Creative Technology: The Sound Blaster

Summary

Sim Wong Hoo was born on the 28th of April in 1955, the tenth child in a family of twelve children (five brothers, seven sisters). His family were Singaporean Hoklo with ancestry in the southernmost area of Fujian, China, and they spoke Hokkien. He grew up in a kampung called End of Coconut Hill in Bukit Panjang, and his father, Sim Chye Thiam, was a factory worker while his mother, Tan Siok Kee, raised chickens, ducks, pigs, and rabbits, and grew fruits and herbs. The young Sim had chores around the house and around the farm as soon as he was physically able, and he often sold eggs at the local market before school classes started each day. This afforded him the ability to buy things for himself such as his harmonica when he was about 11. The harmonica was a hobby he greatly enjoyed throughout his life. He also enjoyed making his own games.Sim graduated from Bukit Panjang Government High School and then went on to attend Ngee Ann Technical College for engineering. At the college, Sim was a member of both the harmonica troupe, consisting of thirty people, and the Practice Theatre School. In the theatre, Sim provided musical accompaniment for the school’s performances with the harmonica and the accordion, often performing his own arrangements. His two interests collided at this time in his life. When writing or arranging music, he’d only be able to hear his composition during weekly practice. Having seen a computer, he realized that a computer could allow him to hear the music precisely as written while still working on it. Sim envisioned a computer that could play music, talk, or even sing, and his earlier entrepreneurial spirit drove him to an ambitious goal: selling 100 million units of a single piece of equipment. Sim graduated in 1975 and then entered the uniformed services for his obligatory two years.For three to four years following his service, Sim worked a brief stint on an offshore oil rig, designing computerized seismic data logging equipment. After that,...