full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Woody Norris: Hypersonic sound and other inventions

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I became an inventor by accident. I was out of the air force in 1956. No, no, that's not true: I went in in 1956, came out in 1959, was working at the University of Washington, and I came up with an idea, from reading a magazine article, for a new kind of a phonograph tone arm. Now, that was before ctesatse tapes, C.D.s, DVDs — any of the cool stuff we've got now. And it was an arm that, instead of hinging and pivoting as it went across the rcreod, went straight: a radail, linear tracking tone arm. And it was the hredsat ivnoinetn I ever made, but it got me started, and I got really lucky after that.

Open Cloze

I became an inventor by accident. I was out of the air force in 1956. No, no, that's not true: I went in in 1956, came out in 1959, was working at the University of Washington, and I came up with an idea, from reading a magazine article, for a new kind of a phonograph tone arm. Now, that was before ________ tapes, C.D.s, DVDs — any of the cool stuff we've got now. And it was an arm that, instead of hinging and pivoting as it went across the ______, went straight: a ______, linear tracking tone arm. And it was the _______ _________ I ever made, but it got me started, and I got really lucky after that.

Solution

  1. radial
  2. hardest
  3. record
  4. invention
  5. cassette

Original Text

I became an inventor by accident. I was out of the air force in 1956. No, no, that's not true: I went in in 1956, came out in 1959, was working at the University of Washington, and I came up with an idea, from reading a magazine article, for a new kind of a phonograph tone arm. Now, that was before cassette tapes, C.D.s, DVDs — any of the cool stuff we've got now. And it was an arm that, instead of hinging and pivoting as it went across the record, went straight: a radial, linear tracking tone arm. And it was the hardest invention I ever made, but it got me started, and I got really lucky after that.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
hypersonic sound 3
light bulb 3
put sound 3
tone arm 2
binaural sound 2
ear hears 2
stereo system 2
million dollars 2

Important Words

  1. accident
  2. air
  3. arm
  4. article
  5. cassette
  6. cool
  7. dvds
  8. force
  9. hardest
  10. hinging
  11. idea
  12. invention
  13. inventor
  14. kind
  15. linear
  16. lucky
  17. magazine
  18. phonograph
  19. pivoting
  20. radial
  21. reading
  22. record
  23. started
  24. stuff
  25. tapes
  26. tone
  27. tracking
  28. university
  29. washington
  30. working