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Musings from Philippe

Sailing, Mountains, Music, and Technology

An Introduction to Understanding Sleep

Introduction: As my colleague Mark Christensen and I were sailing across oceans double-handed (just two of us on a fast high tech sailboat), chasing and beating records, we discovered that we were both so busy that neither of us slept much more than 30 minutes at a time for weeks on end. And it worked. I mean we were performing. Why did it work? We decided to use the scientific method and to build sleep monitors and a software system that would monitor both our sleep and wake performance.

Wired Magazine on Sleep and Sailing

An Introduction to Understanding Sleep

What we learned defied common wisdom. Mark and I were back in an evolutionary environment with no constraints but that of Mother Nature and our whole beings were adapting and shedding all sorts of misconceptions. Just like intermittent fasting makes us healthier, there is magic to understanding sleep budgeting and optimization. Here I share some of our findings based on over 100,000 nautical miles sailed across oceans around the world.

I hope that you find this first installment useful and look forward to your feedback.

Your Sleeptracker® statistics and what is “normal”

Preface: We are all different. However, we can learn a lot from the Sleeptracker® community, comparing our own sleep to “people like me” to help us gain a better understanding of our sleep. So these “normal” values and ranges simply reflect Sleeptracker® stats for 90% of the population, 90% of the time. If you are an elite athlete or have a chronic condition you may find yourself out of range for some of the stats. It’s important to understand where you are and make small improvements over time. Be patient with yourself.

Total Sleep is not the time spent in bed, but the time when you were actually asleep. A restful night’s sleep for most people ranges from 6 to 9 hours. Statistically, females on average tend to sleep a little more than males. Everyone is different. What counts is how rested you feel and making small improvements. For example, if you find initially you sleep for 6 hours on average, try to set your goal for 6 hours 15 minutes. Iterate until you feel more rested.

Time to Sleep is the time elapsed between starting a sleep recording and actually falling asleep. If you fall asleep in less then 3 minutes you are probably sleep deprived. If it takes you more than 30 minutes to fall asleep (once you’ve decided to fall asleep, not if you are simply reading a great book), it would be good to look at factors which can impact time to sleep such as when and what you ate and drank before bed, caffeine consumption, and how much exercise you’ve had and when that occurred. It helps to finish eating and drinking a couple of hours before bed, stretch your muscles, and keep your bedroom cool and quiet.

Light Sleep, REM Sleep and Deep Sleep: Sleep occurs in waves, with a crest called REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream, and a trough called deep sleep when we are in maximum recovery mode, together with several intermediate stages. All stages of the “sleep wave” are necessary, and sleep typically comes in multiple waves. Depending on the individual, each wave of sleep lasts 45 to 90 minutes and we experience between four to six waves of sleep (complete cycles) per night. The highest percentage of deep sleep is experienced during the earlier waves.

Awake time displays how long your “awake events” are during the night. Often, we don’t even remember some of these awake events if they are short. However, if you are awake for more than 12 minutes, it may be a good idea to get up and do something relaxing. Pascal, Newton, Mozart, Debussy, Einstein, Nadia Boulanger, and many other geniuses would actually sleep in “two shifts”: they called it “First Sleep” and “Second Sleep” and claim they did their best work in the middle of the night. That’s hard to do in a modern world with standardized work hours.

Wakeup displays the number of awake events you experienced during your sleep. If they are short, you may not remember them. Up to 3 to 5 awake events is quite normal and with young children or pets, some of us experience several awake events each night.

Sleep Score (range 1 -100): Sleeptracker® makes it easy to rate your sleep from day one, with your “Sleep Score”. For example, there are people with a sleep score of 50 out of 100 initially, who after a few months of using Sleeptracker® improved their sleep score to 75, and continue to improve. The ideal sleeper will look for a sleep score of 90+ over time. But many healthy individuals function well at 75 or above.

Sleep Efficiency is the percentage of time spent sleeping. For example, spending 8 hours in bed and 6 of those hours asleep is a sleep efficiency of 75%. Some people start at 50%, and after a few months reach a sleep efficiency of 75% and continue improving incrementally. With an 85% sleep efficiency or higher, you are doing well.

Percentage of Sleep Goal: This is a great tool to incrementally increase your total sleep time. Set your initial sleep goal at a realistic time for you, then increase your goal by 10% until you beat it, then iterate. Unrealistic goals are demotivating. Small incremental wins are empowering.

Average Breathing Rate is the number of breaths you take per minute. Sleeptracker® measures your breathing rate continuously throughout the night and produces an easy to understand line graph. For healthy individuals between age 16 and 65, resting respiratory rate between 10-22 breaths per minute is considered normal. After about 67 years of age, it’s common for respiration rate to increase by up to 20%. Snoring and sleep apnea affect breathing rate, as well as illness, pain or fever.

Average Heart Rate is the number of beats your heart takes in a minute. Sleeptracker® measures your heart rate continuously throughout the night and produces an easy to understand line graph. A heart rate between 40 and 85 is considered healthy. Snoring and sleep apnea affect heart rate, as well as alcohol, caffeine and sugar consumption, illness, pain or fever. Sleep is your recovery mechanism, and you will notice the more restful your sleep, the lower your heart rate when you wake up. Throughout the night as sleep rebuilds your body, your heart rate decreases in small steady increments.

What is sleep and why do we, and mammals, sleep?

Sleep is the recovery mechanism for all of us. It’s when we rebuild our bodies, our muscles, cleanse our organs, and rewire our brain. Sleep is necessary. The Sleeptracker® monitor helps us understand and improve our sleep. Here is an example: Sleeptracker® will automatically measure your heart rate through the night, and you can see that as your cardiovascular system repairs and rebuilds during sleep, by the morning your resting heart rate is often significantly lower for a healthy individual.

How do I sleep?

Sleeptracker® makes it easy to rate my sleep from day one, with your “Sleep Score”. For example, there are people with a sleep score of 50 out of 100 initially who after a few months of using Sleeptracker® improved their sleep score to 75, and continue to improve after that. The ideal sleeper will look for a sleep score of 90+ over time. But many healthy individuals function well at 75 or above.

What does how I sleep mean?

Practically, how we sleep in the long-term has an important impact on how we perform at work or at the gym, on our mood, and on our overall health.

What are sleep cycles, and how do they affect my sleep?

Sleep occurs in waves, with a crest called REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream, and a trough called deep sleep when we are in maximum recovery mode, together with several intermediate stages. All those stages of the “sleep wave” are necessary, and sleep typically comes in multiple waves. Depending on the individual, each wave of sleep lasts 45 to 90 minutes and we experience between four to six waves of sleep (complete cycles) per night. The highest percentage of deep sleep is experienced during the earlier waves.

What does it mean to improve my sleep?

The consequences of improving sleep are profound and measurable over time, even as we age. Improving sleep means improving overall health, work and physical performance, mood, and even relationships. There are only upsides to improving your sleep.

How can I personally improve my sleep?

You can improve your sleep by making small incremental changes. The power of Sleeptracker® is that we can quantify the effect of these little changes, and the Sleeptracker® AI-powered engine will deliver personalized insights based on your own sleep performance, as well as based on the sleep performance of “people like you” who are part of the Sleeptracker® community.

Can I really improve my sleep that much with Sleeptracker®?

In a nutshell, yes! Let us consider the amount of time that we, as humans, sleep. We sleep for a third of our life. At the same time, we live in a sleep-deprived world. Due to the demands of our modern world, it’s not feasible to increase the amount of time we spend in bed attempting to sleep. Instead, we need to better understand our habits to improve the efficiency, performance, and overall quality of our sleep. Now consider a night where you spend 8 hours in bed, but only sleep for six of those hours; your sleep efficiency is 75%. If we increase that efficiency by only 13 percent, your six hours of sleep becomes seven hours. This increase gains you a full hour of sleep. Sleeptracker® can help you improve the quality of your sleep so you can sleep more, and sleep better.

What happens in the first 30 days when I use Sleeptracker®?

From the first day you start monitoring your sleep, Sleeptracker® will be helpful. Yet, the first step to understanding how to sleep better is understanding how you sleep. In the first 30 days of use, Sleeptracker® gets to know you, gives you personalized insights to help you improve your own sleep over time, and understands how you are sleeping compared to “people like you”.

What does periodization of sleep mean?

By carefully analyzing several million nights of sleep of Mr. and Ms. Everyone, Sleeptracker® has come to the conclusion that sleep performance comes in waves, just like athletic performance. There will be times in life when our sleep performance decreases. For example, if we catch the flu, tear a muscle or have other aches and pains, or if we have busy times at work. It’s important to accept and understand this fact of life, and with the help of Sleeptracker® start improving our sleep score again, patiently a little bit at a time. Many things in life seem to go in waves and in cycles. While Sleeptracker® helps you improve your sleep over time, it is important to realize that improvement does not occur on a consistent continuous slope. Improvement in any realm doesn’t occur at a constant rate, but overall improvement is periodized, and consistency and daily practice make a big difference. That’s true with Sleeptracker® too.

Why is it important to store my sleep information over time as I age gracefully?

Identifying correlations and trends in long-term sleep data helps us understand how our bodies, health, and habits change over time. As we age, our sleep habits change. Sudden changes in our sleep as reported by Sleeptracker® can be indicators of how something in our well-being may have changed and provides a good reminder to continue improving our sleep performance. That’s true with any health condition and at any age. We can always make small incremental improvements to sleep. Sleeptracker® is a key to better understanding our health, and to building a healthier future.

What vital signs does Sleeptracker® monitor?

Sleeptracker® continually monitors respiration and breathing patterns, as well as fluctuations in heart rate, and qualitative and quantitative body motions.

Should I take power naps during the day?

Yes! Taking power naps is a great idea. This is completely natural, particularly if your sleep wasn’t ideally restful. In Spanish, “siesta” comes from “seis” which means “six”, and in general you will notice 6 hours after waking up you will feel a bit sleepy. If you have an opportunity, try a 20-30 minute power nap to recharge; no more than 30 minutes or you risk waking up groggy.

pegasus-racing-philippe-kahn-richard-clarke-open-50-transpac-2007


3 lessons from serial innovators

Hint: It’s not just one bright idea, repeated several times.

Some people appear to be blessed. They aren’t just lucky enough to have a single right idea at the right time; they keep coming up with more bright ideas that make the world better, or at least are valued enough for a profitable business model. While innovation and market success do not always have a strong correlation, there are a few things the creators often have in common.

It’s one thing to get lucky—to have a bright idea at the exact right moment. But many of the people I admire have been “lucky” several times over, sometimes in different guises. Maybe it’s creating a business that evolves from a solo success to a wide range of profitable endeavors under the same corporate umbrella, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Or the spark of creativity may touch different realms, such as Philippe Kahn, whose success began with Borland’s Turbo Pascal, then camera phones, and now working in the Internet of Things.

I’ve paid some attention to what these people do differently from the rest of us mere mortals, including the things they don’t notice. Because, often, we take our personal strengths for granted; they are, after all, the things that require the least conscious effort.

Lesson 1: It’s all about technology. Except when it isn’t.

3 lessons from serial innovators

Always lead with technology, says Philippe Kahn. “I’m passionate about making things that help Ms. and Mr. Everyone. At different times, different things. But it all has to be led by unique technology innovation.” You may remember Kahn’s legacy at Borland, which drove software development on microcomputers. At LightSurf, it was the camera phone, accompanied by key patents. “Today at Fullpower, it’s the leading platform for the smartbed in the IoT smarthome, powered by machine learning and data science,” he says, with “a lot of innovation and patents.”

However, the world is full of technology that is inherently cool, but also an answer in search of a solution. Whether an innovation is an improvement over existing solutions (the iPod, a faster CPU, a more affordable compiler) or a disruptive game changer (DVDs by mail, crowdsourced classified ads), it answers questions that people immediately realize they had—as soon as the answer appears.

The technology breakthrough itself can be a distraction. Even though the market makers may talk about technology publicly, says Saul Kaplan, founder of the Business Innovation Factory, their attention usually is on problem solving and business models. It’s part of their DNA, he says. “When they stand in line at the supermarket, they are considering how to improve the buying experience,” he points out. Indeed, architect and inventor Buckminster Fuller was incensed by the time wasted standing in line when the bank tried to “save money” by limiting the number of bank tellers, and actively did the math to figure out how much income generation the bank was losing out on in that false economy.

Serial innovators constantly prototype and try on mental models in search of a better way. “They fix a problem and worry about scale later,” Kaplan says. (“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”—R. Buckminster Fuller)

“Technology can be a force multiplier,” agrees Dave Gray, management consultant and author of The Connected Company (you can read a free chapter here). “What tips the balance in most cases is the culture, the people, the morale. Those kinds of things win.” Gray refers to work from management researcher Saras Sarasvathy, who observed that entrepreneurs focus on their capabilities and ask, “Given what is currently under my control, what kinds of things could I do in the world?”

Kahn’s innovations with the camera phone bear this out. Instead of his team trying to develop manufacturing systems (not their core knowledge set), the inventors benefited economically by their licensing patents and technology to other companies with manufacturing systems. Others, such as Apple, Google/Android, and Samsung were then able to build the industrial powerhouses that still exploit the LightSurf original 1997 vision of “Point, shoot, share instantly.”

Lesson 2: In the desire to move forward, be willing to make your existing products obsolete.

Serial innovators look for opportunities to improve their own products because they’re aware someone else wants their business. “Paranoia is good,” Catherine Ulrich, chief product officer at Shutterstock, told the BBC. “Paranoia makes you think about your competitors, and that’s going to make you better.”

If the customer is going to find a better product, ideally it should be from the entrepreneur’s own company. Surely it was better for Apple to build a Macintosh that might “steal sales” from the Apple//e than to wait for a competitor to invent the next improvement, because the customers’ money all went into the same corporate coffers.

And that means leaving things behind—even if you once were really proud of the innovation. Back in 2007, Steve Jobs talked about the courage it took to remove technology from Apple products—in this case, support for Flash, USB, and floppy disks—saying that leaving them behind lets you “put energy into making those new emerging technologies be great on your platform.”

It’s hard enough for an upstart (or startup) company to “innovate” over its own products, but even more difficult for large companies to do so. That’s most famously examined in Clayton Christensen The Innovator’s Dilemma. (Here’s a great 4-minute video summary, for the impatient.) Once a product becomes a success, innovators—or the organizations they build—are unwilling to endanger it. Instead of chasing dreams and betting the house on them, they turn to incremental improvements and optimization of the status quo.

Or, as Kaplan expresses the sentiment: “You get so busy peddling the bicycle of the way your business works that you create constraints. Then along comes someone else who says, ‘I am not constrained and can solve it another way.’”

This isn’t new, of course. MIT senior research scientist David Clark, in discussing the development of the Internet, described the attitudes about innovation during the 1960s and 1970s. “A major source of doubt and skepticism was the mindset of the traditional telephone companies that basically said: first, it won’t work, and second, if it does work, we’re going to try to kill it because we’re not interested in having something that competes with us. I actually think that this doubt and skepticism was incredibly empowering because it basically meant they didn’t pay attention to us. As long as they didn’t pay attention, we could do anything we wanted, so we built a network more or less over their dead body, but they couldn’t stop us.”

In the 2004 article Why Big Companies Can’t Invent, author and venture capitalist Howard Anderson explained why new technologies are seen as a threat to the market leader’s profit margins. “Why would RCA or GE push solid-state technology when the profits from vacuum tubes were so high? Why would Kodak push for digital cameras when its real money was made in film? All eventually entered these markets, of course, but late, and only when change was inevitable. Major corporations much prefer ‘just-in-time’ innovation—innovation that peaks just as older products are on the back half of their life cycle. But innovation does not choreograph so simply; it comes in fits and starts, defeats mixed with occasional breakthroughs.”

Little has changed. “BlackBerry and Windows both suffered the fate of their owning companies focusing on the thing being sold, instead of the problem being solved,” points out Peter Coffee, VP for strategic research at Salesforce.

Lesson 3: Create a culture of innovation (really).

People bandy about the phrase “create a culture of innovation” as if it’s something you can order from Amazon or from which you get the parts from your local hardware store. But the serial innovators, particularly the ones who keep recreating their companies as well as their products and services, truly do encourage their people to try new things.

“No one here is ever told ‘That’s not your job’ when they propose an innovative action,” says Saleforce’s Coffee. “For that matter, I would say that people here are genuinely expected to innovate without permission (let alone a formal organization).”

To avoid being disrupted, a company has to create conditions for entire new business models. “Take Uber: they didn’t invent anything. They saw a problem, and they created an app,” says Kaplan. A few global transportation companies had all the resources and capabilities to make their own Uber, he points out. “But they were stuck in their business models, with their own rules of the road.” These other companies never had a sandbox in which innovative employees were challenged to “explore the possible business models even if it is disruptive to us.” And Uber was worth more than the global transportation company’s whole industry just a few years later.

Similarly, Sony had a huge division that created the Walkman. It also had a division that managed music talent, under contract. It had all the pieces. But, points out Kaplan, Jobs did it from scratch with the iPod.

For serial innovators, the problem is never the idea. It’s how to get the ideas off the white board and onto the ground. “In the end it’s about a repeatable and scalable business model and the ability to reinvent it,” says Kaplan. “That’s what it’s going to take to constantly stay relevant. And we live in a world that constantly screams for it.”


All you’ll ever need to know about mobile phones

The first photo message ever was sent in 1997. The inventor, Philippe Kahn, took a snap of his newborn daughter Sophie and sent it to friends and relatives.

CHRISTMAS Day was one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

Experts put it down to our increasing obsession with mobile phones.

So as we hunt out the bargains – frequently on new handsets we’ve just taken out of the Christmas wrapping – here’s what you may not know about your mobile best mate.

The very first smartphone was launched on August 16, 1994, by IBM. It was a pioneer in commercially available touch-screen phones.

Nine out of 10 mobile phones in Japan are waterproof as many people even shower with them.

With a price tag of $15.3 million an Apple iPhone 5, with a 26-carat black diamond in place of the “home” button, became the world’s most expensive phone.

Next year over a third of the world’s population will own a smartphone, with 2.6 billion users.

Since Apple’s App Store was created in 2008, more than 140 billion apps have been downloaded – but a quarter are only used once in the six months after downloading.

Almost 85% of phones use the Android operating system – like Samsung’s – not Apple’s iOS.

You should charge your phone little and often and not necessarily leave it charging overnight when it has reached 100%.

Studies have shown the average mobile phone is covered with 18 times more bacteria than a toilet handle.

Mobile phones are now so common some people have developed a fear of being without one. This is called nomophobia.

Even if you have an older phone it’s still around 30,000 times more powerful than the computers used to take Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.

A staggering seven trillion texts are sent every year worldwide.

In the UK 93% of adults own a mobile phone and 14% of us now live in a home without a landline.

The first portable phone was called a DynaTAC. The original model had 35 minutes of battery life and weighed a kilo.

The first public mobile phone call in the UK was made by comedian Ernie Wise in 1985 from St Katharine dock to the Vodafone head offices.

Less than one in 10 Eritreans have a mobile phone subscription – but in Kuwait there are more than two for every person.

The first photo message ever was sent in 1997. The inventor, Philippe Kahn, took a snap of his newborn daughter Sophie and sent it to friends and relatives.

Each person in the UK sends on average 170 text messages every month.

The Sonim XP3300 is officially recognised as the world’s toughest mobile. It can be dropped 84ft on to solid ground without breaking.

Forget iPhones or Samsung Galaxys – the world’s biggest selling phone is the classic Nokia 1100. There have been 250 million of these handsets sold over the years.

Sick of your phone’s battery running out? Try Russia’s Vobis Highscreen Boost 2. It boasts two batteries and doesn’t require recharging for two weeks.

The Willcom WX06A is officially the world’s smallest phone, measuring just 3.2cm long. The battery is so small it only has a life of two hours.

Think your phone bill is too big? Spare a thought for Frenchwoman Solenne San Jose. Her bill clocked in at £9.5 quadrillion (that’s nearly 40 times the combined wealth of the entire world). Thankfully it was a mistake and she didn’t have to cough up.

The first ever text message came from a Vodafone engineer to his boss. It was sent on Christmas Eve and read, appropriately enough, “Happy Christmas”!


Santa Cruz’s Philippe Kahn makes Time’s 100 most influential photos of all time

Philippe Kahn took the first ever cell phone picture of his then-newborn daughter Sophie in Santa Cruz County

NEW YORK – A single drop of milk, a newborn baby and the ravages of war and terrorism are included in a multimedia project featuring Time magazine’s most influential images of all time, released Thursday through a new book, videos and online.

Many of the photos or frames from films are familiar, ingrained in the collective conscious, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Falling Man,” taken on 9/11 by Richard Drew of The Associated Press.

Others, and their stories, are little known, such as the tiny snap by Santa Cruz software engineer Philippe Kahn of his new baby, the first cell-phone picture, after he rigged a flip phone with a digital camera in 1997.

The magazine’s editors consulted historians and photo editors and curators around the world, while Time staff wrote essays on each image.


Fullpower Receives Another Important Patent for Improving Sleep

San Francisco, CA, November 13, 2016 (Newswire.com) – Fullpower® Technologies today announced it has been awarded another important patent covering a sleep monitoring system, US 9,474,876 B1, including a “Method or apparatus to improve sleep efficacy” by monitoring user’s sleep patterns continuously and making adjustments to various types of sleep aids accordingly.

“Just like phones are now smartphones, in the next few years beds are becoming smart beds” said Philippe Kahn, CEO and founder of Fullpower. “This patent covers some of the important Sleeptracker innovation for IoT Smartbeds powered by AI, Machine Learning and Data Science.”

This patent is part of an intellectual property portfolio from Fullpower that includes more than 125 issued and pending patents. Broad coverage for the Sleeptracker® Technology Platform and MotionX® technology introduces a new and necessary approach for continuous sleep monitoring and analysis. Fullpower’s ongoing innovation translates into continually broadening and deepening of its technology and sensor-fusion patent portfolio.

Important Links:

www.fullpower.com
www.sleeptracker.com

View the patent (PDF)

About Fullpower:
Fullpower is the leader for cloud-based IoT smart-home and wearable solutions powered by AI, machine-learning and data science. With more than 125 patents, the Fullpower IP portfolio covers the AI-powered Sleeptracker® and the MotionX® IoT technology platforms for the Smart-Home and wearable. Fullpower’s business model is to license technology and IP to brand leaders such as Nike, BeautyRest, Serta, Amazon, Movado and others. Founded by Philippe Kahn, creator of the first camera-phone and based in Silicon Valley, the Fullpower team is passionate about technology craftsmanship, innovation, and the AI-IoT paradigm shift.


Fullpower Receives Patent on a Smartbed IoT Monitoring System to Improve Sleep Quality

San Francisco, CA, October 18, 2016 (Newswire.com) – Fullpower® Technologies today announced it has been awarded another important patent covering a sleep monitoring system, US 9,459,597 B2, including a “Method and apparatus to provide an improved sleep experience by selecting an optimal next sleep state for the user”. This enables the user to optimize their sleep patterns by adjusting the environment, bedding, and room temperature for optimal sleep to feel more refreshed.

“This is one more important patent, as most smart bedding systems inspired by Fullpower’s Sleeptracker® pioneering efforts try to copy some of the technology,” said Philippe Kahn, CEO and founder of Fullpower. “For IoT and the smart bed in particular, Fullpower’s IP portfolio continues to extend the Sleeptracker® technology platform.”

This patent is part of an intellectual property portfolio from Fullpower that includes more than 125 issued and pending patents. Broad coverage for the Sleeptracker® Technology Platform and MotionX® technology introduces a new and necessary approach for continuous sleep monitoring and analysis. Fullpower’s ongoing innovation translates into continually broadening and deepening of its technology and sensor-fusion patent portfolio.

Important Links:

www.fullpower.com
www.sleeptracker.com

About Fullpower:
Fullpower is the leader for cloud-based IoT smart-home and wearable solutions powered by AI, machine-learning and data science. With more than 125 patents, the Fullpower IP portfolio covers the AI-powered Sleeptracker® and the MotionX® IoT technology platforms for the Smart-Home and wearable. Fullpower’s business model is to license technology and IP to brand leaders such as Nike, BeautyRest, Serta, Amazon, Movado and others. Founded by Philippe Kahn, creator of the first camera-phone and based in Silicon Valley, the Fullpower team is passionate about technology craftsmanship, innovation, and the AI-IoT paradigm shift.

Click to read the patent.


The top 20 Universities In the world and their most successful alumni, including Larry Page (Google), Gordon Moore (Intel), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) and Philippe Kahn (Camera-Phone, Fullpower).

Philippe Kahn, notable ETH Zurich alumni

ETH Zurich in Switzerland,  one of the top leading universities in technology and science in the worldwhere Einstein studied and taught was founded in 1855, currently counts over 18,500 students including 4,000 doctoral students from 110 countries. The ETH has helped educate some of the world’s most famous big thinkers, including Albert Einstein and many Nobel prize winners. Fullpower CEO and founder Philippe Kahn was selected as the notable alumni for The ETH world ranking. Alumni Philippe Kahn is known for making the first camera phone solution to share pictures instantly on public networks, and has founded three successful technology companies: LightSurf Technologies, Starfish Software, and now Fullpower Technologies, creator of the Sleeptracker IoT Smartbed platform.

Philippe Kahn, notable ETH Zurich alumni

ETH Zurich is consistently ranked among the top 5 universities in the world in engineering, science and technology together with Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Cambridge University  in the QS World University Rankings.

The list of schools includes the ETH Switzerland, the University of Pennsylvania (USA), Harvard University (USA), Yale University (USA), University of Southern California (USA), Princeton University (USA), Cornell University (USA), Stanford University (USA), The University of California, Berkeley (USA), University of Mumbai (INDIA), London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), Lomonosov Moscow State University (RUSSIA), University of Texas (USA), Dartmouth College (USA), University of Michigan (USA), New York University (USA), Duke University (USA), Columbia University (USA), Brown University (USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology  (USA)

View the article at The Hans India

 


Louis Lot #6434

Louis Lot

Paris, France

Stamp: Engraved on head and body: L. L. / LOUIS LOT / PARIS / BREVETÉ. Additionally on head, after Paris: 6434

Louis Lot #6434

Comments: This instrument is my favorite of the plated Lot’s that have been known to me. It has a great feel under the fingers, and the very rewarding Louis Lot tone. This flute has has been well loved, well played. Paul Rabinov overhauled it.

Material: This is the model 7, Maillechort flute with silver plating and C foot. Curiously, Maillechort is named after the 1819 inventors, Maillet and Chorier, who mixed copper, nickel and zinc to make a hard, workable, attractive, and cost effective metal. The lip-plate is silver, with hallmarks. The pad washers are all original French metal. The springs are steel, and possibly original. The crown and cork are the metal screw type, and look fresh from the shop inside.

System: This flute is built in the final system of Villette, which remains largely unaltered to this day. It has a C foot, side G#, and Bb trill. There are no adjusting screws. The right hand uses the hanging T, and the footjoint is pinless. The scale seems to be the classic A=435-438 French scale, yet the headjoint is untrimmed and the flute plays at A=440 really well. The sounding length is just a whisker over 600 mm; the A=435 flutes were built at 605mm. Thus this appears to be one of the rare Louis Lot flutes intended to play at A=440.
Condition: This flute is a very fine example of the flutes made during Taffanel’s professorship at the Conservatoire. This is the flute his students would receive for first prize at the Conservatoire. The tone is classic Louis Lot, yet the instrument shares a bit of the volume and texture of the 20th century flutes to come. It has been well used, such that the mechanism has had to be swedged, yet entirely unabused. Nothing has been changed from the day of delivery, except the pads and some adjustments to take out key movement. This is a very lovely player, in near perfect condition.

Pitch: Pitched at A=440, apparently originally.

Sounding Length: Sounding length 600 mm

Measurements: Embouchure 11.9 x 10.0. Riser 4.22mm/ 4.39mm. Tube thickness .014″

Weight: 384 g.

Case: In possibly the original case, which is in poor condition.

Louis Lot #6434

This flute is in excellent original condition, and is a lovely player. It was one of the few Lots originally made to play at A=440.

Louis Lot #6434
The clear and precise lines of Barat show that he was more stable than the talented yet yet occasionally wayward Debonneetbeau. Indeed, Barat brought the firm back into favor after earlier issues with Altés. The trill key is to Bb, unlike the previous B trill of Lot.

Louis Lot #6434
Barat’s footjoint touches show a bit more curve on top of the teardrop D# key than his predecessor’s, and a new beveled design just to the right of the C# roller.

Louis Lot #6434
No plating is missing from the thumb key, showing that this flute was carefully used, and not to excess. The thumb key tail has an elegant curve, possible since the trill is now to Bb.

Louis Lot #6434
The underside of the footjoint keys shows the original French pad washers, and the very fine finishing work of Barat.

Louis Lot #6434
These are the classic Louis Lot tone holes. The rims are cut with a curve to the thinned top edge. Barat actually also offered toneholes with straight tapered rims. The solder seam is visible where the toneholes meet the tube.

Louis Lot #6434
Although the body and keys are plated, the lipplate is of silver. Here we see the hallmarks used by the firm at this time. The diamond shape has inside, as registered by H. Villette c. 1877. The other stamp is a boar’s head, indicating silver of Paris manufacture.

Louis Lot #6434
The beautiful lipplate and crown are completely original, with very little wear. Inside the headjoint under the crown looks brand new. The embouchure measures 11.9 x 10.0 mm.

Louis Lot #6434
Although the case is damaged and missing one end, the flute has miraculously survived without any harm. We cannot guarantee that they were together when the accident happened!

 


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