Aug 17, 2009
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Sound Engineering
- or, How stereophonic sound changed my life
I remember it very clearly, although I don’t know exactly when it was. Probably 1980, since the first TV series was broadcast in 1981 – so I would have been nearly ten years old. I think it was at my Dad’s suggestion, but perhaps not.
For whatever reason, on that winter evening, I curled up in rapt attention on the sofa and listened for the very first time to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on Radio 4. (Yes, it was a radio series first, before the LPs, books, TV and eventually film.)
It was the episode where The Heart Of Gold lands on the legendary planet of Magrathea, by way of improbability drive, imminent missile attack, sperm whale and a bowl of petunias, and I was transfixed.
Partly because for a nine-year-old, obsessed by a heady mix of Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Star Trek and The Goon Show, Hitchhikers was pure gold – but mostly because it was in stereo.


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