W&F September 2017

www.wealthandfinance-news.com 12 Wealth & Finance International - September 2017 The 1969 fledgling company soon grew into a family business, employing several members of John’s family, including mother, father and elder sister, as well as sales director Ray Scott. Products and services included acoustics consultancy, sound and lighting contracting, high-powered laser displays and pyrotechnics. The company saw many major contracts in its 30-year history, including the installation of the largest sound and lighting system in the UK in Glasgow’s Zanzibar nightclub, in 1985, valued at around £1M in today’s money. Their engineering staff worked on several pavilions in the 1990 Gateshead Garden Festival, and their work on the Northern Electric Pavilion was awarded first prize of the entire festival. But though the company was modestly successful, with sales of around £1M annually, John’s passion for science was not being fulfilled and an event occurred in 1997 that changed everything. On a tour of Egypt, John and his father, George, entered the famous Great Pyramid and its enigmatic King’s Chamber. John lay in the chamber’s sarcophagus, a 3.7-ton granite box, and made vocal sounds to casually test its acoustics. But what happened next was as surprising as it was inspirational: he felt every cell in his body tingle. John takes up the story. “At that point in my career, having worked in the field of acoustics for almost 30 years, I was not prepared for the extraordinary effect that my own vocal sound had on my body. In that moment, I sensed that this effect might have been a designed feature of the pyramid. With that in mind, I gained permission to carry out a series of acoustics tests and a few months later I entered the pyramid with an armory of test equipment. One of the experiments was designed to test the resonances of the sarcophagus and involved stretching a PVC membrane across its open top and sprinkling on some sand. A speaker excited the membrane with Sonic Age Ltd has a history stretching back to 1969, the year when man first walked on the moon. And while Neil Armstrong was taking his giant leap for mankind, John Stuart Reid, who had studied pure electronics at University, was founding his small acoustics business. Yet, as you will come to read, his company has just created a product that is poised to make its own giant leap. Pyramids, Passion and Scientific Progress 1709WF03 For more information visit: cymascope.com [email protected] “I expected to see, at best, a range of simple geometric patterns in the sand. But as I bent low over the membrane, watching the sand grains move, they suddenly began to jump up and form into a shape that strongly resembled an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph.”