Sidney Harman

Sidney Mortimer Harman (August 4, 1918 – April 12, 2011) was a Canadian-born American polymath whose varied intellectual interests enabled him to flourish during a sixty-year career as an engineer, businessman, manager and philanthropist active in electronics, education, government, industry, and publishing.

Harman made “high-fidelity sound [a] part of American life".

Harman's career highlights include: co-founder, CEO and Chairman Emeritus of Harman/Kardon, Inc. [later Harman International Industries], President of World Friends College, U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, board member of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, Isaias W. Hellman Professor of Polymathy at University of Southern California executive board chairman of Business Executives for National Security, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and CFO-owner of the Newsweek Daily Beast Co.

Harman was active in business until his death at 92 years old.

He died one month after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Harman was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, a twin and the seventh of Nathaniel and Gertrude Diana (née Silverstein) Harman's eight children.

Harman immigrated with his parents and siblings to New York City in 1923 and was raised there.

Harman's father managed the regional office of a hearing aid company in Montreal before moving the family for a similar job in New York.

In the late 1930s, Kardon had often helped recording engineers and professional musicians modify available public address amplifiers and speakers to better reproduce radio programs and recorded music.

Recognizing a nascent high-fidelity industry, Harman lobbied the Bogen company to develop improved audio systems for American consumers.

Harman was a graduate of Baruch College of the City University of New York in 1940, earning a BA in Business Administration and later earned a Ph.D. in social psychology from the Union Graduate College in Schenectady in 1973.

His doctoral thesis was titled "Business and Education - New Experiments, New Hope".

Harman was a Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Serving as a second lieutenant in the US Army Signal Corps from 1944 to 1945, Harman's abilities in engineering sound kept him from the front lines.

He instead worked at secret military base in Watertown, New York.

Harman helped develop a classified “sonic deception” project meant to confuse the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and in the Pacific.

Recordings of various military activities were played on high-powered public address systems in the field.

Bogen wasn't interested so Harman left in 1953, taking Kardon with him.

Naming their new company Harmon/Kardon Inc., each invested $5,000 in capital.

Harman handled sales, merchandising, and advertising, while Kardon was Chief Engineer, Designer and Production Manager.

In 1954 their first products were the 7 tube A-100 AM - FM tuner featuring automatic frequency control, priced at $70.50 and the Festival D-1000 receiver, the world's first integrated hi-fi receiver priced at $189.50.

Advertised as having "all the critical electronic elements of a deluxe high-fidelity system on one compact, controlled chassis", the unit included a wide bandwidth FM radio tuner, a pre-amplifier and 20-watt amplifier with automatic loudness control all in a complete chassis.

The partners had created an advanced audio receiver that could be used to play radio programs and records at home with high audio fidelity by simply attaching speakers.

Listeners were amazed.

“We knocked the hell out of them; they were trembling with Shostakovich's Fifth” Harman said.

“Nobody had heard anything like that in his living room”, Harman recalled.

By 1956 Harmon/Kardon was worth $600,000.

Kardon retired in 1957.

In 1958 Harman introduced the Festival TA-230, the first high fidelity simulcast stereo receiver.

Harman steadily grew his company into a consumer audio Juggernaut in the home, professional, and automotive markets producing speakers, amplifiers, noise-reduction devices, video and navigation equipment, voice-activated telephones, climate controls and home theater systems.

Avoiding conflict of interest while serving as Under Secretary of Commerce during the Carter administration, Harman sold the company to the Beatrice Company for $100 million in 1977.

Beatrice spun the company off from its holdings and the company lost value.

Harman repurchased the company in 1980 after leaving government service, saying “There are two ways to get rich, one is to sell your company to Beatrice Foods.

The other is to buy it back.”

Headquartering the renamed business in Stamford, Connecticut, Harman took the company public in 1986.

In his 2003 autobiography, Harman explained “The object was to persuade sentries at enemy listening posts that a significant activity was under way, coming at them from the direction of the broadcast, while in fact the real action was from a different direction".

After graduating from college, Harman's first job was at the David Bogen Company as an engineer where he designed public-address systems.

While working at Bogen, Harman met Bernard Kardon, first Bogen's design engineer and later executive vice-president.

During his 14-year tenure at Bogen, Harman moved from engineer to sales manager.

He was later named general manager of the firm.