But I think I have had some great ideas. Evidently so did somebody else. when I was attending college I had one such experience with a classmate. I was working on an idea to implement a new type of chip that could be used to build tunable active networks for electrical signals to make modified filters to be used in conjunction with a spectrum analyzer. the end result would be an audio device that could adjust the feedback of the room to make it optimal and could enhance the sound to be like different venues. This didn't take much effort to come up with the idea since one of the main problems with any stereo system is making it fit to the room it is set up for. I was experimenting with an active network chip to tune the preamplifier circuits for a disk read/write head. I cam up with the idea as I was being pressed to come up with a senior project.
I had a classmate that had some industry connections and could provide some funding for the project. I thought this would be a good exchange of resources for both of us since he really wasn't very good at thinking things through. One thing I didn't consider though is that his contact only knew of him being the inventor and they had not been made aware this was a group effort or at least he was leading them to believe that he owned all of the information as sole inventor.
As we progressed with the design my class mate became somewhat flaky and was some times a little lax on following through with some of the required funding. I had made efforts in procuring some free engineering sample to use in our tests. Once I had the main design layout formalized and some key schematics prototyped and debugged my class mate became even more skittish. As it turns out he was making plans to get a complete set of plans ready to submit to his contact at a well known electronics company. When he asked to get copies of everything so that he could follow the design better I thought that he had a legitimate point and so I made copies for him.
That was pretty much the last time I talked with him at any length. He made himself purposely scarce and suddenly he had made arrangements to split from me with the dean on our project. I was hung out to dry and was told to find a new project because he convinced the board that he had dome the majority of the work while I was only doing minimal support work. He had also signed with the company that was providing funding to take a job and to sell the idea. It was only 6 months to see the finished product at the CES in Las Vegas.
Of course you know he couldn't sustain his job because he only had the one idea from me and he was fired or left on his own accord ( it doesn't matter) after only 9 months. I understand that he bounced around trying to find an engineering position that didn't require much talent. The last job I heard he was working at was a medical laser company tuning the power supplies. He didn't have to do much just tune a couple of pots to bring the power supply to the center of the scope. I guess if you wanted to mess with the guy you could adjust the settings on his O-scope. that would keep him busy the rest of the day but then may be he wouldn't notice and he might adjust the power supplies to the wrong setting and cause some one an injury because of an over powered laser.
I look to see what was sold for a few years and then later dropped since I don't think the company realized the overall benefit of the design. Or may be they could see that they could sell a variety of other unnecessary equipment to assume the same outcome. It is possible that there is an opening here to modify my design and make something to allow more compact speaker systems to fill a room with even better sound. Still it would have been nice to have been offered a chance develop a new concept that might have revolutionized the audio industry. With the advent of digital audio manipulation I guess I need to take the next step and convert the control to a totally digital source and feedback loop. I could even embed the signal in existing broadcast sound without distorting the play back.
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