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John Ernest Benson

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John Ernest (J.E.) Benson was an australian engineer and researcher who contributed to studies on piezoelectric crystals, television and sound systems, particularly loudspeakers.

Achievements

Benson was born in 1911 and educated at Sydney Technical High School and Sydney University, earning his Bachelors of Engineering in 1934[1]. Shortly afterward he joined the Research Laboratories of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd. (AWA). He made contributions to many areas of electronics, starting with piezoelectric crystals. After earning a Master's degree in 1945, he moved on to study color television and loudspeakers in the late 1940's and 1950's. He designed a novel tapered column loudspeaker system for the Sydney Town Hall to successfully solve some acoustic problems with the space. This design lent credibility to the team at AWA and they won a contract to design the sound reinforcement system for the new Sydney Opera House in 1960. The design once again used column loudspeakers and it won a Duke of Edinburgh prize for industrial design for both Benson and AWA in 1972[2].

Benson was editor of the AWA Technical Review journal from 1948 until 1975, when he retired. A series of papers published in australian journals (including the AWA Technical Review) from 1968-1972 put a firm technical foundation on the electroacoustics of the era, clearly creating a single mathematical loudspeaker enclosure model that could be used to describe sealed, vented, and passive radiator enclosures, and similar types with various sorts of damping elements. Incidentally, Benson was the examiner for the PhD Thesis of Richard H. Small, of Thiele/Small parameters[3].

Benson passed away in 1989 at age 78[4].

Selected Publications

  • Benson, J.E. "Theory and Design of Loudspeaker Enclosures", Amalgamated Wireless Australia Technical Review, (1968, 1971, 1972)
  • Benson, J.E. "An Introduction to the Design of Filtered Loudspeaker Systems", Amalgamated Wireless Australia Technical Review, (1973)

References

  1. ^ Williams, Neville (January 1996). "When I Think Back...". Electronics Australia: 34–38.
  2. ^ Thiele, Neville (March 1990). "J.E. Benson Obituary". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 38 (3): 197.
  3. ^ Williams, Neville (February 1996). "When I think Back...". Electronics Australia: 44–49.
  4. ^ Thiele, Neville (March 1990). "J.E. Benson Obituary". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 38 (3): 197.