Earliest Known Sketch of the L1® Concept
This was sketched by Lou G on tissue paper. I was describing to him our concept, long before we'd tested it or received any approval to move forward with commercialization.
Lou is an amazing artist and designer.
He was sketching as I talked, sitting across from me at a conference table.
I was looking at what he was drawing and couldn't make heads or tails of it and I'm thinking to myself: does he get this?
Then, shockingly, I realize that he's drawing UPSIDE DOWN, so that the sketch is correct for me sitting across from him!!!
The reason I couldn't figure it out is that my brain was assuming he was drawing right side up for him!
Wow.
When we dug out this sketch, for the longest time I could not figure out what the words meant scrawled at the bottom of the drawing.
The words are in Lou's hand, and he must have been taking notes.
I was really confused by what looked like "20 degrees C" at the end of the phrase.
- Everything can be answer > look back to berfore the midda 20 degrees centigrade.
Huh?
And then it dawned on me.
What is says is:
- Everything can be answered. Look back to before the middle of the 20th Century.
This is a reference to our work to understand the history of amplification and the problems that were getting in the way.
What we ended up calling the "era of individual instrument amplification" was a natural extension of unamplified music. And things were ok.
We used the Beatles at Shea Stadium as the breaking point -- when the popularity of the music exceeded the ability of the technology to deliver a good listening experience to huge crowds. It was the reaction to that commercial problem -- in place by Woodstock -- that spawned triple systems.