Alan Blumlein

Alan's mother, Jessie Dower, was Scottish, daughter of William Dower (born 1837) who went to South Africa for the London Missionary Society.

Alan was christened as a Presbyterian; he later married in a Church of England parish church.

Alan Blumlein's future career seemed to have been determined by the age of seven, when he presented his father with an invoice for repairing the doorbell, signed "Alan Blumlein, Electrical Engineer" (with "paid" scrawled in pencil).

His sister claimed that he could not read proficiently until he was 12.

He replied "no, but I knew a lot of quadratic equations!"

Alan Dower Blumlein (29 June 1903 – 7 June 1942) was an English electronics engineer, notable for his many inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereophonic sound, television and radar.

He received 128 patents and was considered one of the most significant engineers and inventors of his time.

Alan Dower Blumlein was born on 29 June 1903 in Hampstead, London.

His father, Semmy Blumlein, was a German-born naturalised British subject.

Semmy was the son of Joseph Blumlein, a German of Jewish descent, and Philippine Hellmann, a French woman of German descent.

After leaving Highgate School in 1921, he studied at City and Guilds College (part of Imperial College).

He won a Governors' scholarship and joined the second year of the course.

He graduated with a First-Class Honours BSc two years later.

In 1924 Blumlein started his first job at International Western Electric, a division of the Western Electric Company.

The company subsequently became International Standard Electric Corporation and then, later on, Standard Telephones and Cables (STC).

During his time there, he measured the amplitude/frequency response of human ears, and used the results to design the first weighting networks.

In 1924 he published (with Professor Edward Mallett) the first of his only two IEE papers, on high-frequency resistance measurement.

This won him the IEE's Premium award for innovation.

The following year he wrote (with Norman Kipping) a series of seven articles for Wireless World.

In 1925 and 1926, Blumlein and John Percy Johns designed an improved form of loading coil which reduced loss and crosstalk in long-distance telephone lines.

These were used until the end of the analogue telephony era.

The same duo also invented an improved form of AC measurement bridge which became known as the Blumlein Bridge and subsequently the transformer ratio arm bridge.

These two inventions were the basis for Blumlein's first two patents.

His inventions while working at STC resulted in another five patents, which were not awarded until after he left the company in 1929.

In 1929 Blumlein resigned from STC and joined the Columbia Graphophone Company, where he reported directly to general manager Isaac Shoenberg.

His first project was to find a method of disc cutting that circumvented a Bell patent in the Western Electric moving-iron cutting head then used, and on which substantial royalties had to be paid.

He invented the moving-coil disc cutting head, which not only got around the patent but offered greatly improved sound quality.

He led a small team which developed the concept into a practical cutter.

The other principal team members were Herbert Holman and Henry "Ham" Clark.

Their work resulted in several patents.

In mid-1930, Blumlein met Doreen Lane, a preparatory school teacher five years his junior.

During the early 1930s Blumlein and Herbert Holman developed a series of moving-coil microphones, which were used in EMI recording studios and by the BBC at Alexandra Palace.

Early in 1931, the Columbia Graphophone Company and the Gramophone Company merged and became EMI.

New joint research laboratories were set up at Hayes and Blumlein was officially transferred there on 1 November the same year.

After two-and-a-half years of courtship the two were married in 1933.

Lane was warned by acquaintances before the wedding that, "There was a joke amongst some of his friends, they used to call it 'Blumlein-itis' or 'First Class Mind'. It seems that he didn't want to know anyone who didn't have a first class mind."

Recording engineer Joseph B. Kaye, known as J. B. Kaye, who was Blumlein's closest friend and best man at the wedding, thought the couple were well matched.

In June 1937, Blumlein patented what is now known as the Ultra-Linear amplifier (US Patent 2,218,902, dated 5 June 1937).

A deceptively simple design, the circuit provided a tap on the primary winding of the output transformer to provide feedback to the second grid, which improved the amplifier's linearity.

He died during World War II on 7 June 1942, aged 38, during the secret trial of an H2S airborne radar system then under development, when all on board the Halifax bomber in which he was flying were killed when it crashed at Welsh Bicknor in Herefordshire.