News/Research

Harry Burson Named Lemelson Center Fellow

23 Apr, 2020

Harry Burson Named Lemelson Center Fellow

Harry Burson, Ph.D candidate in Film & Media with a Designated Emphasis in New Media at UC Berkeley, is part of the Lemelson Center 2020 predoctoral fellows. His research at the Lemelson Center will examine the creation of his new mode of acoustic perspective.

The Lemelson Center has been studying the history of invention and innovation in the U.S, particularly its historical context, and how that history relates to current events. The Fellows program supports projects that present creative approaches to the study of invention and innovation. The Center annually awards 2 to 3 fellowships to pre-doctoral graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and other professionals who have completed some advanced training.

Congratulations Harry Burson on this wonderful achievement!

According to the Lemelson Center page:

Harry Burson’s dissertation, “The World in Stereo: Sound, Space, and Immersion, 1879-1959,” traces the early development of stereophonic sound from Alexander Graham Bell’s tentative 1879 experiments with multi-channel telephony to the widespread popularization of the technology in the 1940s and beyond. He argues that the techniques and paradigms drawn from the studies of hearing, communication, and information developed at Bell Laboratories have had a far-reaching impact across audiovisual media, changing the relationship between listeners and acoustic space as stereo was rapidly adopted as the global standard for recorded sound. His research at the Lemelson Center will examine the creation of this new mode of acoustic perspective based on an ideal of a normative, able-bodied listener, and a new understanding of the relationship between the hearing self and a networked world of sound.

Curious who the other fellows are? Learn more about them here!