In an arresting image, Dick claims that orthogonal time contains, "Everything which was, just as grooves on an LP contain that part of the music which has already been played; they don't disappear after the stylus tracks them".
The original surface analyzers were extremely simple mechanical devices where a fine stylus tracked the surface as it was moved across it.
All modern phonograph systems had certain components in common: a turntable that rotated the record; a stylus that tracked a groove in the record; a pickup that converted the mechanical movements of the stylus into electrical impulses; an amplifier that intensified these electrical impulses; and a loudspeaker that converted the amplified signals back into sound.
For owners of 33 rpm LPs and 45 singles, loud and deep bass was limited by the ability of the phonograph record stylus to track the groove.
With the advent of the compact cassette and the compact disc in the 1980s, the easy reproduction of deep and loud bass was no longer limited by the ability of a phonograph record stylus to track a groove, and producers could add more low frequency content to recordings.
Having a stylus replicate in this way the linear tracking motion of the recording lathe used to cut the original master record is hugely attractive.
I have been tracking Apple patents since the late 1970s and was as certain that Apple would create a stylus input method as I was that Apple would enter into payments.
Bear in mind that original mono records were never designed to be played on a modern stereo turntable, with a tone-arm counter-balanced to give just a few grams of tracking force, and a carefully matched elliptical diamond pick-up rather than the spherical (ie, fatter) sapphire styli of the past.
The Connect will offer interchangeable magnetic tips, and also a homing feature that lets you track down a misplaced stylus via iPad or iPhone.
