Hugh Chippingford-Watson

Hugh Chippingford-Watson (19 August 1652 – 26 October 1713), born in Leeds and is widely credited with being the first major inventor of that city. He was also renowned throughout the county of Yorkshire for his wit, verve and his peerless ability with regard to playing the French Horn.

Upbringing
Hugh Chippingford-Watson was the first son of his parents, Suetonius and Alice Chippingford-Watson, and lived a comfortable childhood under the command of his father's governess, Jane Smit. Hugh's incredible talent for inventing was noticed by his Latin master, Rev. James Pyke, on 20 September 1663, when he caught sight of Chippingford-Watson producing what later came to be known as Coco Pops.

After leaving Harrow School, where he was educated from the age of twelve years, he travelled to Paris where he met the young lady who he would eventually marry, Anne-Marie Dufresne by name. Chippingford-Watson was so fond of Paris that in his diary of 1672 he says,

Anne-Marie was one of the foremost Ballerinas in Paris, and her love for Ballet was the influence for Hugh's first invention of world-renown.

Inventions

In 1678, Hugh dated the drawings of the first form of specifically-designed shoes for Ballerinas, which he called Cork Toes. He supposedly designed these shoes after Anne-Marie, by now his wife, complained of the pain which was inflicted upon her toes whilst performing certain steps. The invention of the Cork Toe "slipper" was to be the starting point for a whole series of inventions which hugely and rapidly improved the world of the Performing Arts.

After a remarkably cold February in Paris in 1682, Chippingford-Watson produced a mechanical contraption, well ahead of its time, which would now be recognised as something akin to a clockwork microphone. Chippingford-Watson's name for this invention was the "Amplitude Augmentor", and its first recorded use was in London, where the re-release of Greensleeves was able to be heard by more people than ever before, at a concert in the area now occupied by Trafalgar Square.

Many other concepts were based around the invention of the Amplitude Augmentor, and one which immediately followed that invention was the creation of "Surrounding Voice", or Surround Sound as it is more comtemporarily known. Chippingford-Watson inverted the technologies used in the microphones to produce an early form of Stereo Speaker. Sadly, as a pioneer for House-Elf Rights, Watson freed his loyal house elf Dolby, who, when finding the free-elf world hard, sold the invention in exchange for money and the naming rights of the invention. This was possible due to Watson's fear of patent offices.

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