“Amar G. Bose, the visionary engineer, inventor and billionaire entrepreneur whose namesake company, the Bose Corporation, became synonymous with high-quality audio systems and speakers for home users, auditoriums and automobiles, died on Friday at his home in Wayland, Mass.,” writes Glenn Rifkin in Saturday’s (7/13) New York Times. “His speakers, though expensive, earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home…. A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music, Dr. Bose was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced stereo system he purchased when he was an M.I.T. engineering student in the 1950s. His interest in acoustic engineering piqued, he realized that 80 percent of the sound experienced in a concert hall was indirect, meaning that it bounced off walls and ceilings before reaching the audience. This realization, using basic concepts of physics, formed the basis of his research…. Dr. Bose taught [at M.I.T.] for more than 45 years,” where his “popular course on acoustics was as much about life as about electronics, said Alan V. Oppenheim, an M.I.T. engineering professor and a longtime colleague. ‘He talked not only about acoustics but about philosophy, personal behavior, what is important in life. He was somebody with extraordinary standards,’ Professor Oppenheim said.”
Posted July 15, 2013
