卡拉ok发明者根岸茂一去世，享年100岁

Shigeichi Negishi, the man who invented the modern karaoke machine, has died at age 100.
发明现代卡拉ok机的根岸茂一去世，享年100岁。

The Japanese businessman died on Jan. 26 after a fall, Negishi's daughter Atsumi Takano said, per The Wall Street Journal.
据《华尔街日报》报道，根岸的女儿高野敦美说，这位日本商人于1月26日坠楼身亡。

WSJ reporter Matt Alt was one of the first to share the news of Negishi's death on X (formerly Twitter), noting that Negishi's family had asked him to share the news.
《华尔街日报》记者马特·阿尔特是最早在X(前身为Twitter)上分享根岸去世消息的人之一，并指出根岸的家人要求他分享这个消息。

"Farewell to another legend: Shigeichi Negishi, inventor of karaoke, has died age 100,” wrote Alt, who interviewed the Tokyo native in 2018. “By automating the sing-along, he earned the enmity of performers who saw his machine as a threat to their jobs. It's an eerie precursor of the debate surrounding AI's impact on artists today.”
“告别另一个传奇:卡拉ok的发明者根岸茂一去世，享年100岁，”Alt在2018年采访了这位东京人。通过自动化合唱，他赢得了表演者的敌意，他们认为他的机器会威胁到他们的工作。这是围绕人工智能对当今艺术家影响的辩论的一个令人毛骨悚然的前兆。”

The salesman, who made a living at his tech company Nichiden Kogyo, produced the first version of the karaoke machine in 1967, when he was already in his 40s. Negishi originally called it a “Sparko Box,” and the first seed for the idea came after one of his employees jokingly insulted his singing voice.
这位销售人员在他的科技公司Nichiden Kogyo谋生，1967年，他已经40多岁了，生产出了第一台卡拉ok机。根岸最初称它为“Sparko Box”，这个想法的第一个种子来自于他的一名员工开玩笑地侮辱了他的歌声。

In his 2018 interview with Alt, Negishi recalled the engineer calling out to him as he sang to himself down the hallway, “You aren’t a very good singer, Mr. Negishi!”
在2018年接受阿尔特采访时，根岸回忆道，这位工程师一边在走廊里自言自语，一边对他喊道:“根岸先生，你唱得不太好!”

Shortly after, he came up with a plan. He asked one of his engineers to put together a microphone, speaker and tape deck, and inserted an 8-track tape to play the song “Mujo no Yume” (“The Heartless Dream” in English) by Yoshio Kodama.
不久之后，他想出了一个计划。他让他的一名工程师把麦克风、扬声器和磁带架组装在一起，插入了一盘8轨磁带，播放了玉玉良夫的歌曲《无情的梦》。

According to Alt, Negishi immediately brought the “Sparko Box” — named for the flashing lights within a later design of the machine — home to his family and tested it with all his kids, giving them each a chance to sing.
据阿尔特说，根岸立即把这台“Sparko Box”带回了家，并让他所有的孩子都测试了一下，让他们每个人都有机会唱歌。“Sparko Box”以机器后来设计中的闪光命名。

“I still remember how shocked and thrilled all of us were hearing our voices come out of the speaker,” his daughter recalled.
他的女儿回忆说:“我仍然记得，听到扬声器里传出自己的声音时，我们所有人是多么震惊和激动。”

Although Negishi is now credited with creating the machine, musician Daisuke Inoue was long thought to be the grandfather of karaoke, although his version was invented independently in 1971, per NPR.
据美国国家公共电台报道，尽管根岸现在被认为是这台机器的发明者，但音乐家井上大介一直被认为是卡拉ok之父，尽管他的卡拉ok版本是在1971年独立发明的。

Next, Negishi hit the road, becoming a traveling salesman as he attempted to sell Sparko Boxes to bars, hotels, restaurants and any other venue he could think of. By the end of his career, he had sold around 8,000 devices, the Wall Street Journal reported.
接下来，根岸踏上了旅途，成为了一名旅行推销员，他试图向酒吧、酒店、餐馆和任何他能想到的场所销售Sparko Boxes。据《华尔街日报》报道，到他职业生涯结束时，他已经售出了大约8000台设备。

Negishi never patented the device, citing Japan’s difficult patenting process of the 1960s as the main reason why. But according to Takano, “truly, the patent never bothered him.”
根岸从未为这款设备申请过专利，主要原因是日本在上世纪60年代申请专利的过程非常艰难。但据高野说，“真的，这项专利从未困扰过他。”

“He felt a lot of pride in seeing his idea evolve into a culture of having fun through song around the world,” she told The Wall Street Journal. “To him, spending a hundred years surrounded by his family was reward enough.”
她在接受《华尔街日报》采访时表示:“看到自己的想法演变成一种通过歌曲在世界各地寻找乐趣的文化，他感到非常自豪。”“对他来说，和家人一起度过一百年就已经足够了。”

Negishi is survived by three children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, per the outlet.
据报道，根岸有三个孩子、五个孙子和八个曾孙。