Is that your book?
As an Official outsider through no direct intent of my own, I've become Very Aware of just how much The Hollywood Community functions as an Underground Mob Network...er, as Family in Government.
No, I'm not crazy about this town. Do they always Borrow everything they see? Or hear about?
Me, I got smacked down with an in-house Hazing by my family for not being fake enough I GUESS! I never had any idea they were in the trade (my folks pretended to be Poor) but many, many ideas and songs, and plots of mine mysteriously wound up on the t.v. and the big screen, over one hundred films, teleplays, books and songs, many well-known, many won awards.
In Pennsylvania 1957 at the age of three, I was sitting crossed-leg on the floor listening to my Brother's acoustic phonograph that used a sewing needle-type stylus and resonator head with an extra-resonant tonearm to sound the recording; no electric amp.
My Brother had earlier told me that the record needle vibrated against the groove of the recording as the record spun, supported in place by the two walls of the groove.
I was resting my head on my hand listening when I then became aware of how the sound only came from the phono, unlike directionality from the surrounding room, so I covered my left ear with my left hand to "hear the recording to the Right side" and then revered my hand and ear to hear the sound to the Left. Then I began patting my ears Left, Right repeatedly and the sound then spread out around me. I remembered what my older Brother said, and I told him that I thought they could use the two walls of the groove, the outer wall and the inner wall, to each represent one ear, one wall for the left side sound and the other for the Right side sound, and use two microphones to record the direction of sound, then apply the left and right channels to the side of the cutting head at an angle, instead of at the vertical angle of a mono recording, up and down. Within the year, RCA introduced the stereo phonograph record. About that same time, there was a informational t.v. show, "You Asked For It!" hosted by Jack Smith. The show was based on viewer requests. In one episode, the UNIVAC computer was featured. I asked my Brother if the computer could play music and sounds based on the digital numbers being converted to voltages, and what the computer itself sounds like if the digital signal were played through a loudspeaker.
In Burbank 1959-60 at the age of 5/6 I was looking at my Father's RCA Radio and T.V. Vacuum Tube Repair books. He began studying RCA T.V./Radio repair at Allegheny Tech in Pittsburgh in 1956, "or claimed to". In one, there was a cross-section diagram of a waveform. I wondered what would happen if someone were to add an inverse voltage to an upright voltage, and when adding a phase-inverted Right Channel from a Stereo recording to the Left Channel. How would the result sound? I thought it would remove the front center sounds. Six months later, the difference signal was adopted in order to provide for compatible FM Stereo broadcasting, though that use was beyond my intent at the time. I was never told it was borrowed and still do not know for sure. About this time, I talked to Brother about recording music digitally to an optical plastic disk with a mirror-aluminum layer, as well as the future possibility of digital video, and a thick disk of magnetic material that could also record short analog video and be accessed immediately for real-time playback.
There was also an article in one of the books about Envelope Volume Expansion and between this circuit and high frequency bandpass circuits, I thought about high passing the high end of an audio or video signal before recording it and then low passing the signal at playback to put the signal above the noise of the medium, tape or record, possibly also using the volume expander in reverse compression/expansion mode. The high pass version became the Dolby Noise Reduction system, first used in videotape. The Expander config became the DBX Noise Reduction system. The folks never told me whether it was me. We were "still Poor and non-connected".
I was born with a Cleft Palate with an accompanying Speech Impediment which is part of the reason I have been rejecting overtures from a non-responsible Hollywood house of pranksters representing performance and music. I also do not sing very well, but have a gift of songwriting.
In 1960, I had a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder to practice my speech therapy, and the damned reels kept falling off the machine and unspooling across the floor. I then talked about (to my poor non-connected family) putting the spools inside of a cartridge, and doing the same for spools of camera film.
I was playing with a cheap lenticular animation toy about this time, where the lenticular lens was used to isolate two frames of 2D motion, and loving the View Master, I played with closing one eye, then the other and saw that the two frames were ghosting at different angles, and suggested trying to use the lenticular lens instead to display a left/right 3D image. Two years later, in 1963, the first commercially produced lenticular 3D picture, that of *I think* a bust of Thomas Edison shot against a museum room with a black and white checkerboard floor, appeared on the cover of Look Magazine.
Back in Pennsylvania 1962 at the age of 8 I suggested a movie screen using beads of glass to increase the image brightness and viewing angle. My Step-Grandfather, or whoever he really was, represented himself as the local rich dairyman for the County and my Grandmother was always showing her slides of pictures.
The beaded screen went to Drive-In use and won an Oscar. I was never told it was my idea and I still can't say at all if it was.
At that same house, in 1957 I made up a song at my Grandmother's piano based on sting music boxes, but it was an original tune. I later heard the very same tune as The Theme from Tammy and the Bachelor. But my folks "had no connections to show business".
In 1966 at the age of 12 I was talking about a camera mount that used either a gyroscope or a counterweight like a plumb bob or pendulum for stabilizing track shots.
In 2004 I also mentioned mounting a camera on a robot arm, then mounted to the roof of a car so that the camera could rotate around the actors inside while driving down the street without seeing any equipment in the background of the shot.
In 1966-67 I talked to the family of "a school friend" about using four channels for records, and they immediately pointed out using a difference signal for a rear channel.
Note: If you use what is called a Haffler speaker arrangement for deriving a four channel effect, that is two speakers connected hot to each channel on the amp without a return ground path, just ground to each other, the two speakers will output the difference between the left and right channels, but...if you add a return ground path through an additional speaker, then the difference pair will still play difference, but that return ground path speaker will sound the front center, albeit at poor audio quality.
About that time I also discussed using a rear screen projection for a movie, but with a vertical tilt and curved around the actors. A Diorama rear screen. And a multi-band frequency control based on sub-octaves. And a shatterproof flexible vinyl for phonograph records.
And using crystals for tweeters.
And with the aforementioned 'friends', I talked about using several speakers arranged side by side in a round cabinet, aligned at the edge of each speaker's sound image...
In the early 1970's I suggested to who knows(?) about using a separate track on a movie soundtrack for low frequency effects and a deep set of heavy magnet/coil woofers to shake the theater.
In the mid 1980's, frustrated with the poor separation of matrix surround systems, I reasoned that you could derive the front center channel digitally, possibly using AND gates, in order to subtract the .5 front center from the left/right channels, then combine the result in two or three configs for recovering a discreet multichannel surround output. About that same time I suggested using a optical disk for the movie soundtrack with only sync to disk on the film strip.
In the mid 1970's I discussed with who knows(?) about using a high pass with the Volume Expander circuit for better dynamics. And a recording tape made with air-dried peanut oil. Looking back on that one, I assume those gray tapes are probably falling apart? I know the company quit using Peanut Oil. And about that time, using digital processing in television. and by 1979,using computers to synchronize movie and sound editing. By that time, I was under The Hazing and started remembering things.
In 1984, laying around my family's apartment in a total funk due to the brutal Hazing (The Silence),. I was watching the t.v. with the crappy NTSC analog color and thinking about using digital proportional differencing of the video and audio signal to increase depth-of-field dynamics for a more 3D-like effect and hit upon using linear digital averaging of each color channel and between the channels to create the (then) NTSC phase-modulated analog color signal. It was in use by the time of the 1984 Olympics, as was video and audio bandwidth expansion. And yet, everyone around here pretends not to notice the depth-of-field effect. Some joke.
Back before The Hazing, in the later 1970's, I had already come up with a method of increasing the usable speaker diameter for use in a car, by using four speakers for each speaker. By 1989, I included using a series/parallel wiring on the four speakers to improve power handling, and I've been hanging on to this system ever since, but JBL suddenly appeared with "their version" called The JBL Diamond Array system, including series/parallel wiring.
But dear family, in passing this system to JBL, has left out the best part of the config for some reason.
In 1995 I suggested using silver LCDs for a digital projector.
And that's Not All. I'm still holding 3D digital projection, but the folks know about it. Not sure about the 3D audio, though in '85 while suffering a twitch in the ear I noticed that the sound on the radio spread out in "surround" and then discovered rapid panning of sound between channels for a "surround effect".
So, what's with the Hollywood folk anyhow?
Is Hazing an effective means to conduct a sensitive contractual negotiation? Why do they think they own people who they owe personal business properties and money to anyhow? And if you want to know how estranged I am, I'm talking about my family and I'm asking you.
I also do not get to discuss ANYTHING with them until I give in. A Pig in a Poke.