|
| Rapid advances,
reflecting on milestones
 By
Keith Clark |
This month - and in fact, December 17, 2003 - marks the 100th
anniversary of the first powered flight. Maybe they saw it coming,
maybe they didn’t, but when Orville and Wilbur Wright attained
lift-off from the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on a blustery
December day in 1903, they put in motion a revolution that goes
beyond mere technology; rather, this benchmark achievement forever
changed - in one way or another - the lives of virtually everyone
on Mother Earth.
Most would agree that the achievement of powered flight was inevitable;
numerous groups and individuals at that time were working toward
exactly the same thing. But what can’t be argued is that the
Wright Brothers were in possession of the right blend of moxie,
imagination and innate knowledge to reach the finish line first.
Noting this milestone as it relates to the professional audio industry,
two thoughts crossed my mind. First, the brothers sure remind me
a lot of the largely entrepreneurial folks who have consistently
driven our own little industry forward. Second, while we can easily
see the tremendous impact of powered flight, we can’t quite
as easily see the development and evolution that have impacted pro
audio remarkably as well.
After Kitty Hawk, a fledgling group of hobbyists quickly sprung
up, putting on exhibitions that showed the wonders of flight, followed
in short order by understanding of the useful applications of the
airplane (i.e., mail and military), then Lindbergh hopped the Atlantic
Ocean, jet propulsion was developed, and bang - just 65 or so years
from that first flight, Neill Armstrong found himself standing on
the moon, waxing “one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind.”
Please forgive this abridged version of history; obviously, there’s
a lot more to it than that. So, too, the story of modern professional
sound reinforcement. Many of the bedrock, fundamental concepts of
physics and acoustics were unearthed and fleshed out at a very early
stage, with subsequent developments building on these principles,
aided by a more detailed understanding as time and technology marched
on.
We’re also somewhat hostage to relative economies of scale;
for example, pro audio has come a bit late to the digital party
because we simply don’t have the resources to undertake such
a monumentally expensive research and development effort. But let
the “big boys” pay the freight, and some pretty darn
smart audio engineers (in the product/technology sense of the word,
please) have swooped in and figured out how to adapt and further
the advantages of digital for our own applications.
Does a PA system used for a political convention at an arena in
the 1920s really differ all that much from the current state-of-the-art
components assembled for the latest, greatest rock concert? Yes
and no. There is no denying that the concepts are much the same,
but the execution is light-years better. Think of Lindbergh’s
single-engine “Spirit of St. Louis” that took more than
24 hours to cross the Atlantic in comparison to a Boeing 747 that
can do the same job in a matter of hours and for hundreds of people
at a time.
We live in a wondrous age, where the rate of technological development
escalates on a daily, exponential basis. Sometimes it seems as though
things might even be moving a bit too fast for our own good, but
that debate is left for another time and people much smarter than
I.
What I do know is that like the Wright brothers, the early pioneers
of pro audio probably couldn’t have foreseen exactly where
their landmark work would take us. But, boy, if they could see it
now, I bet they’d be impressed.
Keith Clark is Editorial Director of ProSoundWeb and Editor of
Live Sound
magazine. Reach him at keith@prosoundweb.com
|
