BA340_D2 Strategic Thinking and Innovation- Week 4: Discussion 2: HWGTN: Sound

In the “Sound” episode of How We Got to Now which two of the inventions mentioned do you think are the most important? Who invented them to the progression of how we got to now with the innovation of "sound?"

Also, what do you think of this video series? What are your thoughts about it, and what you are learning in this series?

Again, it must be clear that you actually viewed these videos through your writing and examples in order to get any credit for this discussion question.

HWGTN - Sound

The most important inventions in HWGTN-Sound are the Phonautograph by Edouard Leon Scott de Matinville and the Telephone by Alexander Graham.

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville was captivated with human speech and writing, and he was curious to discover more scientific means to explore the incident. He accomplished this by inventing the phonautograph, the first known sound recording device, which was important in the development of all subsequent sound recording systems. Despite the fact that his work was never intended to play sounds, the basic design and function of the phonautograph served as a direct inspiration for Thomas Ada Edison's invention of the phonograph, which was the actual forerunner of the modern-day gramophone. Through the phonograph, it was discovered that the process of recording can be reversed and that sound vibrations can be turned back into their original state, so a human voice can be sent through a telegraph. This technology led to Alexander Graham Bell invention of the telephone. Bell started working on ways to send multiple telegraph messages over a single wire, which was a significant emphasis of telegraph innovation at the time and eventually led to Bell's invention of the telephone. This innovation allowed communication around the world.

HWGTN demonstrates how a single basic innovation may usher in a whole new world and a slew of other developments, the most of which are completely unanticipated. The series also shows that all the inventions are as a result of a chain of ideas from different people at different times. For example, in HWGTN-Sound, Johnson discusses how sound evolved into something that people could record, which was the first stage, and then someone else figured out how to play back that recorded sound. It would have been a considerably a huge leap for someone else to improve that idea by adding the function of playing back the recorded sound if someone hadn't figured out how to record sound first. These are all ideas that give rise to new concepts. The ability to record sound evolved into the ability to broadcast sound, which led to the invention of the telephone and radio. Through this series, I realized that people don't talk about the people that initiated ideas that eventually development into innovations that we currently use. The emphasis has been on the people that came up with the final product.

References

Johnson [Stephen]. (2010, July). Watch how we got to now with steven johnson, season 1 | prime video. Retrieved November 10, 2021, from https://www.amazon.com/Glass/dp/B00OJCNVQA/ref=sr_1_1/ref=dv_web_auth_no_re_sig?_encoding=UTF8&ie=UTF8 (Links to an external site.)