Apple Electronics: Inside the Beatles eccentric technology subsidiary – Daily Mail

Apples logo still embellishes Beatles items released today.

Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon and George Harrison are envisioned with others viewing Pattie Harrison modelling at the Revolution club in Mayfair. Between Lennon and Harrison is Mardas.

The Beatles at supervisor Brian Epsteins house on May 19, 1967 for the launch celebration of their eighth album Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. The band established Apple Corps the following year.

Other ideas that were credited to Magic Alex he later rejected he had actually ever attempted to develop, consisting of an X-ray electronic camera that could see through walls and paint that would make objects invisible.
Another alleged concept was to develop a force field around Ringo Starrs drums that would have separated drum noises from the remainder of the microphones in the studio..
Mardas said in his 2010 declaration: I when had a discussion with John Lennon about this topic. I stated that it was possible, in theory, to develop an ultrasonic barrier generated by ultrasonic transfusers..
This would prevent sound travelling over a certain field [however] I never recommended I would make such a barrier..
Paul McCartney likewise kept in mind an idea Magic Alex had– using wallpaper that would function as speakers– that never materialised..

He also produced a little electronic cam for ₤ 50 that could be plugged directly into a TELEVISION screen to show pictures, and an automatic light dimmer for use in movie theaters and theatres..
It should be born in mind that none of these had even been believed about by others at the time, although the majority of them are now in common usage, Mardas said in a declaration published by the New York Times in 2010..
For example, an electronic cam is now commonly used, as is the “memory phone” and what was then called “the making up typewriter” and is now known as voice recognition..
All these items were created by me and we were in the procedure of patenting many of them in the United States..
The Beatles reportedly intended to contribute all the revenues made from the creations to assist the worlds handicapped and underprivileged individuals..

The record jammer.
The record jammer, which took 6 days and ₤ 10 to produce, was able to avoid any vinyl record being taped onto tape.
Apple Corps had worked out that for each vinyl record sold, as many as eight people taped pirate copies totally free..
Mardas supposedly established the system to transfer a high-frequency signal onto a vinyl record when it was being cut..
This would suggest that when anybody attempted and purchased the record to copy it, all they would hear on the tape was an odd grinding sound..
The record jammer was set to be given totally free to 200 world firms where vinyl records were produced.
Apple Electronics would have charged a little royalty for each record played utilizing the jammer– approximated to have been more than 100 million records a year..

Mardas was offered his own workshop– in Boston Place in Marylebone, London– to develop the gadgets to be patented and sold by Apple..
By that November, the Beatles had invested ₤ 100,000 equipping the little lab, which would have cost ₤ 20,000 a year to run..
At that time, the creations were going through a worldwide patenting process with the goal of marketing and offering them in stores around the world; a few Apple Electronics ideas are still listed on Google Patents today..
However by the summertime of 1969, Apple Corps was haemorrhaging cash at a disconcerting rate and Apple Electronics was swiftly closed down by the bands new supervisor, American business owner Allen Klein..
As an outcome, Mardas inventions at Apple Electronics– numerous of which were demonstrated to a Daily Mail press reporter in 1968– never advanced past the model phase..
Madras later returned to Greece and died in 2017, but his remarkable ideas now epitomise the excitement of the late 1960s..
The memory phone.

Apple Corps was established by the Beatles in 1968. Its primary function was to function as a record label, under its chief department Apple Records, however other ambitious subsidiaries were Apple Films, Apple Electronics and the Apple Boutique, a retail store at 94 Baker Street in London.
Americans Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established Apple Computers in April 1976 and started offering the Apple II computer the list below year.
In 1978, the Beatles company Apple Corps submitted a lawsuit versus Apple Computer for hallmark violation.
This was settled 3 years later in 1981 for $80,000.
The arrangement the 2 business settled upon was that Apple Computer would never ever get in into the music service and in return Apple Corps would never participate in the computer company.
In 1991, Apple Corps took legal action against Apple Computer again, declaring that by including noise to its computer systems, the computer company was in infraction of the 1981 arrangement.
This time Apple Computer paid $26.5 million and concurred that although it might be included in digital music, it would not package, sell or distribute any physical music products, such as CDs.
The climax of this disagreement came after Apple revealed iTunes in September 2003 and Apple Corps once again sued Apple Computer for breach of agreement..
Apple Corps declared the online iTunes music store violated the legal arrangement that the two business had where Apple Computer would not participate in the music service.
The main question that the court had to decide was whether Apples iTunes online music store distributed physical copies of music, such as CDs.
This case was heard in the High Court of London in 2006 in front of single judge, who eventually ruled in favour of Apple Computer.
iTunes circulation format was strictly digital, suggesting it sold music that could be used digital devices such as computers and iPods.
In February 2007, Apple Inc (as it had been rechristened the previous month) and Apple Corps reached a settlement of their trademark conflict.
Under this settlement, Apple Inc owns all hallmarks connected to Apple and licenses certain hallmarks back to Apple Corps for its continued use..
Apple Corps is still functional, however the American business efficiently clawed the name Apple from the London firm over the course of the legal battle..
Apple Corps is still functional and supervises the Beatles company.
According to the Mirror, company accounts submitted to Apple Records Limited for the year until January 2019 show that the Beatles made ₤ 50,244,899 over a year.

Holmes said: I put my hand on the plate and Alex pressed a switch– I counted five and needed to nab my hand away..
I put my hand back, the switch was pressed in the opposite direction and my hand began to stick to the cold metal..
Mardas said that some business had actually provided to purchase the device to make sure it never saw the light of day.
He told Holmes: Offers are pouring in from firms who wish to purchase it and drop it in the river with our pledge never ever to make one once again, due to the fact that every cooker and refrigerator will run out date over night..
The making up typewriter.
Mardas took 2 months and ₤ 400 to develop this automated machine, which looked simply like a basic typewriter..
The model gadget, designed for individuals in the music publishing market, featured an early example of sound acknowledgment..
The silent automatic typewriter would listen as somebody played music on an instrument or sang to it..
As he or she did so, the typewriter wrote out music and lyrics it heard ready for the publisher to take to print..
Mardas and the Beatles were always relatively tight-lipped on how such gadgets actually worked on the basis of secrecy..
John Lennon stated in 1968: Weve found out in this happy service world that spies in brown raincoats and sunglasses walk around, therefore you cant state anything about an item till its out..
The robotic homemaker.
A concept for a robotic homemaker remained in advancement but never ever developed– described as a long-lasting job that needed more money and time..
The subservient device was 2 feet tall and formed like 2 huge tennis balls, one on top of the other..
The upper sphere had eyes, nose and mouth simply for enjoyable, while the lower sphere could be affixed to a system of rubber tracks put around the house..
This would permit the robotic, which would have been cost ₤ 50, to zip around your house, cleansing, polishing and making tea..

State the word Apple today and we consider Steve Jobs multi-billion-dollar innovation company that generated the iPhone and the Mac computer system.
However a decade prior to the California-based firm was even established, the Beatles-owned company Apple Electronics was dealing with a number of pioneering innovations– some of which were precursors to commonly readily available items on the marketplace today..
Apple Electronics was led by Alexis Mardas, a young electronic devices engineer and developer initially from Athens in Greece, known to the Beatles as Magic Alex..
He died on this day in 2017, aged 74, and was among the most colourful and mystical characters in the Beatles story..
Worn a white lab coat in his London workshop, Mardas developed prototypes of inventions that were set to be marketed and sold.
These consisted of the making up typewriter– powered by an early example of sound acknowledgment– and a phone with sophisticated memory capacity..
In advancement was a robotic assistant, about two feet high, that would have scooted around the house on a track performing errands..
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Similar to todays clever speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, the memory phone was voice-activated and never ever required a single handset to be lifted to make a call..
It could remember as much as 100,000 phone numbers and ring any of them up when asked, and, if the person called took their time to address the phone, it played music or provided the caller the current Stock Exchange figures.
The memory phone was apparently able to identify who was calling and respond to its owners voice..
Alex had actually kept a prototype of the memory phone in his office, utilizing a few of its awesome features that are expressive of todays individual assistants..
Mardas informed the Daily Mail in 1968: It sounds me up every early morning from the office by itself..
I inform it in the evening to call me at a specific time and where I need to go– the next morning in your home the phone rings me from the empty workplace and tells me to get up and where my first visit is..
The Bell Telephone Corporation of America used Apple Electronics 1 million dollars (₤ 416,000 at the time) for the device, according to Mardas.

The hot-cold plate.
The hot-cold plate had actually begun as a way to cool transistors however developed into what would have been an advanced device for the house kitchen area.
It consisted of plate, around one-sixteenth-of-an-inch thick, powered by the mains or a battery..
It was able to all of a sudden warm itself to 250 degrees Celsius in 20 seconds and cool to 28 degrees below zero in another 20 seconds– successfully intended to be a two-in-one device for saving or serving foods normally served at various temperatures..
The Daily Mails Denis Holmes checked the invention in a tour of the lab in 1968, calling it so refined that it will open a new period in cooking area cookers, refrigeration and cooling..
See this historic Apple Electronics discount.

Mardas appearing in a brief promo video for Apple Electronics. The subsidiary had plans to patent gadgets, sell them in stores around the world and utilize the profits for social great.

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In spite of his efforts, Magic Alex was allegedly paid only a normal income.
He stated in 1968: Companies in America and Japan are using me astronomical wages to join them. Here I simply take a couple of pounds a week..
Mardras left Apple Corps soon after being entrusted to kit out the Beatles brand-new recording studio in Savile Row– a job that he was never able to finish, he later claimed..
I was designing and had really completed a mock-up studio in Boston Place which, when ready, would be moved into the Savile Row facilities [] this was damaged and the devices eliminated, he stated in 2010. As for Apple Corps, the company had a famous ongoing legal battle over rights to the name Apple from 1978, which lastly reached a settlement in 2007..
Apple Corps still exists and supervises the Beatles empire, but its fascinating subsidiaries– which likewise consisted of Apple Retail and Apple Films– are now sadly no longer functional..

APPLE CORPS VS APPLE COMPUTERS.

George Harrison had strategies to utilize Mardas colour-changing paint on his yellow Ferrari (pictured) while driving down the motorway.

Magic Alex in his studio in Boston Place, London. Alex was the Beatles personal developer and head of the electronic devices division of the business, Apple Corps.

The absolutely nothing box – an Apple Electronics innovation?
Mardas is often stated to have provided Lennon a absolutely nothing box– a little black box with 8 lights in numerous colours that flashed in a random sequence.
Lennon, who kept it in the living-room of his six-bedroom house in Weybridge, Surrey, utilized it to complement the effects of an LSD journey– specifically the flashing colours, which were similar to hallucinations..
Often he would stare at the blinking absolutely nothing box Alex had actually presented to him or at the walls and shadows up until the drugs disappeared, stated Peter Brown, board member at Apple Corps, in his 1983 book The Love You Make.
Mardas was not the devices innovator. It was really created by United States retail business Hammacher Schlemmer and launched to the marketplace in time for Christmas 1962..
Hammacher Schlemmers advertisement for the nothing box described the lights as blinking constantly in no recognisable pattern and for no evident factor for almost a year until the battery ran dry..
The novelty recorded the fancy of the Beatles, who acquired hundreds of them as presents, according to the firms site..

John Lennon was at first very taken with Mardas after fulfilling him through John Dunbar, owner of the trendy London Indica art gallery..
Lennon presented Mardas to the other members of the Beatles as his expert, and he joined the electronic devices department of their ambitious brand-new record business in February 1968..

The absolutely nothing box as it appeared in an advertisement. Its eight lights flashed continually in no recognisable pattern for almost a year till the battery ran dry.

Alex Mardas (Magic Alex), head of the electronics division of The Beatles Apple business venture, visualized in 1968.

Colour-changing paint.
Beatles guitarist George Harrison fondly remembered this innovation, which had the capability of changing the colour of metal onto which it was painted..
The paint, which was initially blank and looked like a thick enamel, covered a thin piece of metal with 2 wires coming out of it.
When it was linked to a source of power, it lit up an intense, luminous green, according to Harrison, who wished to coat his Ferrari in it so it would light up whenever he pushed down on the brake pedal..
We asked, “Can you do other colours too?”– “Sure, whatever you want”, Harrison kept in mind in an interview in the 1990s for The Beatles Anthology book..
The back of the cars and truck would be red, however just when you stepped on the brake.
The rest of the time the whole cars and truck would be connected to the revs on the transmission– so the automobile would begin off quite dull and as you moved through the gears it would end up being brighter..
You could decrease the A3 and pass someone and it would appear like a flying saucer..

Alexis Mardas in his little workshop in Boston Place in Marylebone, central London. He was described by John Lennon as his guru.

The nothing box as it appeared in an ad. Its eight lights flashed continually in no recognisable pattern for almost a year until the battery ran dry. Its frequently described erroneously as an Alexis Mardas invention.