Ray Dolby

Dolby (left) is inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Ray Dolby (born January 18, 1933) is the American engineer, movie director and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He was also a co-inventor of video tape recording while at Ampex. He is the founder and chairman of Dolby Laboratories.

Biography

Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon. He was raised in San Francisco, California.

As a teenager, in the decade following World War II, Dolby held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex in Redwood City, working with their first audio tape recorder in 1949. While at San Jose State University and later at Stanford University (interrupted by two years of Army service), he worked on early prototypes of video tape recorder technologies for Alexander M. Poniatoff and Charlie Ginsburg. As a non degree-holding "consultant", Dolby played a key role in the effort that led Ampex to announce quadruplex videotape in April 1956.

In 1957, Dolby received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford. He subsequently won a Marshall Scholarship for a Ph.D. (1961) in physics from Cambridge University, where he was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College.

After Cambridge, Dolby acted as a technical advisor to the United Nations in India, until 1965, when he returned to England, where he founded Dolby Laboratories. In that same year, 1965, he officially invented the Dolby Sound System, although his first U.S. patent was not filed until 1969, four years later.

Dolby is a fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society. Ray Dolby is a member of the Forbes 400 with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion in 2008.

Ray Dolby and his wife Dagmar have two sons, Tom and David.

Dolby noise reduction

Dolby noise reduction works by increasing the volume of high-frequency sounds during recording and correspondingly reducing them during playback. This reduction in high-frequency volume reduces the audible level of tape hiss.

Awards and honors

• 1971 — AES Silver Medal
• 1983 — SMPTE Progress Medal For his contributions to theater sound and his continuing work in noise reduction and quality improvements in audio and video systems and as a prime inventor of the videotape recorder
• 1985 — SMPTE Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal
• 1986 — honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• 1989 — 61st Academy Awards — Academy Award, Scientific or Technical
• 1989 — Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS)
• 1992 — AES Gold Medal
• 1997 — U.S. National Medal of Technology
• 1997 — IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award
• 1999 — honorary Doctor degree by the University of York
• 2000 — honorary Doctor of Science degree from Cambridge University
• 2003 — Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with Charles F. Jenkins

• 2004 — inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame

US patents

• U.S. patent 3,631,365, Signal compressor, filed 1969.

External links

• Ray Dolby bio
• Dolby, R. (2002-05-11). Some Musings on Progress in Audio. Heyser lecture at Audio Engineering Society. Retrieved on 2007-03-26 from http://aes.org/technical/112Heyser.cfm.
• 2004 Interview With Dolby
• Group photo of the Ampex VTR team including Ray Dolby