Fascinating tale about the science of music and the way it relates to other aspects of the world. Waves. Paul Reed Smith, owner of PRS Guitars, has looked at waves and invented a method to pull more data from the waves than previously.
I've met Paul a few times over the years. Never had any real interaction with him. My wife knows him better, having worked on some inside theft cases he dealt with a few years back.
Paul Reed Smith was not content with just perfecting guitars used by rock & roll stars like Carlos Santana, Dave Navarro, John McLaughlin, and many others. After spending two decades building the instruments and improving on their design (through his Maryland-based PRS Guitars)—Smith is now focused on the waveforms, meaning the shapes of the signals, that guitars produce. He’s developing a mathematically-based way of extracting undetected data from those waveforms, as well as unseen data from digital images. Experts from the U.S. Navy and Johns Hopkins like what they see and have formed partnerships with him, to try and apply his algorithms in both the defense and medical industries.
Those in the rock music tech sector need no introduction to Smith, 59. He’s recognized as one of the world’s leading guitar “luthiers’ (pronounced LOO-ti-ər)— craftspeople who make or repair string instruments—and he manufactures roughly 1,100 guitars per month in the U.S., plus about 1,300 in South Korea and Indonesia. A typical fully-appointed PRS guitar sells for approximately $3,100, so young kids who dream of being rock stars might want to start saving their pennies now. (Unable himself to afford a top-of-the-line guitar when he was a growing up, Smith recalls, “the only choice I had was to make one.”)
In several months, says Smith, he’ll launch a new company called Digital Harmonic that will focus on the new tech. What exactly is it? Making a guitar requires geometry and trigonometry, the same science applicable to anything else that is vibrating, oscillating, or rotating. Smith believes he can extract very useful data from those vibrations, and also clear that data of “noise.” (Noise being a random disturbance that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal.)
Patents in hand, Smith now has the attention of Dr. Eric Hendricks, head of science and technology and deputy chief technology officer at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. Hendricks became interested in Smith’s tech after the latter gave a presentation to SPAWAR staffers at the White House earlier this year. The Navy is exploring tech that can improve the cleaning up of digital images, an invaluable tool for underwater photography. “If you can only take a picture from across the [Chesapeake] bay and there’s a bunch of fog, and your camera’s only got an ‘okay’ resolution, [Smith] can process that picture,” says Hendricks, thanks to a special algorithm that will clarify the image....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/milliedent/2015/05/14/rock-roll-x-rays/
I've met Paul a few times over the years. Never had any real interaction with him. My wife knows him better, having worked on some inside theft cases he dealt with a few years back.
Paul Reed Smith was not content with just perfecting guitars used by rock & roll stars like Carlos Santana, Dave Navarro, John McLaughlin, and many others. After spending two decades building the instruments and improving on their design (through his Maryland-based PRS Guitars)—Smith is now focused on the waveforms, meaning the shapes of the signals, that guitars produce. He’s developing a mathematically-based way of extracting undetected data from those waveforms, as well as unseen data from digital images. Experts from the U.S. Navy and Johns Hopkins like what they see and have formed partnerships with him, to try and apply his algorithms in both the defense and medical industries.
Those in the rock music tech sector need no introduction to Smith, 59. He’s recognized as one of the world’s leading guitar “luthiers’ (pronounced LOO-ti-ər)— craftspeople who make or repair string instruments—and he manufactures roughly 1,100 guitars per month in the U.S., plus about 1,300 in South Korea and Indonesia. A typical fully-appointed PRS guitar sells for approximately $3,100, so young kids who dream of being rock stars might want to start saving their pennies now. (Unable himself to afford a top-of-the-line guitar when he was a growing up, Smith recalls, “the only choice I had was to make one.”)
In several months, says Smith, he’ll launch a new company called Digital Harmonic that will focus on the new tech. What exactly is it? Making a guitar requires geometry and trigonometry, the same science applicable to anything else that is vibrating, oscillating, or rotating. Smith believes he can extract very useful data from those vibrations, and also clear that data of “noise.” (Noise being a random disturbance that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal.)
Patents in hand, Smith now has the attention of Dr. Eric Hendricks, head of science and technology and deputy chief technology officer at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. Hendricks became interested in Smith’s tech after the latter gave a presentation to SPAWAR staffers at the White House earlier this year. The Navy is exploring tech that can improve the cleaning up of digital images, an invaluable tool for underwater photography. “If you can only take a picture from across the [Chesapeake] bay and there’s a bunch of fog, and your camera’s only got an ‘okay’ resolution, [Smith] can process that picture,” says Hendricks, thanks to a special algorithm that will clarify the image....
http://www.forbes.com/sites/milliedent/2015/05/14/rock-roll-x-rays/
