I became an inventor by accident. I was out of the air force in 1956. No, no, that's not true: I went in in 1956, came out in 1959, was working at the University of Washington, and I came up with an idea, from reading a magazine article, for a new kind of a phonograph tone arm. Now, that was before cassette tapes, C.D.s, DVDs -- any of the cool stuff we've got now. And it was an arm that, instead of hinging and pivoting as it went across the record, went straight: a radial, linear tracking tone arm. And it was the hardest invention I ever made, but it got me started, and I got really lucky after that.
我在偶然的情況下變成了發明家。 1956年我從空軍退伍。不對,我記錯了: 我在1956年進去,1959年離開的, 之後在華盛頓大學工作, 當我看雜誌文章時,想到了一個點子, 用於留聲機的新型唱臂上。 那是在卡式錄音帶,CD,DVD -- 任何現在很酷的新玩意出來之前的事。 那是一種當它在唱片上移動時 不靠鏈條移動, 不繞著中樞軸旋轉的唱臂, 講明白一點,就是一種在半徑上作線性循跡的唱臂。 這是我做過最困難的發明,但也是它讓我走上了這條路, 這之後我就一直滿順利的。
And without giving you too much of a tirade, I want to talk to you about an invention I brought with me today: my 44th invention. No, that's not true either. Golly, I'm just totally losing it. My 44th patent; about the 15th invention. I call this hypersonic sound. I'm going to play it for you in a couple minutes, but I want to make an analogy before I do to this. I usually show this hypersonic sound and people will say, That's really cool, but what's it good for? And I say, What is the light bulb good for? Sound, light: I'm going to draw the analogy. When Edison invented the light bulb, pretty much looked like this. Hasn't changed that much. Light came out of it in every direction. Before the light bulb was invented, people had figured out how to put a reflector behind it, focus it a little bit; put lenses in front of it, focus it a little bit better. Ultimately we figured out how to make things like lasers that were totally focused.
長篇大論就不多說了, 我們直接來談我今天帶來的發明: 這是我第44項發明。不對,又錯了。 天啊,我已經搞混了。 這是我第44項專利,大概是第15項發明吧。 我稱它為超級超音波。(超越超音波) 我會用它來播放幾分鐘給各位聽, 不過在這之前要先跟各位 說聲抱歉。 我常常秀這個超級超音波,可是大家都會問, 那東西真酷,不過有什麼用啊? 我說,燈泡有什麼用處呢? 我們來比較一下聲音和光線。 當愛迪生發明燈泡,看起來大概就像這樣。 這並沒有改變太多。 光線從各個角度散放出來。 在燈泡發明之前, 人們就知道它後面放個反射鏡, 讓光線更集中; 在前面放個透鏡, 讓它更加集中。 最終我們發現怎麼去做出雷射 這種完全聚集的光線。
Now, think about where the world would be today if we had the light bulb, but you couldn't focus light; if when you turned one on it just went wherever it wanted to. That's the way loudspeakers pretty much are. You turn on the loudspeaker, and after almost 80 years of having those gadgets, the sound just kind of goes where it wants. Even when you're standing in front of a megaphone, it's pretty much every direction. A little bit of differential, but not much. If the light bulb was the way the speaker is, and you couldn't focus or sharpen the edges or define it, we wouldn't have that, or movies in general, or computers, or T.V. sets, or C.D.s, or DVDs -- and just go down the list of what the importance is of being able to focus light.
現在想想,如果我們有燈泡, 但是無法集中光線時, 世界會變成怎麼樣; 當你點亮燈泡,光線四散的時候。 那和喇叭差不多。 當你打開喇叭時, 即使在它們已經發明了將近80年之後, 聲音仍然會隨便亂跑。 即使你在站擴音器前面, 它還是幾乎往各個方向跑。 會有些許不同,但差不多。 如果燈泡和喇叭一樣, 你沒辦法把光線聚集,讓邊界變小或是限制它, 我們就不可能擁有,比如說電影, 或是電腦,或是電視機, 或是 CD, DVD -- 想想看 把光線聚集起來 有多麼重要。
Now, after almost 80 years of having sound, I thought it was about time that we figure out a way to put sound where you want to. I have a couple of units. That guy there was made for a demo I did yesterday early in the day for a big car maker in Detroit who wants to put them in a car -- small version, over your head -- so that you can actually get binaural sound in a car. What if I could aim sound the way I aim light?
在擁有聲音將近80年後的今日, 我想差不多是時候去發覺 如何將聲音導向你希望的位置。 我這兒有一些設備。 那是我昨天在底特律的一家汽車工廠做示範用的, 他們想把這個裝在車子裡 -- 用小的型號,裝在你的頭頂上方 -- 這樣你就可以在車上聽見雙聲道。 如果我能夠將聲音像是光線一樣的去瞄準呢?
I got this waterfall I recorded in my back yard. Now, you're not going to hear a thing unless it hits you. Maybe if I hit the side wall it will bounce around the room. (Applause) The sound is being made right next to your ears. Is that cool? (Applause) Because I have some limited time, I'll cut it off for a second, and tell you about how it works and what it's good for.
我在我的後院錄了這段瀑布的聲音。 除非它朝向你,否則你不會聽見這個聲音。 如果我讓它傳到邊牆上,也許它會產生一點回音。 (掌聲) 聲音就在你的耳朵旁邊。很酷吧? (掌聲) 因為我的時間有限,所以暫時先展示到這裡, 接下來要跟大家說明它的原理和用途。
Course, like light, it's great to be able to put sound to highlight a clothing rack, or the cornflakes, or the toothpaste, or a talking plaque in a movie theater lobby. Sony's got an idea -- Sony's our biggest customers right now. They tried this back in the '60s and were too smart, and so they gave up. But they want to use it -- seriously. There's a mix an inventor has to have. You have to be kind of smart, and though I did not graduate from college doesn't mean I'm stupid, because you cannot be stupid and do very much in the world today. Too many other smart people out there. So. I just happened to get my education in a little different way. I'm not at all against education. I think it's wonderful; I think sometimes people, when they get educated, lose it: they get so smart they're unwilling to look at things that they know better than. And we're living in a great time right now, because almost everything's being explored anew. I have this little slogan that I use a lot, which is: virtually nothing -- and I mean this honestly -- has been invented yet. We're just starting. We're just starting to really discover the laws of nature and science and physics. And this is, I hope, a little piece of it.
當然, 如果可以把聲音像光一樣 用來突顯衣架, 或是玉米片, 或是牙膏, 或是在戲院大廳的看板, 那就太好了。 Sony 有一個點子 -- Sony 現在是我們最大的客戶。 早在1960年代他們就在嘗試這個, 不過當時人們的接受度不高,所以放棄了。 但是他們很認真的想要去使用它。 對一個發明家而言,必須要有多元性。 你必須要有點小聰明, 雖然我大學沒畢業,但不表示我很笨, 因為如果你很笨,你就沒辦法做太多事。 外頭有一大堆聰明的傢伙。 所以我用了不同的方式來進行我的學習。 我不反對接受教育。 我覺得這很棒。只是我覺得有些人, 當他們畢業之後就忘光了。 因為他們太聰明了,所以不願意去看他們已經知道的東西。 我們生活在一個很棒的時代, 因為幾乎所有東西都是全新設計的。 我有一個座右銘, 事實上大部分的東西 -- 都還沒有被發明出來 -- 我很認真的這麼想。 我們才剛剛開始而已。 我們才剛開始發現自然, 科學和物理的法則。 而這只是,我希望,其中的一小部份而已。
Sony's got this vision back -- to get myself on track -- that when you stand in the checkout line in the supermarket, you're going to watch a new T.V. channel. They know that when you watch T.V. at home, because there are so many choices you can change channels, miss their commercials. A hundred and fifty-one million people every day stand in the line at the supermarket. Now, they've tried this a couple years ago and it failed, because the checker gets tired of hearing the same message every 20 minutes, and reaches out, turns off the sound. And, you know, if the sound isn't there, the sale typically isn't made. For instance, like, when you're on an airplane, they show the movie, you get to watch it for free; when you want to hear the sound, you pay. And so ABC and Sony have devised this new thing where when you step in the line in the supermarket -- initially it'll be Safeways. It is Safeways; they're trying this in three parts of the country right now -- you'll be watching TV.
Sony 找回了這個想法 -- 讓我步上這條路 -- 當你在超級市場結帳處排隊時, 你將會看見一個全新的電視頻道。 他們知道你在家看電視時, 因為有太多選擇, 你會轉台而跳過他們的廣告了。 全球每天有一億五千萬人在超級市場中排隊。 他們幾年前曾經試過這個方法但失敗了, 因為結帳人員會厭倦於每隔20分鐘就聽見同樣的東西, 結果就會去把聲音給關掉。 你知道,如果沒聲音,生意通常就做不成了。 例如,當你坐飛機時,他們會放電影, 你可以看免費的電影, 當你想聽音樂時,你卻必須付錢。 於是 ABC 和 Sony 想到這個新點子, 當你在超級市場排隊時 -- 頭一家將會是在 Safeways, 他們正在國內三個分店試用 -- 你會在那兒看他們的電視廣告。
And hopefully they'll be sensitive that they don't want to offend you with just one more outlet. But what's great about it, from the tests that have been done, is, if you don't want to hear it, you take about one step to the side and you don't hear it. So, we create silence as much as we create sound. ATMs that talk to you; nobody else hears it. Sit in bed, two in the morning, watch TV; your spouse, or someone, is next to you, asleep; doesn't hear it, doesn't wake up. We're also working on noise canceling things like snoring, noise from automobiles.
所幸他們很細心, 聲音只會在你站的那條結帳隊伍中出現。 而在這個測試裡最棒的事情是, 如果你不想聽的話, 你只要往旁邊站一步,你就不會聽見了。 於是,如同我們創造聲音一般,我們也創造出寧靜。 提款機對你說的事情,旁邊的人不會聽見。 半夜兩點做在床上看電視時, 你的另一半或其他睡在你旁邊的人, 不會聽見聲音,更不會被吵醒。 我們同時也在努力進行噪音消除,例如打鼾或手機的雜音。
I have been really lucky with this technology: all of a sudden as it is ready, the world is ready to accept it. They have literally beat a path to our door. We've been selling it since about last September, October, and it's been immensely gratifying. If you're interested in what it costs -- I'm not selling them today -- but this unit, with the electronics and everything, if you buy one, is around a thousand bucks. We expect by this time next year, it'll be hundreds, a few hundred bucks, to buy it. It's not any more pricey than regular electronics.
關於這項技術,我的運氣挺好的, 當它完成的同時,這個世界已經準備好去使用它了。 人們爭相找上門來。 我們從去年九月十月左右就開始賣了, 大家的反應都很滿意。 如果你想知道價格的話 -- 我今天不是來賣這東西的 -- 這一台附帶這些電子配備和其他東西, 如果你想買的話,大概要一千美元左右。 我們希望到明天此時, 價格能降到幾百塊美元。 它將不會再比一般家用電器貴很多。
Now, when I played it for you, you didn't hear the thunderous bass. This unit that I played goes from about 200 hertz to above the range of hearing. It's actually emitting ultrasound -- low-level ultrasound -- that's about 100,000 vibrations per second. And the sound that you're hearing, unlike a regular speaker on which all the sound is made on the face, is made out in front of it, in the air. The air is not linear, as we've always been taught. You turn up the volume just a little bit -- I'm talking about a little over 80 decibels -- and all of a sudden the air begins to corrupt signals you propagate. Here's why: the speed of sound is not a constant. It's fairly slow. It changes with temperature and with barometric pressure.
當我播放給大家聽時,你不會聽見吵雜的低音。 我播放的這個設備可以從200Hz到超音波。 它可以發出超音波 --低頻的超音波 -- 振動頻率大約每秒 10 萬次。 你所聽見的聲音, 不會像一般喇叭直接對著你的臉來, 而是在你面前的空氣中產生。 我們所了解的空氣是非線性的。 當你把音量提高一點時 -- 我指的是高過80分貝 -- 空氣會導致聲音被扭曲。 因為,聲音並不是固定速度。它相當緩慢。 它的速度會因為溫度和壓力而改變。
Now, imagine, if you will, without getting too technical, I'm making a little sine wave here in the air. Well, if I turn up the amplitude too much, I'm having an effect on the pressure, which means during the making of that sine wave, the speed at which it is propagating is shifting. All of audio as we know it is an attempt to be more and more perfectly linear. Linearity means higher quality sound. Hypersonic sound is exactly the opposite: it's 100 percent based on non-linearity. An effect happens in the air, it's a corrupting effect of the sound -- the ultrasound in this case -- that's emitted, but it's so predictable that you can produce very precise audio out of that effect.
想像一下,如果用簡單的技術原理來說明, 當我在空氣中製造一個正弦波, 如果我把擴大器開太大, 會因為壓力而產生干擾, 就是說,當製造正弦波時, 剛生成的波,移動速度會產生變化。 我們所知道的聲波 全都會趨向於形成線性。 線性代表高品質的聲音。 超級超音波則完全相反, 它是100%非線性的。 空氣造成的干擾,會將聲音扭曲 -- 這裡的超音波會因此四散, 但這是可預期的, 所以你可以造出正確的聲音來導正這個干擾結果。
Now, the question is, where's the sound made? Instead of being made on the face of the cone, it's made at literally billions of little independent points along this narrow column in the air, and so when I aim it towards you, what you hear is made right next to your ears. I said we can shorten the column, we can spread it out to cover the couch. I can put it so that one ear hears one speaker, the other ear hears the other. That's true binaural sound. When you listen to stereo on your home system, your both ears hear both speakers. Turn on the left speaker sometime and notice you're hearing it also in your right ear. So, the stage is more restricted -- the sound stage that's supposed to spread out in front of you. Because the sound is made in the air along this column, it does not follow the inverse square law, which says it drops off about two thirds every time you double the distance: 6dB every time you go from one meter, for instance, to two meters. That means you go to a rock concert or a symphony, and the guy in the front row gets the same level as the guy in the back row, now, all of a sudden. Isn't that terrific?
現在的問題是,聲音在哪裡形成的呢? 不同於原本由喇叭前面的振動膜發聲, 它是在狹長的空氣柱中 幾十億個獨立的小點所產生, 所以當我將它瞄準你時, 你所聽見的是在你耳邊所發出的聲音。 我們可以將這個空氣柱變小, 也可以將它擴大到覆蓋整張沙發。 我可以讓你一隻耳朵聽見一個喇叭的聲音, 另一隻耳朵聽到另一個喇叭的聲音。這才是真正的立體聲。 當你在家裡聽立體音效時, 你的兩隻耳朵都能聽見兩個喇叭的聲音。 有時只開左邊的喇叭時, 你的右耳還是會聽見聲音。 在舞台上的話限制就更多了 -- 因為聲音必須要傳到你的面前。 正因為聲音是在空氣柱中產生的, 它不會遵循反平方定理, 那是指當距離變成兩倍時, 音量會減少二分之三: 舉例來說,每移動一到兩公尺就會少 6 分貝。 也就是說,當你聽搖滾演唱會或交響樂時, 在後排的人所聽見的聲音, 現在突然之間就和前排的人一樣了。 這不是很棒嗎?
So, we've been, as I say, very successful, very lucky, in having companies catch the vision of this, from cars -- car makers who want to put a stereo system in the front for the kids, and a separate system in the back -- oh, no, the kids aren't driving today. (Laughter) I was seeing if you were listening. Actually, I haven't had breakfast yet. A stereo system in the front for mom and dad, and maybe there's a little DVD player in the back for the kids, and the parents don't want to be bothered with that, or their rap music or whatever. So, again, this idea of being able to put sound anywhere you want to is really starting to catch on. It also works for transmitting and communicating data. It also works five times better underwater.
因此,我們相當成功,也相當幸運, 能有許多公司願意採用這種概念, 在車上 -- 汽車製造商想在前面替小孩們放一套立體聲系統, 以及後面放置不同的立體聲系統 -- 喔,不對,小孩子不能開車。 (笑聲) 我只是在試看看你有沒有注意聽。 事實上,我還沒吃早餐。 在前面替爸爸媽媽放一套立體聲系統, 後面也許有個DVD播放器讓小孩子看, 而父母們不想被這個 或是rap音樂或其他的吵到。 於是,可以讓你在任何想要的地方放音樂的概念 逐漸趕上需求了。 這也可以用來傳輸或溝通資料。 在水底的運作效果好上5倍。
We've got the military -- have just deployed some of these into Iraq, where you can put fake troop movements quarter of a mile away on a hillside. (Laughter) Or you can whisper in the ear of a supposed terrorist some Biblical verse. (Laughter) I'm serious. And they have these infrared devices that can look at their countenance, and see a fraction of a degree Kelvin in temperature shift from 100 yards away when they play this thing. And so, another way of hopefully determining who's friendly and who isn't. We make a version with this which puts out 155 decibels. Pain is 120. So it allows you to go nearly a mile away and communicate with people, and there can be a public beach just off to the side, and they don't even know it's turned on. We sell those to the military presently for about 70,000 dollars, and they're buying them as fast as we can make them. We put it on a turret with a camera, so that when they shoot at you, you're over there, and it's there.
國軍採購了這些 -- 用在伊拉克戰爭時, 你可以在山腰的1/4英里外 播放偽造的士兵走動聲音。 (笑聲) 或者你可以在疑似恐怖份子的耳邊小聲的說一些聖經的詩句。 (笑聲) 我是認真的。它們還有這些紅外線裝置, 可以在一百碼外, 看見他們的表情, 以及每一度絕對溫度的變化量。 希望這個能成為另一種判別敵我的方式。 我們還製造了一種可以造出155分貝的機器。 120分貝就能讓人感到痛苦。 它可以讓你和距離一英里左右的人交談, 那可以是在公共海灘旁邊, 旁人甚至不會發現它已經被打開了。 我們最近把這東西以7萬美金賣給軍方, 我們才剛做好立刻就被他們買走了。 我們將它裝置在砲塔上,並裝置了攝影機,當他們朝你射擊時, 你並不在他們瞄準的地方。
I have a bunch of other inventions. I invented a plasma antenna, to shift gears. Looked up at the ceiling of my office one day -- I was working on a ground-penetrating radar project -- and my physicist CEO came in and said, "We have a real problem. We're using very short wavelengths. We've got a problem with the antenna ringing. When you run very short wavelengths, like a tuning fork the antenna resonates, and there's more energy coming out of the antenna than there is the backscatter from the ground that we're trying to analyze, taking too much processing." I says, "Why don't we make an antenna that only exists when you want it? Turn it on; turn it off. That's a fluorescent tube refined." I just sold that for a million and a half dollars, cash. I took it back to the Pentagon after it got declassified, when the patent issued, and told the people back there about it, and they laughed, and then I took them back a demo and they bought. (Laughter)
我還有許多其它發明。 我發明了一個用來變速的電漿天線。 有天我看著天花板想事情時 -- 我正在進行一個地底探測雷達的案子 -- 我的物理學CEO跑來跟我說,"我們遇到麻煩了。 我們用的是極短波長。 這會產生天線鳴叫的問題。 當使用極短波長時, 就像是用音叉讓天線產生共鳴, 這會讓天線產生出 比起地底反射獲得的還要更高的能量, 這樣會造成分析上更多的困難。" 我說,"為什麼不做一個只有在需要時存在的天線? 可以隨時打開或關閉。 一種改良的螢光燈管。" 我剛將它以150萬現金價賣出。 在它被解除機密等級後,我將它帶回五角大廈, 在註冊專利以後,我告訴那些人關於它的故事, 他們笑了,並且在我進行一些示範後,他們就買了。 (笑聲)
Any of you ever wore a Jabber headphone -- the little cell headphones? That's my invention. I sold that for seven million dollars. Big mistake: it just sold for 80 million dollars two years ago. I actually drew that up on a little crummy Mac computer in my attic at my house, and one of the many designs which they have now is still the same design I drew way back when.
你們有用過 Jabber 的耳機嗎? 那種小型手機耳機? 那是我發明的。我將它以七百萬美金賣出。 那是一個大錯,兩年前它被人以八千萬美金轉賣了。 我當時在家中閣樓裡 用我那台破舊的麥金塔設計出來的, 而許多其他的設計 也都是在當時同樣情況下設計出來的。
So, I've been really lucky as an inventor. I'm the happiest guy you're ever going to meet. And my dad died before he realized anybody in the family would maybe, hopefully, make something out of themselves. You've been a great audience. I know I've jumped all over the place. I usually figure out what my talk is when I get up in front of a group.
所以,我在發明這部份還挺幸運的。 我應該是你們所遇過最快樂的人。 我的父親在能夠知道,也許家裡每個人, 都能幸運地靠自己創出一片天地之前就過世了。 你們是很棒的聽眾。我知道我扯太遠了。 我通常在上台以後才知道我想說的是什麼。
Let me give you, in the last minute, one more quick demo of this guy, for those of you that haven't heard it. Can never tell if it's on. If you haven't heard it, raise your hand. Getting it over there? Get the cameraman. Yeah, there you go. I've got a Coke can opening that's right in your head; that's really cool. Thank you once again. Appreciate it very much.
最後幾分鐘讓我再次 替那些還沒聽見的人們 示範一下它的功能。 不過我沒辦法知道它是不是已經啟動了。 還沒聽見的人麻煩舉個手。 那邊聽見了嗎? 攝影師也來一下吧。 好,來嚕。 在腦中打開可樂罐的聲音,很酷吧。 再次感謝大家。 非常謝謝各位。