life.
Speaker 1: I mean, every report I ever read about the two
Speaker 1: of them talking about very sweet talked about how parties
Speaker 1: they were always right there, you know, backing each other up,
Speaker 1: and they they complemented one another in various ways. So
Speaker 1: she was actually from Germany. She was in Cambridge for
Speaker 1: a summer program when they met, and the rest is,
Speaker 1: they say, is history. We'll we'll talk more about them
Speaker 1: a little bit later on to UM. But then in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, really cool, Yeah, Dolby read about this
Speaker 1: opportunity in a newspaper for the United Nations Educational, Scientific
Speaker 1: and Cultural Organization a k a. UNESCO as most people
Speaker 1: would know about it, UM to to go to India
Speaker 1: and help consult to to build up a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a kind of infrastructure, Yeah, scientific laboratory infrastructure,
Speaker 1: specifically in the Punjab region which is known as a
Speaker 1: very culturally rich area. And he spent two years there.
Speaker 1: And while he was doing that, he continued to be
Speaker 1: really interested in creating equipment that would be allowed to
Speaker 1: allow you to make high fidelity audio recordings. Well, he
Speaker 1: had brought one of those professional level Ampex I think
Speaker 1: it was the Ampex six hundred tape recorders along with him,
Speaker 1: and UH would would invite musicians to complay at his
Speaker 1: house so that he could experiment with recordings. And UH
Speaker 1: and he started to really be bothered by something that
Speaker 1: is inherent in magnetic tape recordings analog recordings, which is
Speaker 1: that you get this hiss sound, particularly if you're playing
Speaker 1: the tape at lower speeds. And we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that as well. Because in nineteen sixty five, once he
Speaker 1: had concluded his two year stint with UNESCO, he decided
Speaker 1: to go back to London. There was a dressmaker factory.
Speaker 1: I assume it was a factory for dresses, not for dressmakers.
Speaker 1: Think they actually built dressmakers. I think the robotics wasn't
Speaker 1: quite it's advanced at the time. So yeah, he rented
Speaker 1: essentially what was a corner in an old factory and
Speaker 1: created Dolby Laboratories. He was using twenty dollars in startup money,
Speaker 1: which was what he had saved plus borrowed from other folks,
Speaker 1: and it had a grand total of four employees when
Speaker 1: it first started, and their first product that they were
Speaker 1: working on was something called Signal to Noise Stretchers. Now
Speaker 1: that's the technical name for what Dolby created. However, that
Speaker 1: they are to this day called Dolby's. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: industry they're called Dolby's and it didn't take very long
Speaker 1: for that to happen. So the whole point of signal
Speaker 1: to noise Stretchers, it kind of comes in the name
Speaker 1: signal to noise. So if you think of something that's
Speaker 1: been recorded to magnetic tape, the signal is whatever it
Speaker 1: was you were trying to record, right, Noise is noise,
Speaker 1: it's stuff you don't want, it's artifacts, it's it's static. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it distracts from what you were trying to capture. So
Speaker 1: if your goal is to create a recreation of the
Speaker 1: moment that a sound was created, then you want to
Speaker 1: reduce that noise as much as possible. And so this
Speaker 1: was a method really of recording and playing back stuff
Speaker 1: so that you would reduce that noise so that it
Speaker 1: was inaudible, it was unnoticeable. And we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: he did that in the second half of this of
Speaker 1: this episode. But anyway, this was you know, really meant
Speaker 1: to be kind of a a side project. It was
Speaker 1: meant to be the thing that allowed him to make,
Speaker 1: you know, to fund the other things he was going
Speaker 1: to do, specifically X ray experimentation. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: Don't Be hit on something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: found really fascinating and valuable and it took over his life. Well,
Speaker 1: even even at the time very high qualit uality media
Speaker 1: like a like like an LP like a record. Um,
Speaker 1: we're recorded from a master tape, a master magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: So this impacted a huge segment of a few different industries.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, if your master tape has a hiss on it,
Speaker 1: then that hiss gets transmitted to every other copy that
Speaker 1: you make. Right, So if you're able to create a
Speaker 1: system where you remove that hiss so that you have
Speaker 1: the highest quality master tape, then whenever you are making
Speaker 1: a new copy, then you are there across your copying
Speaker 1: the hiss as well. Yeah, so if you if you
Speaker 1: can get rid of the hiss, that's awesome. And that's
Speaker 1: why it ended up being such a big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: And so early on it was really focusing mostly on
Speaker 1: on studio level quality, right, we're talking professional recording studios,
Speaker 1: not something that you would find in your average uh
Speaker 1: playback device that a consumer would have right right right there.
Speaker 1: Their first customer was Decca Records. Yeah uh ended up
Speaker 1: being a pretty important customer. So Decca Records, they come
Speaker 1: up and they say they want to use the Dolby
Speaker 1: system on a series of recordings made by Vladimir Ashkenazi
Speaker 1: of Mozart Piano Concertos, which you know already it's speaking
Speaker 1: to Dolby's heart, and so Dolby says that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he realized that the noise reduction, which he thought was
Speaker 1: gonna be that little side project, was going to become, uh,
Speaker 1: the main thing he worked on for the at least
Speaker 1: the foreseeable future. So nineteen sixties six, Dolby Mary's Dagmar.
Speaker 1: So uh. They end up eventually having two children, Tom
Speaker 1: and David. Tom is a novelist and a journalist and editor,
Speaker 1: and David sits on the board of directors for Dolby Labs.
Speaker 1: So they're both very successful. Um. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Dolby is convinced by a man named Henry Class, who
Speaker 1: at that time was president of the k l H
Speaker 1: Research and Development Corporation, to create a consumer version of
Speaker 1: his signal to noise stretcher technology. All right, because up
Speaker 1: until this point it had all been these these really
Speaker 1: high end, pretty expensive versions for for that professional studio
Speaker 1: that for doing like doing those master tapes, right, it
Speaker 1: was it was meant as a as an industry thing.
Speaker 1: So it was you know, Originally Dolby was thinking that
Speaker 1: his stuff that he was working on it would trickle
Speaker 1: down to consumers. But in a way that the consumer
Speaker 1: would never notice, or in a way that the consumer
Speaker 1: would never have any direct participation in. Yeah, exactly, because
Speaker 1: because you know, the consumer would be able to enjoy
Speaker 1: the benefits by playing something and not hearing that sounds
Speaker 1: better than that other things, right, but they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to create their own stuff. Right Well, this class
Speaker 1: ends up saying to to Dolby that, hey, you should
Speaker 1: really make a consumer version of this. Dolby says, there's
Speaker 1: not really a market for it. I can't see consumers
Speaker 1: jumping at this. So then what Class does is something
Speaker 1: kind of sneaky to convinced Dolby otherwise. He goes back
Speaker 1: and he tells some of his engineers, hey, guys, let's
Speaker 1: kind of reverse engineer this. Take Dolby's Type A what
Speaker 1: would eventually be called the Type A Dolby's UM and
Speaker 1: reverse engineer so that we can make a consumer level
Speaker 1: of our own. They do that. He then takes that
Speaker 1: to Dolby and says, look at what I did. I
Speaker 1: took your stuff and I made a cheaper version for consumers.
Speaker 1: Someone else is gonna do that and they're gonna beat
Speaker 1: you to the market, so you should do it. First,
Speaker 1: and Dolby says, huh, how about that. You're right, I
Speaker 1: should do that, And so Dolby that goes to create
Speaker 1: a consumer version of his signal to noise stretchers called
Speaker 1: Type B. So Type A is for the professional studios,
Speaker 1: it's it's more sophisticated, it covers a greater range of sounds,
Speaker 1: and we'll go over that in the second half. To
Speaker 1: Type B is less expensive, more limited. But then for
Speaker 1: your average consumer it was perfectly unless unless you're an
Speaker 1: expert in the field and have an extremely good year
Speaker 1: end cetera, etcetera. Was basically fine. And then later on
Speaker 1: Dolby Labs would end up releasing updates. They had a
Speaker 1: Type C come out that was a more sophisticated version,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they had a spectral recording which was
Speaker 1: an even more sophisticated version of the same basic approach.
Speaker 1: Class would wind up continuing to to interact with Delby
Speaker 1: in this industry. Yeah, he ends up creating a company
Speaker 1: called Advent Corporation, which would produce the first consumer cassette
Speaker 1: deck that had the Dolby technology in it. Now, that
Speaker 1: wasn't the first one that was a consumer product. The
Speaker 1: first consumer product was real to real deck So this
Speaker 1: is before cassettes really had had started to become a thing,
Speaker 1: but real to real recorders. If you were, you know,
Speaker 1: an amateur musician or even a professional musician, but you
Speaker 1: want to record your own stuff, then this is the
Speaker 1: kind of technology you were using at the time. So
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one that's when Dolby Labs begins to experiment
Speaker 1: by going outside of just the audio recording industry. There's
Speaker 1: still very much it's still audio centric, but they're looking
Speaker 1: at another industry that they can impact, and that that
Speaker 1: was movies. And this would be this would be a huge,
Speaker 1: huge player in in a Delby's personal success and and
Speaker 1: be just the film industry. Yeah, so they're looking at
Speaker 1: making movies sound match the quality of the images because
Speaker 1: uh and Lauren, I saw that you you pulled this
Speaker 1: into the notes as a perfect example. The problem was
Speaker 1: that movies at that time we're relying on the same
Speaker 1: basic sound systems that have been developed decades earlier. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there had been so many innovations in um in film
Speaker 1: quality itself over the past, of the recent past of
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixties and fifties, but really like gone
Speaker 1: with the wind was the industry standard of of audio production,
Speaker 1: and that had happened thirty five or forty years previously, right,
Speaker 1: So Dolby ends up looking into creating a system that
Speaker 1: would make much more clear, crisp sound or movies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so the first film that gets released that has
Speaker 1: the Dolby treatment to it is a little film called
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange And oh, my, Drew gis if
Speaker 1: you don't vitty, well, what I say, things changing sus
Speaker 1: scory these days, and people quick to forget. Just remember
Speaker 1: that without this, our movies wouldn't sound nearly as good.
Speaker 1: And here here's the reason why Dolby was so influential,
Speaker 1: really early early on, because not only did it work,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't expensive for theaters to incorporate into their systems.
Speaker 1: Like this is this is not surround sound we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. This is just the sound quality. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just the clarity, removing that hiss, because the same
Speaker 1: hiss was apparent in uh in film as it was
Speaker 1: in yeah, in magnetic tapes. So this was a way
Speaker 1: of being able to create this, this crisp sound that
Speaker 1: theaters didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: to fit. They didn't have to do that. So it
Speaker 1: ended up the coming in industry standard because it worked
Speaker 1: and it was cheap. And when it works and it's
Speaker 1: cheap and becomes a standard, that means you have a
Speaker 1: constant supply of customers. So Dolby had struck gold with this.
Speaker 1: This was going to end up being one of the
Speaker 1: biggest businesses for Dolby moving forward, because you had an
Speaker 1: entire industry dependent upon that that particular methodology to make
Speaker 1: movies sound good. And it became one of those things
Speaker 1: where if you saw that the movie incorporated Dolby Sound,
Speaker 1: you knew you were in for a special treat. So
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to talk about here, including
Speaker 1: some some developments that also tied back into sound and
Speaker 1: the movies. But before we do that, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Al Right, getting back
Speaker 1: to ray Dolby, So he was already seeing success in audio,
Speaker 1: uh well, audio hardware, both on the on the the
Speaker 1: professional side and on the consumer side, was starting to
Speaker 1: see success in the motion picture industry. Um and then
Speaker 1: starts to work on some other stuff for movies. In
Speaker 1: nineteen Uh, A lot of things happened. First of all,
Speaker 1: he relocated the headquarters of Dolby Labs. It had been
Speaker 1: in London, as we had said earlier, they moved it
Speaker 1: over to San Francisco, California. Yep. So he goes over
Speaker 1: to to to Uh, well, I was gonna say San
Speaker 1: fran but boy, they hate that. I would also say Frescope,
Speaker 1: but they hate that more. We'll just say the city.
Speaker 1: So he takes it to the city in California. Well,
Speaker 1: they still keep their London office. That they still keep
Speaker 1: the London office open, and they then introduce a multi
Speaker 1: channel technology for films that becomes known as surround sound.
Speaker 1: So multi channel is pretty self explanatory. There are multiple
Speaker 1: channels for the sound, and you have multiple speakers and
Speaker 1: you send different channels to different speakers to create the
Speaker 1: effect of sound surrounding the person in the in the theater.
Speaker 1: So that way, if you have action on the screen
Speaker 1: that's heavily taking place on the left side, you can
Speaker 1: amplify the stuff that's on the left rather than on
Speaker 1: the right and give the impression that you are right
Speaker 1: there in the middle of things. You can even isolate
Speaker 1: sounds so that particular sounds play either more on one
Speaker 1: side than the other or just on one side. And
Speaker 1: if you've been keeping up with surround sound, both in
Speaker 1: the film industry and in just home entertainment center centers,
Speaker 1: you know that the numbers keep going up, like you
Speaker 1: had five point one and then like six point one
Speaker 1: and seven point one. Then mostly that really refers to
Speaker 1: the channels, all right, it's the number of channels that
Speaker 1: are involved, and it's usually uh, I think it's five channels.
Speaker 1: And then the point one is technically the effects channel.
Speaker 1: It's point one is that technically the subwoffer because if
Speaker 1: you have a five point one's set up, it usually
Speaker 1: means that you have a front center speaker front left, front, right,
Speaker 1: back left, back right, and then you have the sub
Speaker 1: wolverer for forgetting those those vibrated so effects. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the that's what makes the movies like uh like like
Speaker 1: Event Horizon really watchable, you know when you get that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, any any time that you have the elder
Speaker 1: gods coming for you, it's great if you can really
Speaker 1: feel it in your spleen. Yeah, even if every time
Speaker 1: the Taranto source Rex takes a step in dress a
Speaker 1: park the water on your table actually actually shakes, then
Speaker 1: you know you've got a really good sound system. So yeah,
Speaker 1: surround sound comes out. And there were some there were
Speaker 1: a few movies that that took advantage of it early.
Speaker 1: But there was one in particular, close to my heart,
Speaker 1: that um really leveraged it, little independent film that came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen Star Wars. I was thinking Close Encounters
Speaker 1: of the third kind of Star Wars is good too. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it was Star Wars, and both Star Wars
Speaker 1: and Close Encounters did take advantage of surround sound. Both
Speaker 1: did come out in nineteen seven. And those movies had
Speaker 1: so much going for them. I mean, they were capturing
Speaker 1: people's imaginations, they had incredible scores. John Williams worked on both. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were they were movies that hit just at the
Speaker 1: right time, and they were so big budget. There were
Speaker 1: such blockbusters. That was kind of the beginning of the
Speaker 1: entire blockbuster era. And and it's kind of a chicken
Speaker 1: and an egg issue of whether they caught on so
Speaker 1: well because they had this terrific sound quality, or that
Speaker 1: the sound quality because it was attached to these incredibly
Speaker 1: popular movies, thus became more popular. Doesn't really matter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would say that the sound was certainly an integral
Speaker 1: part of what made those movies an amazing experience. And
Speaker 1: in fact, George Lucas gives incredible amounts of credit to
Speaker 1: Dolby and Dolbie Labs for making Star Wars immersive. He
Speaker 1: said that, you know, that's what gave me the ability
Speaker 1: to create the experience I had imagined. Grant, he said
Speaker 1: that way back in the in the late seventies, I
Speaker 1: suppose when he went back and decided to ruin the
Speaker 1: Star Wars movies with all the special editions, he was
Speaker 1: thinking that maybe he didn't really achieve what he had
Speaker 1: planned on achieving. That's kind of commentary will skip on
Speaker 1: the rest of that. But but but at any rate,
Speaker 1: was you know, this was a huge industry game changer,
Speaker 1: and I believe that tech stuff that that Jonathan and Chris,
Speaker 1: you guys did a whole episode on surround sound back
Speaker 1: in Yeah, So if you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: how surround sound works, definitely go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that podcast. It's from August time. The name is what
Speaker 1: is surround sound? If you're looking for it, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: So go check that out because we're not going to
Speaker 1: cover surround sounds so much as we're gonna cover the
Speaker 1: signal to noise stretchers at the end of this episode. Um, now,
Speaker 1: when we're getting into an interesting time in Dolby Labs
Speaker 1: is history At this point in nine nine, William Jasper
Speaker 1: joins Dolby Labs, and Jasper was a little different from
Speaker 1: the average person who worked at Dolby. Basically everyone who
Speaker 1: worked there at the time was a technician, Yeah, including
Speaker 1: Dolby himself. And so that works great when you're building products,
Speaker 1: But any person who is especially handling a complex business
Speaker 1: will tell you if you don't have the expertise and
Speaker 1: things like managing a budget and people and etcetera, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that your company can end up going straight, uh,
Speaker 1: even if you are working your hardest to make sure
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. And they were working their hardest, I
Speaker 1: mean there, but their response to having any kind of
Speaker 1: monetary problem was to innovate wonderful new technology, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, a fine thing for business to do, but
Speaker 1: also so expensive and also yeah, it's also not the
Speaker 1: best plan. So essentially what's saying what we're saying here
Speaker 1: is that anytime Delby Labs got into some financial uh
Speaker 1: you know, like like they're starting to creep toward the
Speaker 1: red right, like they're gonna lose more money than they
Speaker 1: bring in. Then they would end up making some sort
Speaker 1: of new product and that would stave off that and
Speaker 1: make make sure that they were doing okay. But that
Speaker 1: was a lot of short term reactions, and bringing Jasper
Speaker 1: on as a manager was sort of a long term solution, saying, well,
Speaker 1: let's get someone in here who knows how to manage people.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what Jasper's background was in. So Asper
Speaker 1: starts by making some pretty tough choices. Uh. For example,
Speaker 1: he ends up laying off about a third of Delby
Speaker 1: Labs employees in both the San Francisco and London offices.
Speaker 1: He said that the purpose for that was because of
Speaker 1: budgetary problems, like you had to do it in order
Speaker 1: for the company itself to remain strong. Um, so they
Speaker 1: continue to innovate. Yeah, yeah, despite all of those, all
Speaker 1: of those layoffs. Um, you know, Jasper kind of got
Speaker 1: the system working again, and over the next decade they
Speaker 1: would they would introduce surround sound systems for television, compact discs,
Speaker 1: and laser discs. Uh. Nineteen eighty, Dolby Labs would introduce
Speaker 1: the C type Dolby's that I mentioned earlier in this episode,
Speaker 1: which you know, the higher grade consumer version of the
Speaker 1: those original type stretchers. Right. Um. In two they would
Speaker 1: introduce Delby Surround for home video, right which again for
Speaker 1: people who are big home entertainment theater enthusiasts, that was
Speaker 1: a huge deal. In nin teen eighty three, William Jasper
Speaker 1: would become the president of Delby Labs. By the way,
Speaker 1: all through this time, Ray Dolby retained ownership of the company.
Speaker 1: He was the chairman of the board until the late
Speaker 1: the late odds, the late two thousand something, so he
Speaker 1: he was, um, you know, he was actually at this
Speaker 1: time the really the sole owner of the company. So
Speaker 1: it's still privately held company at this time. In seven
Speaker 1: Ray Delby becomes an Officer of the Most Excellent Order
Speaker 1: of the British Empire, which means he gets said O
Speaker 1: B E at the end of his name. It does
Speaker 1: not mean he's a knight. Knighthood would require a higher
Speaker 1: ranking than O B E. But still he was not
Speaker 1: more highly regarded in the eyes of Her Majesty the
Speaker 1: Queen than I don't worry, Jonathan, I'm still waiting. She
Speaker 1: never returns my calls. Yeah, anyway, I'll have her over
Speaker 1: for tea sometime, I swear it so. Nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Dolby receives an Oscar for his contribution to the motion
Speaker 1: picture sound uh. In nine seven, he received an award
Speaker 1: from then President Bill Clintons. Don't when we still call
Speaker 1: hi President Clinton. He's not the current president. No, but
Speaker 1: you get that title forever, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't have that title. But one day he doesn't return
Speaker 1: my calls either. For the for the record, at any rate,
Speaker 1: he was awarded. Dolby was awarded the National Medal of
Speaker 1: Technology and Innovation. And here is Dolby's speech, which I love.
Speaker 1: The first part of your life is education. The second
Speaker 1: part is hard work, and then you get discovered and
Speaker 1: people start handing you awards. That's exactly how it works.
Speaker 1: Short and sweet, very very modest man by a very
Speaker 1: humble according to all reports that I read, where he
Speaker 1: loved working on the stuff he worked on, and he
Speaker 1: loved also we'll talk about some of his hobbies. He
Speaker 1: loved those very much as well, and of course his family.
Speaker 1: But was not the kind of person to you know,
Speaker 1: revel in these things or boast in them. He was
Speaker 1: just very determined and enjoyed working on something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was just one of these wonderful people
Speaker 1: who had that drive to create all of this stuff
Speaker 1: in the experiment. Um. For for that, he was awarded
Speaker 1: in two thousand three by the Emmy's with a Lifetime
Speaker 1: Achievement Award yep, And two thousand four, he was inducted
Speaker 1: into the Royal Academy of Engineers. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Dolby Labs then finally goes public and this move ends
Speaker 1: up getting uh, Ray Dolby around like his shares are
Speaker 1: worth around two hundred million dollars at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he became a pretty much instant billionaire. Yeah. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that rocketed him to billionaire status. And in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine Dolby retires as the chairman of the company board.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah it was um, you know, pretty pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable time for Dolby Labs and also sadly for Ray
Speaker 1: Dolby because it was around this time also that he
Speaker 1: discovered that he had contracted Alzheimer's. So uh and by
Speaker 1: two thousand oven he had officially retired because even even
Speaker 1: a stepping down, he was still working on things. He
Speaker 1: was still working on systems and um. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: that kind of is the you know. And of course
Speaker 1: he passed away September twelve. Yes, yeah, so that that's
Speaker 1: a look at his life. But more than that, I mean,
Speaker 1: he obviously he won multiple awards. He won Oscar Awards,
Speaker 1: Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award. He has a theater named
Speaker 1: after him, the Theater where the Oscars are held every year,
Speaker 1: the theater right as a as a tribute to him,
Speaker 1: his Dolbe Labs secured the name of that for the
Speaker 1: next twenty years. Yeah, that was formerly the Kodak Theater.
Speaker 1: I've actually visited that theater and um, because I I've
Speaker 1: stayed in Hollywood a couple of times and I stayed
Speaker 1: near that theater. It's a really it's a really interesting place.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a cool design. I like it a lot.
Speaker 1: Um And then you know, let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: his hobbies, some of his interests. He was. He sat
Speaker 1: as the director of the San Francisco Opera for a while. Um.
Speaker 1: He was also on the he was a governor of
Speaker 1: the the Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony as well. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that love of music doesn't go away, Sharon. And when
Speaker 1: you're as big a person as dol be Er, as
Speaker 1: as you know, influential, influential, then I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: he was that tall. That's not what I was saying. Um.
Speaker 1: He also was an amateur pilot. Yep. He loved sailing
Speaker 1: and boating. He had a yacht. He also liked to
Speaker 1: drive for pleasure. I loved reading about some of his
Speaker 1: driving adventures. Like he he drove a vintage Jeep around
Speaker 1: for a while just to explore the San Francisco area
Speaker 1: and California in general. He also for a while enjoyed
Speaker 1: driving essentially what was the same thing as a tour bus,
Speaker 1: like a like a tour bus that rock musicians would use.
Speaker 1: He liked driving one of those around. Uh, that's so cuteous.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting character. And um. Also, he and
Speaker 1: his wife both were h or philanthropist. She still is obviously,
Speaker 1: She's still very much involved in philanthropy, all right. She
Speaker 1: she inherited his his his multitudino misfortunes. He was worth
Speaker 1: around two point four billion dollars at the time of
Speaker 1: his death and one of the projects they donated money
Speaker 1: to was they donate like thirty five million dollars to
Speaker 1: the University of California, San Francisco for stem cell research
Speaker 1: projects and instead of Flowers when when they announced the
Speaker 1: passing of Ray Dolby, the family said, well, in lieu
Speaker 1: of Flowers, why not make a donation too, And they
Speaker 1: listed a couple of different medical facilities that specifically do
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's research and a little bit into leukemia as well,
Speaker 1: which is he actually passed away from right, right, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know there they were very much active and she
Speaker 1: still is in uh, scientific endeavors not you know, it's
Speaker 1: all sorts of philanthropic endeavors, not just the arts, but
Speaker 1: also the sciences. Um. So that's and to really, I think,
Speaker 1: to be fair to Dolby, he would not just stay
Speaker 1: which between the two. He felt art and science really
Speaker 1: were interwoven. Oh sure, well, you know it's he he
Speaker 1: was so influential in bringing in bringing the two together.
Speaker 1: You know, it's you can't have you can't have art
Speaker 1: without the applications that allow more people to experience it.
Speaker 1: And you know, this has been a fun time to
Speaker 1: look back on on his life and his contributions. Let's
Speaker 1: take the last part of this podcast to really talk
Speaker 1: about what put Ray Dolby on the map, the signal
Speaker 1: to noise stretchers, Like what exactly was that all about
Speaker 1: and how did they work? Yeah? Yeah, okay, So what
Speaker 1: actually causes tape hiss? Okay? So magnetic tape you know,
Speaker 1: has the little magnetic particles in it that that's what
Speaker 1: stores you know, and encoded. So it's that grain structure
Speaker 1: that let's you store it, right, and that grain structure
Speaker 1: actually creates that hissing noise. So it's the it's the
Speaker 1: medium itself that produces the hiss, which means you cannot
Speaker 1: remove You cannot remove it because if you had, if
Speaker 1: you had a smooth tape, then you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to store anything on it. So that's the that's you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of the double edged sword. It allows you
Speaker 1: to store sound, but it also will create this his
Speaker 1: So how do you handle this? Well, you know, first
Speaker 1: of all, it's really noticeable, Uh, if you have something
Speaker 1: that's playing at a low volume, particularly at a higher pitch,
Speaker 1: or something that's that's recorded at a low volume, right right, right,
Speaker 1: So when you play it back, any of those low
Speaker 1: volume parts, you're going to be you're going to notice
Speaker 1: the hiss more if it's a louder part in the recording.
Speaker 1: Like let's say that you've recorded a symphony and the
Speaker 1: symphony starts off softly but then builds to this well,
Speaker 1: during the crescendo, you may not notice any hiss at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the the sound itself is at
Speaker 1: an intensity where there's no noticeable hiss, but maybe at
Speaker 1: the softer, slower parts you can kind of detect it.
Speaker 1: And that was what Dey'll be found to be infuriating
Speaker 1: and needed to be wiped off the face of magnetic tape.
Speaker 1: So what he did was well. And also we should
Speaker 1: mention that this is more notice bowl if you're playing
Speaker 1: the magnetic tape back at a slower speed, so real
Speaker 1: to real tape plays tape quickly compared to cassette tape. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're doing real to real, that speed is
Speaker 1: about seven and a half inches per second, which equals
Speaker 1: out to be about nineteen centimeters per second. But a
Speaker 1: cassette tape plays magnetic tape much more slowly, at about
Speaker 1: one and seven eighth inches per second, or about four
Speaker 1: point eight centimeters per second, So cassette tapes move slowly
Speaker 1: compared to real to real. So at that slow speed,
Speaker 1: with that narrow band, if you're playing a low volume,
Speaker 1: high pitch sound, you're gonna hear a lot of hiss
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking. And and as Dolbe was noticing that cassettes
Speaker 1: were becoming more of a thing, you know what, more
Speaker 1: of a capable technology. Sure, yeah, yeah exactly, he was like, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to address this because otherwise no one will
Speaker 1: ever want to listen to anything. I certainly won't, so yeah,
Speaker 1: So what he decided to do is he came up
Speaker 1: with a system for both recording and the playback of
Speaker 1: of stuff that you were recording onto magnetic tape. The
Speaker 1: recording element was a system where you would boost low
Speaker 1: volume signals going onto the tape, so you would artificially
Speaker 1: intensify them, you make them where they would essentially overpower
Speaker 1: the hiss uh. And then when you would play it back,
Speaker 1: a decoder would interpret this and be able to play
Speaker 1: it back at the low volume right, so that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get the the high volume played back at additional
Speaker 1: volume right. So, so here's how they would target the
Speaker 1: low volume parts, so parts that are quieter that gets
Speaker 1: targeted by a system and then it gets artificially boosted
Speaker 1: and then recorded to the magnetic tape. When it's played
Speaker 1: back at the you know it and the decoder says, okay,
Speaker 1: play this at a lower volume the original volume that
Speaker 1: it was intended to be at. It reduces the hiss
Speaker 1: sound by the same amount that the signal itself had
Speaker 1: been boosted in the first place. And so the his
Speaker 1: is still there, it's just inaudible because it's it's so quiet.
Speaker 1: So uh. And then since you're not treating the high
Speaker 1: volume parts, you don't have to worry about blowing out
Speaker 1: the capacity of the magnetic tape to record that sound
Speaker 1: and then distored everything right, and the hiss also is
Speaker 1: not noticeable at that or or it's not very noticeable
Speaker 1: at the high volume things because as we said before,
Speaker 1: the sound is already drowning it out exactly. So in
Speaker 1: other words, it doesn't really remove the hiss. It kind
Speaker 1: of masks it, which is brilliant. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: have to remove it if you're not able to hear it, right,
Speaker 1: it just goes this is not the hiss you're looking for.
Speaker 1: It's kind of to me. It's like theater. So if
Speaker 1: you're in a theater, like a stage theater, and you're
Speaker 1: watching a play, you know, the set you see looks gorgeous,
Speaker 1: but if you were to walk behind that set, it
Speaker 1: would just be plywood and you know, stands and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, because it only has to look good from
Speaker 1: the side that you can perceive it. So if you
Speaker 1: can't perceive the utrest of it, don't don't bother building
Speaker 1: a set that's never gonna be seen. Peter Jackson, um
Speaker 1: So anyway, Uh, that's you know, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: low down the basics of how this worked. Now Type
Speaker 1: A Dolby's did this with all frequencies of sounds, so
Speaker 1: whether it was a low pitch or a high pitch,
Speaker 1: it would handle that all of it, so that way
Speaker 1: you would have it would make all of the his
Speaker 1: the least amount of noticeable. Exactly. That's really awesome grammar.
Speaker 1: So I do it too. But the consumer version focused
Speaker 1: mainly on high pitches because that was where the problem
Speaker 1: was most noticeable, and so it didn't really bother with
Speaker 1: the low pitches so much. Because most consumer quality recording equipment,
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about it as much. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be so good that this is the
Speaker 1: master recording for something. Then uh, the Type C, like
Speaker 1: we said, handled a slightly wider range of frequencies than
Speaker 1: the Type B did, and once you get up to uh,
Speaker 1: I think it was spectral recording where they introduced the
Speaker 1: ability to handle pretty much all volumes below a certain
Speaker 1: threshold and all frequencies. So it the goal was actually
Speaker 1: to do as little production as possible, to remove hiss
Speaker 1: without affecting the final sound, because the other risk you
Speaker 1: run whenever you do this sort of thing is that
Speaker 1: you actually affect the sound of the thing itself, where
Speaker 1: you might remove the hiss, but you also somehow otherwise
Speaker 1: affect the sound and thus it's not a good recreation
Speaker 1: of what the original sound was. So, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a delicate line to walk. But as technology improved overall,
Speaker 1: um with with with computers and algorithms and everything that
Speaker 1: could go into this kind of process, and um, they
Speaker 1: were able to, I mean because because keeping costs down
Speaker 1: was always an important part of this Dolby system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course we're talking here all about analog. Dolby
Speaker 1: himself resisted the digital revolution quite a bit in the
Speaker 1: early eighties. But eventually Delby Labs did come around, obviously
Speaker 1: because if you've seen Dolby Digital everywhere now, but at
Speaker 1: the time, the the whole spectral recording idea that was
Speaker 1: mostly to try and extend the life of analog recording
Speaker 1: beyond what most the industry thought it was going to do.
Speaker 1: You know, they thought it was over spectral recording comes
Speaker 1: out like, okay, well you've extended the lifespan by like
Speaker 1: five years. And eventually Dolby Digital would become a big
Speaker 1: player in that space. But it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that that Dolby himself resisted for a while. He
Speaker 1: had a real soft spot in his heart for analog. Um.
Speaker 1: He felt felt that digital was a little a little cold,
Speaker 1: and you know, early implementations were not the best, right
Speaker 1: they were. They were imperfect, We'll say. Yes, although Dolby
Speaker 1: Labs has certainly gotten into the digital space, yes, as
Speaker 1: we said, and they lead it now so or at
Speaker 1: least they are a leader. Um also, I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're continuing to bring out new systems, for example, Dolby Atmos,
Speaker 1: which is a sixty four speaker theatrical sound system. Some
Speaker 1: two theaters installed it when it first came out. But
Speaker 1: what was really cool about this system, the sixty four
Speaker 1: speaker system, is that it's so precise that you could
Speaker 1: even program a sound to come from only one of
Speaker 1: those ext four speakers. So if you wanted to pinpoint
Speaker 1: a specific point of origin for a sound in a theater,
Speaker 1: you could do that, which would be interesting because it
Speaker 1: would mean that your experience of that film would depend
Speaker 1: heavily upon where you sat, because if you sat closer
Speaker 1: to the speaker, it would be louder to you, If
Speaker 1: you sit sat further away it be it would be softer.
Speaker 1: But either way, you sure there's I mean, there's always
Speaker 1: going to be a sweet spot in the theater. And
Speaker 1: I think that the general rule is that when when
Speaker 1: they're designing these kind of theater systems, the people designing
Speaker 1: them are sitting kind of two thirds of the way
Speaker 1: back and dead center in the room. And so if
Speaker 1: you really want to get the best sound system, and
Speaker 1: Holly Holly Fried did an excellent brain Stuff episode about this,
Speaker 1: and if any of you guys are watching brain Stuff
Speaker 1: over on YouTube or test Tube, but it's generally designed
Speaker 1: so that so that anyone will get a pretty good experience,
Speaker 1: right right. So let's let's close this out with a
Speaker 1: couple of quotes from the man himself. From Ray Delby, Um,
Speaker 1: here's one of mine, and it's it's the longer of
Speaker 1: the two. It's I've often thought that I would have
Speaker 1: made a great nineteenth century engineer, because I love machinery.
Speaker 1: I would have liked to have been in position to
Speaker 1: make a better steam engine, or to invent the first
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine, to work on the first car. All
Speaker 1: my life, I've loved everything that goes. I mean, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, jeeps, boats,
Speaker 1: sail or power airplanes, helicopters. I love all of these things.
Speaker 1: And I just regret that I was born in a
Speaker 1: time when most of those mechanical problems had already been
Speaker 1: solved and what remained were electronic problems. That's kind of funny. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's beautiful though. That's that's so, and that
Speaker 1: really uh. I especially having done a bunch of episodes
Speaker 1: relatively recently about some of the build up to modern technology,
Speaker 1: right and and talking about what was going on in
Speaker 1: the in the eight in the nineteenth and early early
Speaker 1: twentieth century. That was just fascinating to me. Another one
Speaker 1: that that I really loved. Um He said, to be
Speaker 1: an inventor, you have to be willing to live with
Speaker 1: his sense of uncertainty, to work in this darkness and
Speaker 1: groped towards an answer, to put up with anxiety about
Speaker 1: whether there is an answer. And that's what technology is about. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: it's you know all about you know, innovation. You know
Speaker 1: the fact that you are You're trotting upon unexplored ground
Speaker 1: and you have no idea when you set forth if
Speaker 1: it's going to meet with success or failure. I mean,
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. A cool guy, and thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're glad that we had a chance to talk about him.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna wrap this up. Guys, if you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future topics, maybe there's another figure in the
Speaker 1: tech world that you would like us to cover, or
Speaker 1: perhaps it's a company or just a specific technology that
Speaker 1: you've always wanted to know about. Let us know. Send
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler
Speaker 1: or handle at all. Three is text stuff. H. S.
Speaker 1: W And Lauren and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how staff works dot com.