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I suggested a want ad in the local classifieds but Gerd simply stood up and addressed the restaurant’s patrons. “Do we have a woodworker with imagination amongst us?” I thought he’d either get laughed out or no reaction. But two tables away, someone got up, walked over and introduced himself: 'Hi, I’m Marcus and a furniture maker.' Impossible you say? He wasn’t merely an accredited wood worker—that would have been wild enough—but someone who ran a successful and  fully equipped shop with all the trimmings. And, he absolutely loved our plans. That’s where we’re headed to right now by the way, Marcus's shop. Was that story even believable? It sure sounded like a Baron Munchausen yarn. Yeah, perhaps we’re having just a bit too much fun with Klangfluß.

Meanwhile we’d arrived at the first stop of my short trip. Stefan parked his car at the Möbelwerkstätte Heck below, a traditional artisanal firm located in Gaggenau/Bad Rotenfels and operated by Marcus Klöpfer whose hand I’d already shook in Munich. I’m the resident wood worm. I hear you’ll visit us shortly? Yep.
The idyllically placed furniture shop Heck where veneer species are in no short supply.
The group photo shows Marucs Klöpfer, Stefan Weber and Gerd Reime from left to right.

While the products of Klöpfer’s and Weber’s main firms are quite physical and hence tactile, Herr Reime’s are more conceptual though no less intriguing. Picosens is an inventor’s workshop or electronic development think tank with a core focus on optical, capacitive and inductive sensors for industrial and automotive applications. If this reads somewhat abstract, Herr Reime for example holds a patent for a rain sensor which enjoys widespread use in the windshield wiper steering of commercial trucks. He currently works on a new type of parking assistance sensor.

The next four photos show a car bumper with park sensors; a prototype new metal detector; and an optical transponder. Picosens doesn’t produce any final products but engineers patent-worthy solutions which are sold or licensed to the industry. Aside from owner and chief inventor Gerd Reime, the firm employs 10 development engineers whose paid job it is to come up with crazy new ideas. There’s also a patent attorney and sales assistants to find clients for new inventions.

To answer my question where one might go to school to become an inventor, Gerd Reime described a long arc which, likely far from accidental, included an idea called 'shock-wave conditioning'. It’s central to the K1 project but was on hold for some 25 years. As you might imagine, inventor isn’t on any classic job training curriculum. As Reime explained it, he was groomed at Grundig where he completed a formal education in radio and television technologies during the mid to late 70s. Blessed with a very practical imagination, Grundig took notice of the lad and moved Reime to a development center in Fürth which conducted R&D into sound and video recording equipment. This offered the young lab rat more creative surroundings than raw production. Reime’s core focus was on video but this didn’t prevent him from thinking about other fields as well. The shock-wave conditioning idea didn’t actually occur at Grundig but, as the story goes, during sleep – or better, during sleep interruptus one fine night when a melolontha bug or Maikäfer walked across a styropor insulation sheet next to Reime’s bed.

That a small insect would tear one from sleep might be more or less amusing but Reime wondered how come the far louder traffic noise didn’t wake him (in his flat beneath the roof, he’d kept the window open for air circulation) yet the bug did.  Where most wouldn’t have missed a beat to continue on with ordinary life, this very trivial reaction to two different noise exposures got Reime thinking. The next morning he captured the critter, brought him to the Grundig laboratory and studied its movement noise on a plate that was connected to a specialized microphone and oscilloscope. As suspected, he saw a correlation between the distance from the microphone and the wave form - or more precisely, a relationship between the first few half cycles or shock waves to what followed. The closer the bug was to the microphone, the proportionally higher the shock waves rose compared to their sustain and decay. The farther removed the microphone, the more closely the transient energy mirrored the ring-out cycles.

Reime suspected that this pattern was deeply embedded in human psychology. We use the sonic shock wave or leading edge to gauge distance and, during our hunter/gatherer days, evaluated danger origins from sabre-tooth tigers and such. Relative to musical realism, shock waves make for the famous live factor. Reime in particular analyzed the transient behavior of instruments and discovered an analogy to his bug observations. Attacks of course possessed higher energy than sustains and decays. When comparing live instruments to recorded playback however, this distinct relationship shifted. Reime theorized that the compressed shock wave energy was the root cause why hifi always sounds more distanced, less energetic and homogenized compared to live sounds. Excited, the young laboratory technician shared his findings with the old dogs at Grundig to find little appreciation. High fidelity, he was duly informed, concerned itself with flat frequency response, phase linearity and low distortion. Who had ever heard of shock waves?