Did you know that Yahoo is an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle?  Most people just think of it as a search engine, an unsophisticated person, or both.

Yahoo!, the search engine, was founded in January 1994 by Stanford PhD candidates, David Filo and Jerry Yang.  It was originally called ”Jerry and Dave’s Guide to the World Wide Web” and it  consisted of a directory of other websites.  The “yahoo.com” domain was created on January 18, 1995 and the company was incorporated on March 1, 1995.

In October 1995, one of my fellow product marketing managers at Lotus Development - John Briggs - left Lotus to join the founding team.  In John’s words, “then The Great Event happened. IBM bought Lotus and bought out my stock options. From then on, I was pretty much in job search mode while eagerly awaiting my bonus retention check”.  While at Yahoo!, he launched Yahoo News, Weather, Sports and Finance .  John also headed up their e-commerce unit (Yahoo Shopping, Auctions, Classifieds & Yellow Pages), and eventually became a VP & GM. He stayed until October 2002 and had quite a ride that included the IPO.

Yahoo! went public in April 1996 as YHOO.  The stock started $24.50 per share and hit a high of $43 before closing at $33.  It was the most closely watched IPO since Netscape Communications went public in December 1995.

With the influx of cash from the IPO, Yahoo began acquiring other companies.  Yahoo!’s first acquisition was the purchase of Net Controls, a web search engine company, in September 1997 for US$1.4 million. The acquisitions continued as Yahoo! competed against other companies and grew in company size and viewership.  As of May 2013, Yahoo! has acquired a total of 78 companies.

In February 2008, Yahoo! escaped becoming acquired, but not without some damage to the company.  Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for USD $44.6 billion. Yahoo! formally rejected the bid, claiming that it “substantially undervalues” the company and was not in the interest of its shareholders. Three years later, Yahoo! had a market capitalization of USD $22.24 billion.

Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a multinational Internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.  Many of the original employees and executives have moved on to other adventures.  In July 2012, On July 16, 2012, Marissa Mayer, a former Google exec, was appointed President and CEO of Yahoo!.  The company has 11,500 employees in 25 countries, provinces, and territories.

– Carole Gunst

What is Pi?

Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159.  It has been represented by the Greek letter “π” since the mid-18th century, though it is also sometimes written as pi.  The calculation of π was revolutionized by the development of infinite series techniques in the 16th and 17th centuries.  Infinite series allowed mathematicians to compute π with much greater precision than Archimedes and others who used geometrical techniques.   Although infinite series were exploited for π most notably by European mathematicians such as James Gregory and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the approach was first discovered in India sometime between 1400 and 1500 AD.  

How is Pi Day Celebrated?

My office celebrated Pi Day today by holding a pie contest.  Over 25 employees and contractors each brought in a pie and all staff was called down to the cafeteria to have a slice.

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day.  Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28 pm, which they have called “Tau Time”, to honor the rival numbers Pi and Tau equally.
• The town of Princeton, New Jersey (and home to Princeton University,) hosts numerous events in a combined celebration of Pi Day and Albert Einstein’s birthday, which is also March 14.  Einstein lived in Princeton for more than twenty years while working at the Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to pie eating and recitation contests, there is an annual Einstein look-alike contest.
• Google had it’s own Pi Day doodle posted on the site in 2010.
• National Public Radio created a Pi Day rap video in 2010.

In case you missed the celebration, mark you calendar now for Pi Approximation Day on July 22 (or 22/7 in day/month date format), since the fraction ²²⁄₇ is a common approximation of π.  Maybe you can share a fraction of a pie with a friend.

– Carole Gunst

Geeta grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, the daughter of scientists. She lived only five minutes from the campus of Princeton University and often spent weekends at the Institute for Advanced Study. By age fourteen, she was researching polymer (i.e. plastics) chemistry, and by the time she was seventeen, she was editing her father’s chemistry publications.

A passion for music and technology at a young age

Geeta’s father would play a significant role in the interests she developed: electronic music, science and technology, and how they interacted. In addition to his training as a chemist, he played the tabla – indian drums – and this left a lasting impression on his young daughter. She subsequently gained a passion for technology in music and would frequent the local record shop, Princeton Record Exchange where, over the years, she would purchase numerous cassettes and LPs. Geeta recalled to me that at thirteen, she acquired her first album by Kraftwerk, a Dusseldorf quartet who used various synthesizers to produce uniquely enticing musical compositions. They were pioneers at the intersection of film, fashion, performance art and high tech electronic musical arrangements.

Geeta was encouraged by her father in all her intellectual endeavors. He trusted her ability to assist with his academic writings and at one point confided to her that she “was smarter than her brothers.” He felt strongly that a girl like Geeta could do anything a boy could do, which was a progressive attitude for the times. Following graduation from high school, she enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she took courses as varied as cognitive neuroscience, film and video and installation art. All the while, she remained intrigued about the German technological, musical and performance art scenes – having been captivated by Germany since her first visit at age seven.

Geeta’s travels to Germany left her with several lasting impressions: for one, she was completely enthralled by the autobahn (the well-known highway), as well as by German train travel. She loved the German approach to technology which was, at its essence, highly efficient and stylistically beautiful in every respect.

For Geeta, Berlin is the country’s cultural capital. In contrast to other German cities like Munich, a leader in pharma; Stuttgart, prominent in car manufacturing, and the financial centers of Cologne and Frankfurt, Berlin has always retained a cosmopolitan character. When there, Geeta has regularly observed a proliferation of construction cranes, which gives one the “seductive” feeling that the city is unfinished.

A city largely eschewing the reverence for the past much of the rest of the country holds, Berlin is more culturally diverse and, very much like Paris, has welcomed expatriates from the U.S. and Britain. Consequently, the English language can be heard widely on the streets, and it’s become a truly globalized European hub.

Conrad Schnitzler

Along with this migration came a growing prosperity to match its diversity. It was in this city that electronica musician and performance artist Conrad Schnitzler once worked; Geeta, who wrote extensively about him, considered Schnitzler “an outlier whose life says a lot about Germany.” Schnitzler was a student of Joseph Beuys, a prominent professor of sculpture in Dusseldorf, and was an idiosyncratic performer whose memories of growing up in Nazi Germany gave him an aversion to joining groups for any reason. He was an alternately irascible and loving person who had a great respect both for the beauty and mathematical precision of electronic music.

The group Kluster, which Schnitzler founded with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius in 1969 was an ultimately successful and influential experiment in avant-garde musical expression. The nucleus consisted of Moebius, Roedelius and Schnitzler, and eventually mutated into the group Cluster, sans Schnitzler.

The late 1960s saw a renaissance in technology, which resulted in new and innovative ways to create and produce music. German musicians excelled in this environment. In the manner of Conrad Schnitzler, Dusseldorf’s Kraftwerk, formed in 1970, evolved from primarily a rock band to riding the cusp of a formative electronic music movement. And in Great Britain, a company called EMS designed a synthesizer called the Synthi, designed to fit in a briefcase, which became popular with Kraftwerk and Brian Eno. Analog synthesizers like this and the ARP 2600 gave electronic music more appeal; not only an aesthetic sense, but also because these devices offered greater portability and affordability.

Another interesting observation by Geeta makes on the creation of not only music, but art generally, is how the artist derives inspiration from disparate sources. Schnitzler’s musical influence, for instance, derived considerably from his sculpture. His embrace of this tangible, visual medium led, seemingly inevitably, to his attempts to express himself musically. Schnitzler used the synthesizer to essentially “sculpt” new sounds. He supplemented this with his own unique brand of “performance” art that provided an anthropomorphic dimension to his music.

Geeta also asserts that the 1960s helped bring the advent of “system-based” art; that there was a tendency by many to “conceptualize in terms of systems to provide new solutions to problems.” In this light, she cites John Cage’s music of that period as an outstanding example of “giving yourself a set of constraints [that] makes you more creative.” Additionally and provocatively, she suggests this creativity can extend from other disciplines. For example, she notes painter Robert Rauschenberg was a great student of physics, and musician David Byrne was deeply interested in brain science. In other words, these peripheral interests symbiotically fed their artistic repertoire and caused them to probe ever more deeply for inspiration.

Brian Eno

A corollary of sorts to artists looking to system-based art was their interest in and study of cybernetics – the science of systems of communication and how they interact with humans. This is a fascination of Geeta’s, as well as of the subject of her biography of Eno, Another Green World. Pioneered by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Norbert Wiener, the discipline entered what Geeta calls “a second wave” through several British thinkers, including Stafford Beer. Eno became absorbed with Beer’s work, which inspired his work in the studio, which he referred to as a musical instrument in and of itself. Here he began to experiment with new – and largely electronic – sounds.

Eno interestingly, if also regrettably, never met Conrad Schnitzler, though each was familiar with and respectful of the other’s work. Eno had arrived in Germany in 1976 to record with the avant garde electronic group Cluster. Geeta writes that Eno, who rarely performs live, didn’t believe in so-called “cash-in tours”, which doubtless stems from his preference for the richly-expressive and innovative sounds he was creating in studio with ever-more sophisticated electronic instruments. In fact, Geeta says that to him, performing live was “almost beside the point”.

It’s obvious from my conversation with Geeta Dayal that she is consumed with the creative culture that has percolated in Berlin from its challenging post-war period. She spends considerable amounts of time there and from the city’s architecture, its constantly changing skyline to its resilient and boundlessly creative artistic inhabitants, Geeta’s affection for Berlin is readily apparent. In that environment, electronic music has thrived and has clearly become Geeta’s passion.

I lastly asked her if she was planning any new projects and said that she is now working on a book about the history of electronic music from the 1950s. Her unique perspective, as an expert both on the technology and the cultural environments in which those technologies were employed will certainly make that book a must-read for musicologists and electronica enthusiasts alike.

Geeta’s website is entitled The Original Soundtrack. Access it here.

You can also follow her on Twitter @GeetaDayal.

-Chris Hartman

The profits from his teaching permitted him to buy a music shop in Hanwell, London, where one of his first employees was Ken Bran, whom Marshall hired as an engineer. Bran suggested that they build their own amplifiers, and brought in another engineer, Dudley Craven, to help them. They issued their first amplifier in 1962, and its sound became known as the “Marshall Crunch.”

Marshall had always been complimentary of the Fender amplifier, which at the time he created his own brand in 1960 was the prevailing amplification device for country/western and jazz artists – and which produced a “clean” and warm but quiet sound. However, Marshall, for his part, sought to cater to a new generation of musicians who played rock-n-roll and who were looking for a bigger, louder, rougher and more “fuzzy” sound. His success in this sense has made Marshall the amplifier of choice for world-class rock-n-roll artists to this day.

The Who’s Pete Townshend, another Marshall evangelist, told Marshall he wanted a system “as big as an atom bomb” which would be as “powerful as a machine gun.” As he recalled in one interview, “Pretty soon, by accident, I discovered the Gibson SG (guitar) … and because I was using a mix of Sound City (later Hiwatt) and Marshall amplifier stacks, I landed the Live at Leeds sound that stayed with me almost all the way on from there—at least onstage.”  

Though Marshall had worked closely over the years with musicians such as Townshend, Roy Orbison, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Guns and Roses guitarist Slash to name only a few, he reserved his most affectionate praise for Jimi Hendrix, whom he considered “our greatest ambassador, without a doubt,” as well as the greatest guitarist ever. There was a story Marshall often told about Hendrix coming into his shop in 1967 just prior to the release of his smash album Are You Experienced. At the time, Marshall just considered him “another American chap wanting things for free.” But Hendrix was adamant that he wanted to pay full retail price and proceeded to buy four stage setups – the so-called Marshall “stacks.”

-Chris Hartman

Eric M. Howlett, demonstrating the LEEPvr System in Las Vegas, 1980. Courtesy, leepvr.com

This past December 11th saw the passing, at age 84, of an innovator of so-called “Virtual Reality,” Eric Mayorga Howlett. Mr. Howlett was a life-long inventor and entrepreneur in the area of optical and electronic engineering. His creation of the Large Expanse Extra Perspective or “LEEP” system was a dramatic development in optics, becoming popularly known as Virtual Reality – though in engineering circles, it was more commonly referred to as “Virtual Environment” – as it was essentially a computer-simulated environment. The term is attributed to polymath Jaron Lanier, co-founder of VPL Research - the first company to sell Virtual Reality goggles and gloves and a pioneer in 3-D computer graphics.

Jaron Lanier, co-founder of VPL Research - a competitor, and ultimately a client of Howlett's LEEP, Ltd. Courtesy, The Guardian (U.K.)

Howlett, who grew up in Miami, was a prodigy in mathematics and science. In 1944, during his senior year in high school, he was selected in the Westinghouse (Now Intel) Science Talent Search - one of only forty students in the country to be so chosen. As a recipient of this award, he had the opportunity to visit the White House, where he met the then First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. Grumman Aircraft offered him a full scholarship to the university of his choice, whereupon he selected M.I.T. After a short time in the Navy, he achieved his physics degree. During the 1950s, he worked at M.I.T.’s Lincoln Laboratory and General Electric, where he specialized in early warning radar and other electrical systems for military application.

Development of the LEEP System

In the intervening years and contemporary with the launching of the LEEP device, Howlett had been working in high-quality photography equipment. He developed a wide-angle stereoscopic photography system consisting of a viewer and a matching camera to make pictures to view. A patent for it was issued in 1983. They had seventy early orders for it, but only completed twenty as manufacturing the cameras was too complex for Howlett’s bare-bones staff. Howlett knew that he couldn’t raise the $100 million corporations such as Kodak and Polaroid would spend, and he tried to interest each of them in his technology. Both rather unceremoniously declined.

After the ill-fated Polaroid presentation, Howlett began to compare himself to Chester Carlson, who at the time was likewise trying to get companies (and investors) excited about his new invention, xerography:

“After Polaroid I was comparing myself to Chester Carlson as he trekked around the country trying to interest people in some cockamamie thing called “xerography” that his company, “Haloid” or “Haloid Xerox” was developing.”

The NASA VIVED (Virtual Visual Environment Display), which used the LEEP system viewers. Courtesy, http://www.leepvr.com

However, NASA expressed an interest in the viewers that accompanied the cameras. One of their engineers came by Howlett’s  offices in Waltham, Mass. (at the old Waltham Watch factory) and was impressed with the quality of the images and immediately placed an order, after which NASA became one of Howlett’s best customers. These units were to become the NASA VIVED (Virtual Visual Environment Display). Howlett was also able to sell similar units to Disney – though they were never widely produced. The prices for the the devices based on their features ranged between $840 and $3,500. The engineer also told Howlett that they should supply their competitor, Lanier’s VPL Research (who NASA also had a contract with), with the viewers, because VPL had a contract to build devices for NASA’s VIEWS (Virtual Interface Environment Work Station) project. When Howlett found out that NASA was having these units built at their competitor, he called NASA and was told that they would pay $10,000 at least per unit of a head-mounted virtual reality system. This precipitated the development of Howlett’s “Cyberface” system.

Cyberface (1989)

The original Cyberface system. Courtesy, leepvr.com

The Cyberface system went through a series of updates, which variously improved the quality of the pictures, and the ease of its use and portability. With the advent of LEEP Cyberface, Eric Howlett became the first to offer a commercial head-mounted display. As it was developed through the Cyberface2 and Cyberface3 models, resolution of images continued to improve, and the entire system was made for the wearer to move more efficiently, and, ultimately, to make the experience more and more realistic.

Cyberface4 and Virtual Orbiter

Created in 1996, the fourth incarnation of the Cyberface system, the Virtual Orbiter, convincingly delivered the effect of floating through space as an untethered spacewalker.  Cyberface4 forms the nucleus of this device, which offered still higher resolution than its predecessor, the Cyberface3.

The Virtual Orbiter was conceived as a standalone, Virtual Reality experience. Its display was supported on one’s arm, permitting the user to look freely in every direction in their virtual environment. The Virtual Orbiter initially revealed the Earth as it appeared from 20,000 miles above, moving to within 200 miles, then back, allowing the “space walker” to acquire a virtually unique perspective - a vantage point previously available only to space travelers.

As a bittersweet coda to this tale, Eric Howlett, though seeing the significant benefits of his innovations, never fully realized the rewards of his work. He had lost his home in an effort to finance his dreams; but remained undaunted to the last that what he was doing was both important and ahead of its time. With his passing, his son Alex (likewise a talented electronics engineer)  is trying to now market LEEP to the gaming community – fertile ground for such advanced, realistic technology. Though it remains to be seen if he will ultimately be successful, there is no question that his father’s research advanced both the argument for, and the technology of Virtual Reality, to the betterment and enjoyment of society.

As J.M. Lawrence succinctly noted in Howlett’s January 15, 2012 obituary in the Boston Globe,

“Toiling in the basement of his Newton home in the 1980s, virtual reality pioneer Eric M. Howlett solved a key problem in the quest to experience far-flung and potentially dangerous places without ever leaving a comfortable chair.”

-Chris Hartman

Boston's Vilna Shul Synagogue. Courtesy, scratchmm.com

Author’s Note: Though not dealing in particular with the history of high tech or venture capital, the annual Venture Capital Panel held at Boston’s historic synagogue, Beacon Hill’s Vilna Shul, is nevertheless an important event on the calendar of Boston’s high tech community. The panel was preceded by a 45-minute networking session, and was followed by a short question-and-answer period.

I have covered this discussion for a few years now, and it always is enlightening as both a retrospective on the previous year and as a forecast of the coming twelve months. To that end, I have included selective responses from the panelists. This particular group, moderated by the Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner (author of its “Innovation Economy” column), included the following participants:

Rob Go, NextView Ventures
Jonathan Seelig, Globespan Capital Partners
Jo Tango, Founder & Partner, Kepha Partners
Fred Destin, Partner, Atlas Ventures

Panel moderator Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe. Courtesy, ScottKirsner.com

Scott Kirsner started off the discussion with a soul-searching, two-part request of the panelists: Your greatest satisfaction in investing, as well as your biggest regret in passing on an investment.

Jonathan Seelig responded that his biggest regret was not investing in Hub Spot, a Boston-based Internet marketing firm. He mentioned also that he originally hails from Vancouver, Canada, and during one trip there saw a queue outside a retailer called LuluLemon Athletica, a manufacturer and retailer of yoga-inspired athletic wear. He wanted originally to invest in it but hedged. It went on to be wildly successful and is based all over the United States and Canada.

He then added he was very proud to have been an original investor in ZipCar, a successful car-sharing company based in the Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts area. He sits on its board and is pleased about its profitability and other accomplishments.

Rob Go of NextVentures. Courtesy, Cyberposium.com

Rob Go mentioned his biggest regret was passing on investing in Groupon, the Internet coupon site which has basically become an Internet phenomenon. However, he took great satisfaction from investing in SkillShare, a New York City-based company where professionals share their expertise on just about any topic through a remote-learning model.

Scott Kirsner then inquired as to what the biggest story in venture capital for 2011 was. Rob Go responded that he thought the IPO for LinkedIn, the professional networking site which, on the day of its opening (May 26) was worth a reported $9 billion, was the most significant story of 2011.

Globespan Capital Partners' Jonathan Seelig. Courtesy, Crunchbase.com

Jonathan Seelig said he thought the most important factor was that there was over $8 billion raised for new businesses last year – and that the trend lately has been that the amount of money available for venture investing has doubled each of the past four years. That would indicate we are in a healthy investment period.

Jo Tango mentioned that the diversification of duties of venture capitalists was a significant development. He stated that the recent recession had forced VCs to be more creative and inventive in their business dealings.

Scott Kirsner next asked a broad question about notable trends in Boston-based venture capital. Is the region on the upswing? Rob Go asserted that there was a shift of focus on the part of Boston-area investors toward New York City. He said that this started in 2007-8, coinciding with the most recent economic downturn. He suggested that New York City was a more insular investment community and this, together with the fact that they have a lot of money, allows them to be more selective about making the best deals.

Fred Destin of Atlas Ventures. Courtesy, The Telegraph (U.K.)

Fred Destin said he thought that Boston needs to be more aggressive and active in venture investment. Talent from Boston-area firms is too often lured away. Boston needs to be more aspirational in its approach to venture capital. He next suggested that so-called “angel investing” (definition), which he and Atlas specialize in, should contain multiple platforms – allowing for small start-up companies to not be overlooked in the investment process. He added that some might require only between, say, $2 million and $3 million to “get them across the finish line.”

Jonathan Seelig clarified the term “angel investor” by asserting one needed to have started or run a company that gives a good money cushion for investment. He mentioned that Silicon Valley has an advantage over theBoston area in this sense because there are exponentially more individuals who are in that position. He closed by saying angel investment was the “social currency of the region”; that is, angel investors are often guided by a sense of social or cultural responsibility.

Scott Kirsner followed up with a question about what particular sectors the panelists invested in. Fred Destin said that he was not “thematic” in any sense with regard to his own investments, and that as an angel investor, he was open to different vehicles.

Kepha Partners' Jo Tango. Courtesy, Bizjournals.com

Jo Tango said that his preferred genre of investment was “data mobility” – (Companies he’s invested in include StreamBase Systems, Vertica Systems, and Virtual Iron; he was also involved in Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), Digital Market, and NextCard).

Rob Go is focused largely on education and education delivery systems. As mentioned previously, he invested in SkillShare; but has always been interested in the media, technology, and entertainment sectors – as well as the intersection of K-12 consumer-directed education and eCommerce. He suggested this area lends itself to intuition; that is “you’re rowing and you can’t see land; but you can tell where the currents are moving.”

Jonathan Seelig noted that it was a difficult question for him. He finds influence of social networking sites “interesting”; but really believes that purchasing decisions as influenced by “friends” is more complex that it appears on its face. Social media does provide a “framework for influence” that’s quite subtle and where connections are not obvious.

Scott Kirsner asks “What’s the mood with consumer internet startups”? Rob Go suggested that these consumer internet startup companies, of all funding levels, have a long way to go before their potential is realized; but that the “wind is at our back.” (For instance, companies like Zynga, Groupon, Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare are examples of sophisticated and well-funded consumer internet startups). He added that in typical education investments, an investor should know the intricacies involved in navigating school districts. The profile of such an investor is quite different than your usual software engineer. It is difficult to make money efficiently in this investment area – school districts are not analogous or compatible as to their own needs. They have little interest in other school districts.

In closing, I’d note that happily, Vilna Shul was filled to capacity that evening. There were 170 reservations placed through social media, and the networking session beforehand, from my own perspective, was very beneficial (and fun!) Every year I’ve gone to these panels, they have been thoughtfully sponsored by Goodwin Procter law firm in downtown Boston. They have been a great friend of these events, and very much deserve a mention. And of course, Doug Levin, who capably organizes all of the panels (in addition to running his own start up) is the steady hand who makes it all possible.

-Chris Hartman

From a 1986 documentary series on PBS called “The Entrepreneurs.” Steve Jobs articulates his own vision for NeXT, the company he started after being forced out of Apple Computer a year prior.

The opening scene has the eminent designer Paul Rand (designer of logos for IBM, Westinghouse, UPS, etc.) unveiling the logo he created for NeXT. Design was a great passion of Jobs’, and he wanted this company to make an important statement in that regard right from the beginning.

Much of the subsequent footage is taken at two NeXT retreats at California’s Pebble Beach - the first taking place 90 days after NeXT was started, and the second three months hence. Jobs presides at his ever-present whiteboard and probes and challenges during these freewheeling discussions with his colleagues, many of whom followed him from Apple.

The “Reality Distortion Field” that Jobs’ made (in)famous is boldly on display here. The first instance shows the staff pushing back on Jobs because they are determined the original 18-month deadline for shipping the first NeXT units is unrealistic. The college market, where NeXT’s computer is being positioned, has put pressure on the company to keep the price at no more than $3,000.

Jobs’ hard-edged instincts as a businessman lead him to assert that missing the Summer, 1987 deadline for college purchases would delay their educational computer for another year – thereby wreaking havoc in the company. Jobs’ chief concerns involved not selling enough units to meet operating costs, and falling behind technologically by the time the units actually do ship. The dreaded talk of “spending cuts” also enters the conversation.

At one point, Jobs is overtaken by a stream of consciousness, issuing forth an entrepreneurial soliloquy about his own start-up philosophy that would make Hamlet blush:    

“I forgot how hard it is to start a company … it’s A LOT of work. And … you’ve got to do everything: you have to come up with a name, you have to come up with a logo … I mean, in addition to designing the product, you’ve got to figure out what you want to design, you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to get it to the marketplace, you’ve got to do a part number system, you’ve got to go get bank accounts, you’ve got to set up charts, general ledgers, a management information system, get a little kitchen set up, get a coffee maker, ALL THIS STUFF!”

NeXT wound up being purchased by Apple around the time Jobs triumphantly returned to the latter as “iCEO” in 1997, and the technology NeXT developed was ultimately incorporated into Apple’s OS X operating system. But here, in this brief snapshot, you get a bold-faced look at the urgency Jobs felt to make his ”next” act successful, and you experience that pure, undistilled passion he had for what he was trying to accomplish.

-Chris Hartman

Jonathan Rotenberg

This is a personal account, by Boston native Jonathan Rotenberg, about the day in 1981 he met Steve Jobs, who with Steve Wozniak was in town to attend ”Applefest ’81,” a computer show Jonathan organized as a prodigious 18 year old. Rotenberg, who currently resides in Los Angeles, has a long history in computing. When he was only 13, he co-founded Boston’s Computer History Society. He is now President of Centriq Advisors, a management consulting firm for the high tech industry. Below I quote Jonathan’s account in its entirety. It’s remarkable for the humanity and kindness Jobs exhibited that day – particularly to young Jonathan.

Click here to check out Jonathan’s Facebook page and his blogging on life in L.A., a variety of issues relating to technology, spirituality, creativity and business.

“On June 6, 1981, a very kind man named Bob Washburn (Northeast Regional Sales Manager of Apple Computer Inc.) made a dream come true for an 18-year old semi-geek named Jonathan Rotenberg. Bob convinced the cofounders of his company, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak, to be keynote speakers at a computer show I organized in Boston called Applefest ’81.

“Applefest was the first Apple-specific computer show ever, and was the platform from which IDG (International Data Group) later launched something called Macworld Expo.

“In this photo, taken that steamy Saturday afternoon at Boston’s Park Plaza Castle, the 26-year-old Steve J. is standing next to his just-launched Apple III. Little did Steve realize at this particular moment just how much the pimply 18-year-old Kid actually knew about him. The Kid had researched Steve in meticulous detail.

“Weeks before, the Kid had been in intense conversations with one of Boston’s top chefs, Odette Berry of Another Season restaurant (the location today of Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill). Odette and he (me) planned an exquisitely stylish and innovative seven-course, all-vegetarian dinner for Saturday night. Odette developed each recipe from scratch specially for Steve Jobs. With a warm and gentle British accent, she said: ‘Mind you, now, this won’t be any “hippie vegetarian” dinner. Each course will be extremely elegant and unique.’

Lala Rokh restaurant (previously Another Season), Mt. Vernon Street, Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood.

“In 1981, a lot of teenagers idolized Blondie or Mick Jagger. That Saturday evening at Another Season, this 18-year-old found himself sitting in the presence of his greatest childhood hero. As the dinner began, the 26-year old may have had a hunch that, in this Kid, he had found someone who could appreciate his extraordinarily high standards. (FYI, six years later–after leaving Apple and founding NeXT and Pixar–Steve would say, in a biting, caustic phone voice: ‘You know, Jonathan, you can be an ANAL RETENTIVE JERK sometimes!’ Part of understanding Steve is knowing that ‘anal retentive jerk’ can be understood as an expression of esteem by one perfectionist to another …)

“The dinner guests seated around the table included the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal, Dick Schaffer; the publisher/founder of Inc. magazine, Bernie Goldhirsh; and the technology reporter of the Boston Globe. Each of the seven courses was crafted from fragrant, brilliantly colorful, just-picked spring vegetables. The guests seemed impressed. But the 18-year-old–so determined to raise himself to the soaring, monumental standards of the master–had something else up his pimply sleeve … He knew a truth about Steve that almost no one knew then. Many people knew that Steve had been a fruitarian for a number of years. But what virtually NO ONE knew was that Steve’s favorite fruit was NOT the apple; it was the strawberry.

“Odette had designed each course of the dinner to include a unique, innovative strawberry element within it. The 18-year old sat across the table, facing the 26-year-old master. A waiter appeared with the first course: a beautifully-designed glass platter made from a highly-polished mirror with gorgeous, ever-so-lightly prepared, gigantic strawberries, arranged like a work-of-art on the mirror. The 18-year old peered across the table and saw a grin appear on the face of the master. ‘We heard that you like strawberries,’ the Kid said. ‘Doesn’t everyone like strawberries?’ he replied, with a happy, boyish laugh. He then slid a large portion of the platter onto his plate …

“After dinner, I invited the guests to my parents’ townhouse on Beacon Hill for liqueurs and biscotti. As we walked up Mt. Vernon Street after dinner, it was close to the summer solstice. The setting Spring sun illuminated the gentle colonial brick townhouses, trees, and gas lamps of Beacon Hill. I had been waiting all day to to find an appropriate time to speak with Steve about the future of Applefest. As we walked together, I shared with him some challenges we had been struggling with in our collaboration with Apple’s marketing department. Steve put his arm around my shoulder and seemed to listen intently. He then reached into his jacket and pulled out a small leather box. ‘Here, Jonathan, I want to give this to you.’ (The box, I later discovered, contained a pure gold pen with the full-color Apple logo on its clip). After some further conversation, he said: ‘Jonathan, Could you call my assistant next week? I’d like to fly you out to California, so that we can sit down and talk about this.’

“There is a saying that ‘when the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ On June 6, 1981, the most important teacher of my lifetime appeared.”

-Chris Hartman

An early advertisement for Sound Techniques Studio. Courtesy, Sound on Sound

At Levy’s, and dreaming of starting a recording studio

Geoff Frost has called Levy’s essentially a “jobbing” studio; that is, anything and everything, including sound effects, was recorded there. Geoff had been Chief Engineer at Levy’s since 1959 while associate John Wood had joined the staff in 1962. The decision to start their own venture was prompted partly because Geoff and John wanted to be their own bosses and partly because Maurice Levy had just sold the firm to U.S. recording industry giant CBS Records, leaving the pair with some uncertainty about their future employment. Though a meticulous and technically astute pair, there interestingly was no great forethought in their decision to leave.

John Wood later reminisced: “We decided we’d start a recording studio, and with that wonderful ignorance is bliss mentality, impetuousness of youth, we thought we’d just get on and do it and do a better job than Levy’s … so Geoff left in September [1964] and started looking for premises and that was it!”

Though in no way a guarantee of success, the variety of complementary skills that Geoff (then aged 28) and John (aged 24) possessed had helped ensure that Sound Techniques Chelsea (S.T.C.) had a solid footing for future success. In his role as Chief Engineer at Levy’s, Geoff had assumed the lead technical role in building and maintaining the studio’s equipment in addition to overseeing engineering sessions. Wood meanwhile had apprenticed with Decca Records, and his editing of classical recordings had finely tuned his ear for the more subtle inflections of folk and folk rock recordings.

To finance their venture, Geoff Frost secured a loan with Barclays Bank and the company was officially registered in December 1964, after a name for the company had been chosen during a “swift but inspired telephone conversation” between Wood and Frost. John Wood remembers:

“Geoff rang me up from Peter Godfrey’s office, who was our solicitor, saying, ‘We’ve got to have a name for the company!’ … and I’m sitting in the control room at Levy’s, and there’s a Pultec on the rack and an Altec compressor and I see Pulse Techniques underneath Pultec so I said ‘Well, what about Sotec or Sound Techniques?’, and that’s literally where our name came from. And it was a great name! The biggest mistake we made was not registering it across the world!”

At the time Frost joined Levy’s in 1959, the studio’s basic control equipment comprised two Vortexion 4-way mixers, a passive two way mixer, an EMI BTR2 and a Tannoy 15” dual concentric speaker in a Lockwood cabinet. But as the years went on, and through Frost’s persistence, both the quantity and quality of equipment they installed improved greatly.

Their experience at Levy’s encouraged Frost and Wood to hone the technical skills that would prepare them to both design and build mixing desks – not only for S.T.C. but for other studios around the world. To quote Frost: “We never started out to manufacture mixers for anyone other than ourselves … It came as a bit of a surprise when people saw the first desk at Chelsea and said ‘this sounds great, can you make one for us?’”

As far as the studio’s configuration and acoustics were concerned, Frost and Wood had the benefit of a journey Geoff made to an American studio earlier in 1964. As Frost recalled:

“I got on a plane to Nashville to look at the American studios to find out why they got such better sounds than the English studios … There was an incredible difference in the sound. American stuff was open, it was loud – the stuff from British studios was very sort of twee and dull. The sound coming out of America, particularly from Bradley’s, really impressed me personally. So the first thing I did when we got off the plane was, after finding a hotel, I knocked on Bradley’s door and said, ‘I’m a chief engineer from London, is it possible for your chief engineer to show me ‘round?’ And they said, ‘Well, of course!’ And Bradley’s was by the far the most impressive studio I saw and just the kind of studio that John and I wanted to build.”

The perfect blend of acoustics and equipment

One of the most important revelations Geoff took away from his visit to Bradley’s was that the acoustics weren’t anything like those of English studios, where the idea was to make everything sound “as dead as possible.” Bradley’s had a very alive and powerful sound from their plain walls and very high ceilings. The Nashville studio also had very minimal equipment. The English had, for the longest time, been going in a mistaken direction to achieve an “American” sound by adding more equipment. Frost remembers:

“Bradley’s had a very simple desk – I think it was an ex-broadcast desk – a Bendix or a Gates or something like that and they had outboard EQs – they had Langevins and all the Langevins were locked in at 3k 8db boost position and left there!”

In December of 1964, Frost and Wood opened their new studio off the King’s Road at 46a Old Church Street, Chelsea. Notably, it was one of the earliest independent sound recording studios in the U.K. Housed in an old dairy, the studio closely resembled a garage with a cobbled floor. The floor had a gentle slope towards an elevator at the far end. The slope was originally there to drain off the water when cows were hosed down. Interestingly, the studio was on the first floor of what Frost termed “a Victorian milking parlor!”

In order to achieve a “Bradley’s type sound,” a team of builders was recruited to modify the studio space. An eighth of an inch of asphalt was laid on the floor to dampen the sound to an extent (another Nashville tip), then covered with carpet, though the original gradual slope from the dairy days was left as it was, which Frost and Wood felt possibly contributed to the room’s unique sound. And, while pursuing the best possible acoustics, Frost recalled:

“John and I went around clapping our hands, and we’d say, ‘Ooh, we need something up there!’ but bearing in mind we were so short of money, we did as little as possible! Underneath the office, we left the old fashioned lathe and plaster ceiling which did great things for strings.”

Another critical factor that made a studio’s sound unique was reverb (an electronically produced echo effect) – whether from echo chambers or plates. At S.T.C., Wood tweaked their reverb plates masterfully. Before the era of excessive multi-track recording, a recording room’s contours were paramount. S.T.C.’s high ceiling in the middle, the space under the office on the right hand and other logistical factors provided the natural spillage amongst microphones that made possible the studio’s unique sound. These factors are subtle, but to sound professionals and ultimately the listening public, also indispensable. For instance, strings and rhythm sections were typically placed in the center of the room under the high section of the ceiling, again using the particular idiosyncrasies of the old dairy to bring out the best in the sounds that ended up on tape.

Innovations in recording and mixing technology

During the 1960s and 70s, S.T.C. studio enjoyed unqualified success at the top-end of the music business as did its manufacturing division. With the latter, Frost and Wood commenced work during 1964 on a pioneering range of audio recording consoles starting with their “A Range” desks, followed in 1969 by the “System 12” mixer – one of the first ever compact desks in production. Eventually, forty or so of these desks were built and sold.

Sound Techniques Chelsea's System 12 recording desk - taking in the beach.

The System 12 was conceived during a brief stop along the road for a cup of tea, where John Wood, in a manner reminiscent of other high-intensity start-up entrepreneurs, drained the café’s supply of napkins sketching out prototypes. Eventually, the desks that Geoff designed for Sound Techniques would also help shape the sound of the records made at Chelsea as well as the other studios they supplied. For example, Trident and De Lane Lea (at both Kingsway and Wembley) bought a succession of S.T.C. mixers over the years, as did Sunset Sound and Elektra studios in California.

Establishing a reputation for excellence

At the time of Studio Techniques’ inception, a majority of studios in London had the reputation of being, as Frost notes, “stuffy and oppressive, manned and administered by scientists in brown lab coats who had little interest in the nasty guitar music that had so rudely thrust itself upon them.” But by the middle of the 1960s, new independent labels like S.T.C. were primary innovators in advancing a new, “hip” recording environment with a passion for popular music. For instance, on the 11th and 12th of January 1967, Pink Floyd and producer Joe Boyd spent two days at Sound Techniques, recording and mixing “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Nick’s Boogie” for the Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London soundtrack.

A seminal moment for the studio was when Elektra Records began booking time there. The label was referred to S.T.C. by ex-EMI engineer (and good friend) Malcolm Addey. It was through this relationship with Elektra that S.T.C. came to know producer Joe Boyd – after which Pink Floyd and many other musicians found their way to S.T.C.

“It was much funkier than places like CBS or Abbey Road, the bigger studios that people had spent lots of money on” said Dave Pegg, bass guitarist for Fairport Convention, “But those studios never had very good ambiences as far as I was concerned. Sound Techniques was like coming home to us – and there was the cake shop next door and the pub opposite – I remember the pub opposite really well!” And Craig Leon, a noted composer who produced the first Ramones album and who now composes and produces classical music, said of Sound Techniques: “I think what was great about the place was the room and how John and Geoff understood how to get the best out of their console since they knew it so well. It was just right for recording acoustic singer/songwriter folk music.”

Foremost amongst its many advantages, S.T.C. studio was designed to be functional. Function arose from form and substance trumped style.

The end of an era and, like the phoenix, reinvention

John Wood in S.T.C. studio, 1974. Courtesy, Sound on Sound

The Sound Techniques studio under the stewardship of John Wood and Geoff Frost came to a sad end in 1974 after the existing lease ran out. John Wood continued in the music industry becoming a successful freelance engineer and producer while Geoff continued to use the Sound Techniques facility to run a burgeoning software development house. The Chelsea studio freehold was bought by Olympic Studios, who continued to use the facilities until the early 1980s. When S.T.C. studio closed its doors in 1976, the manufacturing division (now based in Mildenhall, Suffolk) diversified into computer software. S.T.C. (now known as S.T.L. Technologies) soon got a contract to install the first computer system dedicated to Magistrates’ Courts software. The company has since flourished and now specializes in the development of law enforcement systems and software.

Geoff Frost creating a schematic on building an analogue mixer (“A bit bleeding obvious, you say?!”):

For further viewing and reading:

Matt Frost, music writer (and son of Geoff), has written an excellent history of the studio at Sound on Sound magazine. This has significantly informed the present article.

Sound Techniques’ YouTube channel is an invaluable resource for learning more about the history of the studio, in addition to technical instruction.

*Author’s note: I will be interviewing Geoff Frost shortly, and will post the transcript of my Q&A at that time.

-Chris Hartman