Saw Tape Recorder Quotes

I got a little tape recorder and laid it on my chest and kept describing the scene as I saw it. Just the opening scenes took about 45 minutes. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I like it that way. If I knew how it ended, I’d lose interest in the story.

Dammit that yodel of triumph of yours was the most beautiful thing I ever heard in my life. I wish I'd a had a tape recorder to take it down.' 'Those things aren't made to be heard by the people below,' says Japhy dead serious. 'By God you're right, all those sedentary bums sitting around on pillows hearing the cry of the triumphant mountain smasher, they don't deserve it. But when I looked up and saw you running down that mountain I suddenly understood everything.

The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.

Helen, a junior high math teacher in Minnesota, spent most of the school week teaching a difficult “new math” lesson. She could tell her students were frustrated and restless by week’s end. They were becoming rowdy so she told them to put their books away. She then instructed the class to take out clean sheets of paper. She gave each of them this assignment: Write down every one of your classmates’ names on the left, and then, on the right, put down one thing you like about that student. The tense and rowdy mood subsided and the room quieted when the students went to work. Their moods lifted as they dug into the assignment. There was frequent laughter and giggling. They looked around the room, sharing quips about one another. Helen’s class was a much happier group when the bell signaled the end of the school day. She took their lists home over the weekend and spent both days off recording what was said about each student on separate sheets of paper so she could pass on all the nice things said about each person without giving away who said what. The next Monday she handed out the lists she’d made for each student. The room buzzed with excitement and laughter. “Wow. Thanks! This is the coolest!” “I didn’t think anyone even noticed me!” “Someone thinks I’m beautiful?” Helen had come up with the exercise just to settle down her class, but it ended up giving them a big boost. They grew closer as classmates and more confident as individuals. She could tell they all seemed more relaxed and joyful. About ten years later, Helen learned that one of her favorite students in that class, a charming boy named Mark, had been killed while serving in Vietnam. She received an invitation to the funeral from Mark’s parents, who included a note saying they wanted to be sure she came to their farmhouse after the services to speak with them. Helen arrived and the grieving parents took her aside. The father showed her Mark’s billfold and then from it he removed two worn pieces of lined paper that had been taped, folded, and refolded many times over the years. Helen recognized her handwriting on the paper and tears came to her eyes. Mark’s parents said he’d always carried the list of nice things written by his classmates. “Thank you so much for doing that,” his mother said. “He treasured it, as you can see.” Still teary-eyed, Helen walked into the kitchen where many of Mark’s former junior high classmates were assembled. They saw that Mark’s parents had his list from that class. One by one, they either produced their own copies from wallets and purses or they confessed to keeping theirs in an album, drawer, diary, or file at home.

Helen, a junior high math teacher in Minnesota, spent most of the school week teaching a difficult “new math” lesson. She could tell her students were frustrated and restless by week’s end. They were becoming rowdy so she told them to put their books away. She then instructed the class to take out clean sheets of paper. She gave each of them this assignment: Write down every one of your classmates’ names on the left, and then, on the right, put down one thing you like about that student. The tense and rowdy mood subsided and the room quieted when the students went to work. Their moods lifted as they dug into the assignment. There was frequent laughter and giggling. They looked around the room, sharing quips about one another. Helen’s class was a much happier group when the bell signaled the end of the school day. She took their lists home over the weekend and spent both days off recording what was said about each student on separate sheets of paper so she could pass on all the nice things said about each person without giving away who said what. The next Monday she handed out the lists she’d made for each student. The room buzzed with excitement and laughter. “Wow. Thanks! This is the coolest!” “I didn’t think anyone even noticed me!” “Someone thinks I’m beautiful?” Helen had come up with the exercise just to settle down her class, but it ended up giving them a big boost. They grew closer as classmates and more confident as individuals. She could tell they all seemed more relaxed and joyful. About ten years later, Helen learned that one of her favorite students in that class, a charming boy named Mark, had been killed while serving in Vietnam. She received an invitation to the funeral from Mark’s parents, who included a note saying they wanted to be sure she came to their farmhouse after the services to speak with them. Helen arrived and the grieving parents took her aside. The father showed her Mark’s billfold and then from it he removed two worn pieces of lined paper that had been taped, folded, and refolded many times over the years. Helen recognized her handwriting on the paper and tears came to her eyes. Mark’s parents said he’d always carried the list of nice things written by his classmates. “Thank you so much for doing that,” his mother said. “He treasured it, as you can see.” Still teary-eyed, Helen walked into the kitchen where many of Mark’s former junior high classmates were assembled. They saw that Mark’s parents had his list from that class. One by one, they either produced their own copies from wallets and purses or they confessed to keeping theirs in an album, drawer, diary, or file at home. Helen the teacher was a “people builder.” She instinctively found ways to build up her students. Being a people builder means you consistently find ways to invest in and bring out the best in others. You give without asking for anything in return. You offer advice, speak faith into them, build their confidence, and challenge them to go higher. I’ve found that all most people need is a boost. All they need is a little push, a little encouragement, to become what God has created them to be. The fact is, none of us will reach our highest potential by ourselves. We need one another. You can be the one to tip the scales for someone else. You can be the one to stir up their seeds of greatness.

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So, I went out into the bright spring sunlight and taped a few minutes of the wren laying furious claim to his territory with song. Then I let him hear his own voice. That little bird, one- third the size of a sparrow, began to dive- bomb me and my cassette recorder, swooping back and forth, inches from the speaker. We saw a lot of that sort of behaviour, even in the absence of the tape recorder. If a larger bird ever dared to sit and rest in any of the trees near our birdhouse there was a good chance he would get knocked off his perch by a kamikaze wren.

Just as my mother said this, Nour slouched back in the metal chair she was sitting on and placed her hands below the seat. She paused for a second, looking puzzled as her hands felt something beneath the chair. “Ahed, come look,” she whispered. I lowered my head to see what she was touching. And that’s when I saw it: a voice recorder taped to the bottom of her seat.

Genesis,” God said slowly. “The sick fuck recorded it.” Genesis bent and picked up the box and shoved it at God’s chest. “Mom and I saw it all. She found this box buried in the attic. We must have just put it up there without opening it when we moved here. It shows it all!” Genesis’s tears were falling freely as he yelled. “The fights, the beatings, the threats.” Genesis dropped to his knees as if he was in agony. He cried so hard his body jerked with the sobs. “Oh my god, oh my god,” he groaned. Cash shoved the box of old VHS tapes to Day and dropped down to embrace his brother, and Genesis clung to him for dear life. “The

Producer Norman Macdonnell saw Fort Laramie as “a monument to ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times”: their enemies were “the rugged, uncharted country, the heat, the cold, disease, boredom, and, perhaps last of all, hostile Indians.” Men died at Fort Laramie: some died of drowning, some of freezing, some of typhoid and smallpox. “But it’s a matter of record,” Macdonnell said on the opening, “that in all the years the cavalry was stationed at Fort Laramie, only four troopers died of gunshot wounds.” The series was less intense, and far less known, than Macdonnell’s major western, Guns-moke: the stories focused as much on atmosphere and mood as on violence and action. The run of 40 shows is complete on tape in excellent quality. The star, Raymond Burr, went from obscurity to national prominence a year later, taking on the title role in TV’s Perry Mason.