Word: instrument
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...Schawlow and Charles Townes describe a device that they thought would be able to stimulate molecules of gas confined in a cylinder until they gave off photons in an intense and powerful stream. Their device was a variation of Townes's earlier Nobel Prizewinning invention, the maser-an instrument that produced invisible microwaves by a process called "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Because it was designed to produce visible light, ihey called their proposed new instrument an optical maser...
Just two years later, Physicist Maiman used the Townes-Schawlow theory and built the world's first working laser, a small, hand-held instrument that shot out bursts of brilliant red light. Instead of a gas, Maiman's laser used a synthetic ruby crystal grown in a bath of molten aluminum oxide. In pure form, the aluminum oxide crystal is colorless and transparent. But a pinch of chromium added to the bath as an impurity gives the resulting crystals their characteristic ruby-red hue and supplies the chromium atoms (one for every 5,000 aluminum atoms) that cause...
...sings with all the richness of the cello, the warmth of the viola and the agility of the violin. Yet Karr is not content simply to be the master of a narrow field. He wants to broaden the field-by revamping the technique of bass playing and bringing the instrument into its own as a solo voice. "My intention is to start revolutions," he says. "Most bass music doesn't demand very much, and most bass players don't want to work very hard; they're satisfied to be ensemble players. They've done too little...
...Boston's New England Conservatory and the University of Wisconsin. He publishes a magazine (The Bass Sound Post) and organizes annual conferences for the 1,000-member International Institute for the String Bass, which he founded and heads. He champions improvements in bass design: his own custom-made instrument has, among other features, a special thick-bellied shape for resonance and carrying power and an unusually close spacing between the strings and fingerboard for easier fingering. He has his own method of drawing the bow more slowly across the strings to achieve a "rich, passionate" tone. He also argues...
Many of Karr's techniques are self-taught. Raised in a musical family in which the father, grandfather, two uncles and three cousins all played the bass, he took up the instrument at nine "without even knowing there were other instruments." He made such rapid progress that he soon ranged beyond the conventional approach to the bass. He studied with a cellist, a pianist and even with Singer Jennie Tourel ("the greatest influence on my phrasing and musical ideas"). After a 1962 appearance in one of Leonard Bernstein's televised Young People's Concerts, he started...