Theo Gray demonstrates his Element iPad ap -- and "debuts" the Japanese version of the Elements song
Theo Gray demonstrates briefly his iPad Element ap and "debuts" the Japanese version of Tom Lehrer's Elements song, which isΒ ...
Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Essent
Search every verified Theodore Gray interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote β each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a September 2011 interview, Theodore Gray demonstrated his iPad app for the periodic table, noting that it was available in ten versions covering English, French, German, and Japanese, each with a regular and a demo edition. He explained that the app features rotating object images, a stereo 3D mode, and links to Wolfram Alpha for detailed information and market prices. Gray also debuted a Japanese version of Tom Lehrer's "Elements" song, performed by his cousin Lena Lickstein, and described how the audio was assembled from multiple takes with some audio processing to improve enunciation.
“There's actually 10 different versions of the iPad app which is US English, UK English, French, German and Japanese, and then for each of those a regular version and a demo version which you can find in Apple Stores all over.”
“The first thing you see is a periodic table which looks a lot like the front page of periodictable.com or like any of the periodic table posters that I sell, except that it's all turning β all the objects in there are actually rotating.”
“If we were connected to a network I'd be able to touch any of these numbers or the Wolfram Alpha logo there and it would then call up a screen that would give much more detailed information, downloaded immediately from the Wolfram Alpha service β and that does things like give you the current market price for elements...”
“On the second page you see the same text that's in the print book, but the big difference is that you can touch these things and you can spin them β you can use several fingers at once because this is a multi-touch screen.”
“In this mode you can click the stereo button and now you actually see it in stereo β if you have either very flexible eyes or an inexpensive pair of glasses that we sell on our website, you actually see this thing popping off the screen in three dimensions.”
“Here we have the brand-new Japanese version of the element song with the same animation except the names are all Japanese; the song in Japanese is much longer than the song in English for a few reasons β Tom Lehrer can sing this faster than anybody, Japanese element names have more syllables, and there are more element...”
“On the left we have Lena Lickstein who is the performer of the Japanese version β she's my first cousin once removed, half Japanese, moved to Japan 20 years ago to become a lounge singer in the Osaka area and during the day writes music for video games.”
“That [video] was lipsynced β the audio portion was pieced together out of a number of takes and there were places where we improved the enunciation of some of the letters by audio processing, though she basically sang the whole thing.”
Theo Gray demonstrates briefly his iPad Element ap and "debuts" the Japanese version of Tom Lehrer's Elements song, which isΒ ...
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Theodore Gray.
The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →