Imagine this.

Over time, you have grown functionally deaf.

Now what?

You dream of inventing a machine that can record and reproduce sound.

Now what?

You dream of creating a machine that can record and play music.

Now what?

You dream of taking photographs, moving them so quickly, one after another, that the eye is not struck with the thought of seeing a fast-moving sequence of individual pictures. Instead, one is seduced into thinking he sees people in motion. They are motion pictures. Furthermore, you dream of assigning sound to those moving pictures so that the movement of the lips of the humans in the moving images matches the sound the ear hears. But, again, you are deaf.

Now what?

I suppose many would have lamented that the dreams were nice but impossible to fulfill. However, I know of a man who did not give up on those very dreams I described. I know of a deaf inventor so determined to build these machines that he learned to hear music “by holding a stick in his teeth with the other end pressed against an acoustic speaker’s diaphragm.”

That kind of imagination, persistence, and problem-solving allowed Thomas Alva Edison to invent the phonograph and contribute to the invention of the motion picture camera and the syncing of sound to movies.

Of course, Edison created over 1000 inventions (the light bulb, anyone?). Still, none were as dramatic in overcoming personal limitations and obstacles as those inventions involving sound.

Now, what do you dream to achieve?

Do you face any obstacles?

Any like Edison’s?

For Further Reading:

A STREAK OF LUCK: The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison
By Robert Conot

Edison
By Edmund Morris