Ray Dolby, 1933–2013
The audio engineer who refined recording
If it weren’t for Ray Dolby’s audio expertise, the hum of light sabers and howls of X-wing fighters in Star Wars would never have achieved their breathtaking clarity. Dolby’s innovations are what enabled the 1977 blockbuster’s revolutionary soundtrack. “Star Wars changed sound forever,” said Michael Minkler, the movie’s sound mixer, and Dolby made that possible.
Dolby was obsessed with mechanical devices from a young age, said The Wall Street Journal. As a teenager, he landed a job with pioneering audio firm Ampex after serving as the projectionist when the company’s founder gave a talk at his high school. He went on to study engineering at Stanford University and to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University before traveling to India to help UNESCO set up a national laboratory for the Indian government. When he recorded professional musicians playing in his home on a multitrack reel-to-reel tape recorder, “the irritating and pervasive hiss on his recordings gave him the idea for a business.”
Dolby returned to England in 1965 and set up a company bearing his own name, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.), working on technology that eliminated unwanted background noise. The record industry soon made Dolby’s noise-reduction system the standard for commercial tapes. The engineer returned to the U.S. in 1976 and “turned his attention to the cinema”—introducing the multiple speakers and surround-sound technology that would make Star Wars’s intergalactic battles come alive, and investing the sound of the mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind “with the same emotional intensity as the pictures.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“Dolby’s innovations established worldwide standards for sound,” said Variety.com, and his company received 10 Academy Awards and secured more than 50 U.S. patents. But Dolby had never sought glory. “I was never a gold digger, or an Oscar digger, or anything like that,” he said. “I just had an instinct about the right sort of things that should be done in my business.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Apollo 13: Survival – a 'real, rare and breathtaking tale of survival'
The Week Recommends Netflix documentary includes 'remarkable' archival footage from near-disastrous moon mission
By Ellie O'Mahoney, The Week UK Published
-
Missile escalation: will long-range rockets make a difference to Ukraine?
Today's Big Question Kyiv is hoping for permission to use US missiles to strike deep into Russian territory
By Richard Windsor, The Week UK Published
-
'Taylor Swift endorses, for real'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published
-
Michael Mosley obituary: television doctor whose work changed thousands of lives
In the Spotlight TV doctor was known for his popularisation of the 5:2 diet and his cheerful willingness to use himself as a guinea pig
By The Week UK Published
-
Morgan Spurlock: the filmmaker who shone a spotlight on McDonald's
In the Spotlight Spurlock rose to fame for his controversial documentary Super Size Me
By The Week UK Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
Why Everyone's Talking About Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
Why Everyone's Talking About The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published
-
Martin Amis: literary wunderkind who ‘blazed like a rocket’
feature Famed author, essayist and screenwriter died this week aged 73
By The Week Staff Published
-
Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian folk legend, is dead at 84
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published