Talk:Laser harp

Gloves

Lasers so powerful you have to wear gloves? I don't believe that. --Abdull 10:43, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Direct exposure to a class IV laser may lead to skin damage; see laser safety and [1]. –Mysid (talk) 08:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

He had to wear gloves when using his early outdoor setups, as they were powered through an Argon gas laser of several Watts. His recent setups are less powerful, but he still wears white gloves because they make detection easier, as more light bounces off and hits the sensors underneath. Playing with his bare hands is possible, and he did so during the Live In Beijing and World Arena Tour concerts. Stoney3K (talk) 00:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The power of the laser in our harp is quite a lot lower than that used in Jarre's early harps and whilst it is possible to play ours without wearing gloves after it has been fanned out to 8 beams it is NOT possible to keep your hand in the beam for any length of time without gloves when it is still a single beam. It will readily burn through a piece of paper in a measured 2.2 seconds. The rating of our laser is >600mWatts and has actually been measured at 720 mWatts. Jarre's early harps reportedly used lasers of at least 1 watt + magnitude. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to expect it to be somewhat painful on un-protected skin if not actually injurious. A photograph on the following page shows clearly the effect that our lower powered laser had on my hand during the development stage! http://www.jarrelook.co.uk/KitLaserHarp/LaserHarp.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.194.255.1 (talk) 11:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

It's real alright

OK, the problem is obviously "no own research", but the Laser Harp is not a fake, because I played one. There was an installation at the 1989 "Concert d'Images" exhibition at the Nouveau Forum des Halles in Paris. It consisted of a number of laser beams behind a perspex partition, in which two thick gloves were mounted, not unlike a baby incubator. On the palms, retro-reflectors were affixed. You could stick your arms into the gloves and trigger notes by sticking your hands in the beams. By moving your hands up and down, you could also do modulation.

As for "careful inspection of concert footage", that's completely useless because those videos have been edited. As an example, the Laser Harp started malfunctioning during the 1990 Paris La Défense concert. If you happen to have a live recording from the Europe 2 radio station, it can plainly be heard. After a few painful minutes of mis-triggered and double-triggered notes, the melody supposed to be played with the laser harp is replaced with a synth that sounds very, but not completely similar to the original sound (which would presumably have been the Syntex).

The whole section about "many people believe" should probably be removed, because "many people" have never seen one up close and personal, let alone played on one.

Now, whether all of the music during one of Jarre's concert is 100% live is quite another discussion, but the fact of the matter is that (a) it works and (b) it didn't work when used live during the 1990 Paris concert. SeverityOne 21:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I've added some information about working (and malfunctioning) laser harps to the article. As a reference, here is a page with information about Jarre exhibitions, including the playable laser harp at Concert d'Images. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SeverityOne (talk • contribs) 20:42, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Just one practical question: Is it really enough to put just a hand to block the beam? If so, does that mean that a stray bird may disrupt a Jean-Michel Jarre concert? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.137.119.42 (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The harp works by detecting a reflection of the laser beam off his hand. A stray bird some few dozen feet up in the air will give a much smaller reflection than his hand, which is much nearer to the sensor. The same goes for beams reflecting off the ceiling, although that can be a problem in smaller venues. It works by figuring out the timing of the reflected beam (it is a single scanning beam) in relation to the light picked up by the sensor. Stoney3K (talk) 10:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Typical framed style laser harp software functions

I doubt this is of any added value here, because it is not specific to laser harps and can be said for any MIDI controller. Stoney3K (talk) 14:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

I fully agree with Stoney3K. This chapter is not encyclopedic over Laser Harp. It is a general MIDI features.Iw2mln (talk) 14:05, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Blogs & YouTube used as references

The "article" currently reads as a blog - interesting -, but not enciclopedia. --Technopat (talk) 10:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

@Technopat: Agreed. Ten years later, same problem. I tagged the article {{Primary sources}}. We need more newspaper-of-record type references, and fewer YouTube-based original research. – voidxor 23:19, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

In modern Culture

This was in the sims 3 future expansion. Has it been seen anywhere else? --Tristyn^⌘ 07:37, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Bernard Szajner / Geoffrey Rose

Hi all. This has been a bone of contention for some time, with the inventor of the laser harp oscillating between the two people above. At one point, the article had both names in it, and the background re. patents, but that was removed some time back.

Over the past few days, an anon editor, who may or may not be Geoffrey Rose, made these edits, which now have been reverted twice.

So - let's discuss. How do we handle this? - Alison ^❤ 16:14, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• "Two individuals are claiming to have created the innovative instrument, Geoffrey Rose and Bernard Szajner, which stirred debates in patent issues. Regardless of who invented the instrument, the laser harp is deemed to originated in France"
• "The inventor of the instrument has been debated due to patent issues but the two people claiming to have invented it are Bernard Szajner and Geoffrey Rose."
• "Note: We received an email from Geoffrey Rose notifying us that he invented the Laser Harp."'
• "UPDATE: I recently received an email from Geoffrey Rose in Australia. He told me about a laser harp he built in 1976 (four years before Szajner) -I managed to find this picture of it in Google Images."

@Alison: I too removed some uncited claims as to another inventor not too long ago. Feel free to add back or rephrase completely using your references. The Invention section is a little short as is. – voidxor 22:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok. Let me have a go at this and see if I can try to encompass the above to everyone's satisfaction - Alison ^❤ 19:01, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@Alison: Looks good to me but I tweaked it a little. I like how you removed the mention of invention from the lead section, as it's disputed and not needed to introduce the reader to the subject. On the issue of linking French patents, the {{Cite patent}} template automatically generates links, as you know. I fail to see the issue with this, as its link is working for me. I can see basic metadata on the Bibliographic Data tab, and the patent itself on the Original Document tab. I just reverted you on the Bernard Szajner article before seeing that you did the same again here with an explanation of the link not working. Can you further explain what the issue is? Thanks! – voidxor 16:41, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that the {{Cite patent}} template wasn't generating the right metadata in the GET header for it to be successful. It was missing &FT=D and the search was failing. Oddly enough, it is generating that today, so I can only assume someone fixed it! - Alison ^❤ 17:51, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Tweaks look good, too. I'd like some stronger refs for the Rose stuff, but we have what we have. I'll keep digging here - Alison ^❤ 17:53, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

• "Space Light: Holography and Laser Spectacular" ISBN 0710092296 - published on June 1, 1982, specifically mentioned Bernard Rose and his Laser Harp. This is about the same time as Szajner's patent was granted - Alison ^❤ 18:02, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm glad you have book sources, so I penciled that one into the article. Thanks for researching Geoffrey Rose. He's supposedly Australian, so do we know for sure that he filed with the British patent office, and not the Australian one? – voidxor 23:56, 16 September 2021 (UTC)