95 Year Old Karaoke Inventor’s Machine Still Rocks #MusicMonday
Karaoke has been one of Japan’s most enduring and successful exports. But where did Karaoke begin? As it turns out, Karoke was invented by Shigeichi Negishi in 1967. Negishi is 95 and his invention, the Sparko Box, is still running. Here’s more from Kotaku:
One day in 1967, Negishi kept singing as he walked into the offices of Nichiden Kogyo, his electronics-assembly firm, which built 8-track tape decks for other companies in the suburbs of Tokyo. His head engineer gently ribbed the boss for his crooning. And that, says Negishi, is when inspiration struck…. [Later] the engineer had wired a microphone amp and a mixing circuit to a surplus 8-track deck. Negishi turned it on and slotted in an instrumental tape of “Mujō No Yume” (“The Heartless Dream”), an old favorite from the thirties. His voice came through the speakers along with the music—the first karaoke song ever sung. “It works! That’s all I was thinking. Most of all, it was fun. I knew right away I’d discovered something new.” He told his engineer to build a case for it, wiring in a coin timer they had lying around for good measure. He instantly grasped that this was something he could potentially sell.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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