Amar Bose recently joined the ranks of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison, after the National Inventors Hall of Fame announced his name as one of the seven living 2008 inductees.
Dr Bose, a former MIT professor of electrical engineering who has revolutionized the quality and concept of stereo loudspeakers, is only the second Indian American after Dr Rangaswamy Srinivasan, whose invention of ultraviolet surgical and dental procedures resulted in what is known today as LASIK surgery, to be inducted in the Hall of Fame.
Dr Bose, son of a political dissident who had immigrated from Kolkata, was raised just outside Philadelphia and began his career at the age of 13 repairing radios in his basement during the Second World War.
According to MIT's biography of Dr Bose, who is both an alumnus and former professor of the institution, his passion for technology continued at MIT, where he earned Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral degrees in Electrical Engineering. He embarked after his BS on a personal crusade to invent a stereo loudspeaker that would reproduce, in a domestic setting, the vivid sound that a member of the audience hears at a great concert hall.
In 1956, he was asked to join the faculty at MIT, where he taught until 2001. His research at MIT led to the development of new, patented technologies.
In time he succeeded in achieving this goal inventing the direct/reflecting speaker system in 1968, one of the first stereo loudspeakers to utilize the space around them instead of reproducing sound as if in a vacuum. He has also worldwide fame with customized sound systems for automobiles and active noise reducing headphones.
The Hall of Fame noted that under his leadership 100 per cent of profits of the company are reinvested back into the company, enabling advancements in non-audio areas.
Image: Dr Amar Bose. | File photograph
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