Amar Bose, 1929–2013

The engineer who pioneered acoustic excellence

Amar Bose was finishing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956 when he treated himself to a new hi-fi system at Radio Shack. But when he tried out his new purchase, he was appalled by the awful acoustics. The inability of modern speakers to replicate live sounds, he said, became “a problem that began to obsess me.” That obsession would eventually make him a household name, a billionaire, and a legend in the world of high-fidelity acoustics.

Born in Philadelphia, Bose was the son of an “Indian freedom fighter forced to leave Calcutta because of his political beliefs,” said Outlook India. To help his family make ends meet, he worked repairing radios while still in high school. He was accepted into MIT in 1947, and it was nearby that he later started Bose Corp., which started out doing acoustic engineering primarily for military contracts, but later branched out into commercial applications.

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