As we continue to celebrate March Audio Month, we’ve got an interesting story that combines audio tech and history.
Herefordshire England. June 7, 1942. World War Two is raging and the RAF is in a rush to test its new H2S radar, a ground scanning radar being designed for night mission bombers in all types of weather. The radar being developed at an RAF Defford in the West Midlands of England is still in use today.
A few hours before the flight took off, a mechanic inspected the Halifax bomber being used for a test run but failed to properly tighten a tappet bolt on the outer starboard engine. Flying at about 300 feet, the engine caught fire, and the fire quickly engulfed the entire airplane, causing it to flip and crash upside down. The entire RAF crew and the civilian engineers who were working on the radar system had no chance to escape and everyone aboard perished in the crash.
One of the engineers on board the ill-fated flight was 38-year-old Alan Blumlein who was the architect of the H25 radar system. At the time of the crash, Blumlein already held multiple patents for an amazing array of audio and electrical circuits. In fact, he was so accomplished that Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the news of his death to be withheld completely so as not to give Hitler any positive news whatsoever. With the wartime censorship of Blumlein’s death came the near loss of all of his technical achievements. Because of the War, Alan Blumlein almost became a forgotten man but if not for his early death and the vagaries of war, Blumlein would be held in the same esteem as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison.
A few hours before the flight took off, a mechanic inspected the Halifax bomber being used for a test run but failed to properly tighten a tappet bolt on the outer starboard engine. Flying at about 300 feet, the engine caught fire, and the fire quickly engulfed the entire airplane, causing it to flip and crash upside down. The entire RAF crew and the civilian engineers who were working on the radar system had no chance to escape and everyone aboard perished in the crash.
One of the engineers on board the ill-fated flight was 38-year-old Alan Blumlein who was the architect of the H25 radar system. At the time of the crash, Blumlein already held multiple patents for an amazing array of audio and electrical circuits. In fact, he was so accomplished that Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the news of his death to be withheld completely so as not to give Hitler any positive news whatsoever. With the wartime censorship of Blumlein’s death came the near loss of all of his technical achievements. Because of the War, Alan Blumlein almost became a forgotten man but if not for his early death and the vagaries of war, Blumlein would be held in the same esteem as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison.
Among his many other achievements, if you’re a recording engineer or audio geek you know the Blumlein pair, and the binaural microphone set that mimics how humans hear sounds.
Blumlein was born in 1903 in London. In an interview before his death, his sister said Blumlein could not read until he was twelve. In the same interview, Blumlein countered by saying “yes, but I knew a lot of quadratic equations.” At age seven he fixed the doorbell on the family home and presented his father with a bill, signed “Alan Blumlein, Electrical Engineer.” Unfortunately, how much he charged for his services has been lost to time.
In 1933 he married Doreen Lane, who was said to be every bit his intellectual equal, and by all accounts, Doreen Lane and Alan Blumlein were a great match for each other.
Blumlein was born in 1903 in London. In an interview before his death, his sister said Blumlein could not read until he was twelve. In the same interview, Blumlein countered by saying “yes, but I knew a lot of quadratic equations.” At age seven he fixed the doorbell on the family home and presented his father with a bill, signed “Alan Blumlein, Electrical Engineer.” Unfortunately, how much he charged for his services has been lost to time.
In 1933 he married Doreen Lane, who was said to be every bit his intellectual equal, and by all accounts, Doreen Lane and Alan Blumlein were a great match for each other.
This is where the invention of stereo comes in.
But first we need to fly back to the US and talk about Bell Labs, based at the time in Holmdel and Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs developed the synchronous sound system that gave us the motion picture “talkie,” the transistor, trans-Atlantic telephone communication, the mp3 and the earliest computers, just to name a couple of minor things. Bell Labs was responsible in some way for almost all of the technology we take for granted today.
In the early 1940s, engineers at Bell Labs were working on developing a two-channel recording and playback system for music. What they didn’t realize was that Alan Blumlein already held the patent for his system he called ‘stereo.’
But first we need to fly back to the US and talk about Bell Labs, based at the time in Holmdel and Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs developed the synchronous sound system that gave us the motion picture “talkie,” the transistor, trans-Atlantic telephone communication, the mp3 and the earliest computers, just to name a couple of minor things. Bell Labs was responsible in some way for almost all of the technology we take for granted today.
In the early 1940s, engineers at Bell Labs were working on developing a two-channel recording and playback system for music. What they didn’t realize was that Alan Blumlein already held the patent for his system he called ‘stereo.’
During the summer of 1931, he and his then fiancée Doreen were at the movies and Blumlein became obsessed with the fact that as the actors on the screen moved from side to side, the sound came from one point in space. Back in those days, theaters stuck the speakers wherever they had room for them, so the sound was rarely, if ever, coupled to the action on the screen. On December 14, 1931, he filed his patent for binaural sound and the patent was granted in June of 1933. It took two years longer to issue the patent than it did for Blumlein to invent the format. By 1935, Blumlein and his team at EMI (you may be familiar with them as the original developers of Abbey Road Studios) had developed a working system to play movies in stereo and finally, the sound followed the actors!
Shortly after that he developed a way to cut the grooves on each side of an acetate record to play in stereo – one side of the groove for the right and one for the left. And pretty much to the joy of everyone but the engineers at Bell Labs, that is how stereo came to be.
Shortly after that he developed a way to cut the grooves on each side of an acetate record to play in stereo – one side of the groove for the right and one for the left. And pretty much to the joy of everyone but the engineers at Bell Labs, that is how stereo came to be.
By Jack Sharkey for KEF
