Sagebrush

The original USA theremin patent was issued February 28, 1928, exactly 80 years ago today.

Related: Original Theremin Patent Filed, Happy Birthday Léon, Theremin Patents, Theremin Patent

WinChime 1.0, our first Sagebrush product, was released February 27, 1995, running on Windows 3.1 . Win95 would not appear until November of that year, computers were just beginning to come equipped with sound cards and CD-Rom drives, and people wanted something to play on their new devices. Audio takes up a lot of space on 40MByte disk drives, so we took advantage of the built-in MIDI capabilities of sound cards to produce plesant ambient sounds without using much computer resources.

WinChime is still supported and improved. Look for new features in an update later this year.

In an earlier, we had pointed out several theremin student design projects. Here, we mention theses and dissertations related (however remotely) to this hands-off instrument:

Visual Frets for a Free-Gesture Musical Interface, Leila Hasan, MIT MS EECS, 2001. Visible lasers provide frets.

Toward an Understanding of Musical Gesture: Mapping Expressive Intention with the Digital Baton, Teresa Anne Marrin, MIT MS Media Arts and Sciences, 1996.

Radical User Interfaces for Real-time Musical Control, Andy Hunt, University of York PhD, 2000.

Design of Virtual Three-dimensional Instruments for Sound Control, Axel G E Mulder, Rijks Universiteit Groningen PhD School of Kinesiology, 1989.

The Times reports on the “Mosquito”, which produces an irritating high-pitched noise only perceived by young people:

“These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving,” Sir Al [Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner for England] told the BBC.

[kudos boingboing]

Previously: When Time Stamps Go Bad, When Time Stamps Go Bad 2