Here’s how he changed the world
One of the 20th century’s most prolific inventors will be posthumously awarded a Grammy by The Recording Academy. Alan Dower Blumlein was not only the inventor of stereo sound, but filed 127 other patents in his life for technologies that revolutionised telecommunications, TV and radar.
Born in 1903 to German-Jewish and Scottish parents, Blumlein spent his childhood in Hampstead, London. At the age of seven, after repairing the family’s doorbell, he presented his father with an invoice signed « Alan Blumlein, Electrical Engineer ».
After leaving school he graduated from Imperial College and began working at International Western Electric in 1924. There, he measured how human ears respond to amplitude and frequency, designing the first systems that weighted sound for human consumption.
In 1929, he joined the Columbia Gramophone Company, and invented a new form of disc cutting head that offered greatly improved sound quality, as well as developing a series of microphones that were used by the BBC and in EMI’s recording studios. Around the same time, he invented a type of amplifier – the long-tailed pair – that can be found in almost every integrated circuit in the world.
