Alan Blumlein
Railway enthusiast, music lover, and the man who gave us stereo sound.
1903-1942
King George V 1910-1936 to King George VI 1936-1952
Railway enthusiast, music lover, and the man who gave us stereo sound.
1903-1942
King George V 1910-1936 to King George VI 1936-1952
Alan Blumlein (1903-1942) is the acknowledged father of stereophonic sound recording. There were others working on stereo, notably Arthur Keller in the USA, but Blumlein was the first man to patent stereo recording equipment, and the man whose ideas best stood the test of time.
IN 1935 Alan Blumlein, an avid railway enthusiast, made a five-minute film of trains running through Hayes in Middlesex.
There was a serious purpose to Blumlein’s subject. A maddening feature of early talkies was that as actors moved around the screen, the sound of their voices and movements appeared rooted to one spot. On a visit to a cinema in 1931, Alan had remarked casually to his wife Doreen that he had found a way to let the sound follow the action, and the following December Blumlein had filed the world’s first patents in stereophonic sound.
Subsequent tests included a recording of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ symphony in 1934,* since Blumlein was a keen music lover. However, Blumlein’s employers at EMI questioned the commercial value of stereo so early in the music industry’s evolution, and his distinctive 45º single groove modulation, a technique for recording stereo sound, lay forgotten until 1957, when Westrex made it the industry standard.
Arthur C. Keller of Bell Laboratories in the US had by this time already recorded Leopold Stokowski in stereo, conducting Scriabin’s ‘Prometheus: Poem of Fire’ at Carnegie Hall in 1932. Amidst the secrecy of the recording industry, Keller and Blumlein appear to have been entirely ignorant of each other’s work.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
How did stereo improve the experience of movie-goers?
It allowed sound to track on-screen movement.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Blumlein filmed Hayes railway station in 1934. A train crossed from left to right. The train’s sound seemed to cross with it.