John Roberts {JR} wrote on Wed, 12 March 2008 07:46 |
I applaud this effort.
I don't think a few hour session at an AES show could do justice to even a small fraction of this list.
This strikes me as perhaps a good longer term project for local AES chapters. First to identify important contributions made by people in their region and then to document that. These local efforts could be consolidated into a larger whole. Certainly AES efforts could be cross linked to WIKI, etc.
I regret that some of these individuals are already gone so they can't be interviewed but associates and subordinates may still be findable. This should be an ongoing project, not just a one time deal. The IEEE from time to time published a historical overview along similar lines across the broader category of electronics.
There was (is?) an Audio Museum that IIRC was associated with the AES, but this was more old hardware than "engineer" organized. Perhaps a more logical organization of this is by tracing the progress of technology and people associated with those technology milestones can be cross linked. Many companies also have corporate museums either formal or informally, that could be documented by willing employees.
This is a potentially massive project and you will get different short lists from different people, but that's fine. It's better to have too many entries than not enough.
In many cases the historical individual will be associated with one major series of products or technology, like Dan Dugan with his automatic mixing invention, so this alternate organization may be academic, the people and what they do/did is inextricably linked together.
JR
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AES has its Historical Committee; they do some mighty fine activities such as assembling vintage gear for demos. In 2000, they hosted "When Vinyl Ruled" with a rotary-knob Putnam remote recording mixer, a pair of Ampex 300 tape recorders and three Altec 604s for playback. There was a vintage microphone demo in 2001. Before that, Jack Mullin would bring all the oldest gear he could find and demonstrate each one by itself.
AESHC also invests effort in organizing scraps of the past; they're improving digital online access to historic patents, for instance. They have a lot on their plate.
Bill Wray and
Gene Radzik co-chair the AES Historical Committee and John G. "Jay" McKnight (Magnetic Reference Laboratory) is Chair Emeritus. Check it out here:
AES Historical Committee (AESHC) website. Volunteers don't have to be members!
I agree that this should be a long-term project. Our most important pioneer engineers are sometimes lauded in popular media but more frequently given only a few paragraphs of PR copy or a final "In Memoriam" in an industry publication. I would like to see more of a public face put to what we do and who we are.
JR, you mention people linked to their hardware inventions: in many cases, important new hardware developments were put forward by a team of clever cats who remained relatively nameless following the effort. My organization of this list by individuals will miss these stories but that doesn't mean the stories shouldn't be told. It would be great to read about the various team development efforts at Bell Labs, for instance.
Non-hardware conceptual and methodological developments are important, too. There's software pioneers, too. It's not just voicecoils and formers.
A big challenge moving forward will be to sort the classic EE engineers from the much larger list of recording and mixing engineers. At this point on Wikipedia they're all jumbled together.
I'm going to ping the AESHC guys and let them know we're mounting this effort. Perhaps they'll be interested in putting a generous helping of AES information out on Wikipedia; perhaps they'll opt to play it closer to the chest.
-Bink
P.S. More engineers worthy of an article or expansion:
William J Halligan (Hallicrafters)
Lincoln Walsh (Bozak) transmission-line loudspeaker
Harold Rhodes (electric piano)
James Edward Maceo West (electret mic)
Gerhard M. Sessler (electret mic)
Wally Heider (concert remote recording)
John M. Eargle (JBL)
Sidney Harman (JBL)
John G. "Jay" McKnight (MRL, AMPEX)
Myron Stolaroff (AMPEX)
John Leslie (AMPEX)
Jack Mullin (tape recorders)
John Herbert Orr (magnetic tape)
Walter Weber (1907-1944) (Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG)) or German Broadcasting Company. Bias implementation and stereophony in magnetic recording.
Hugh Knowles (miniaturized transducers)
Lee DeForest (triode "Audion")
Heinz K. Thiele
Willi Studer
Dick Heyser (TDS)
Avery Robert Fisher (hifi)
Herman Hosmer Scott (hifi)
Leo Fender (Stratocaster)
Tom Dowd (recording engineer and innovator)
Peter Baxandall (tone control)
Jim Gamble (mixing console)