#ampex tapes

[stone-cold-groove]

The tape that launched a thousand hits.

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Ampex 341 recording tape.

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Promo ad for David Bowie. Images 1966-67 - 1973.

[musicsnobs]

RAY DOLBY, INVENTOR OF DOLBY NOISE REDUCTION PASSES

The man who invented that thing which cuts the hiss out of your cassette tapes has recently died, yes the guy who invented Dolby Noise Reduction.  Ray Dolby had been fighting a battle against leukemia for several months, and had passed away last week in his home in San Fransisco.  He was 80 years old.

Ray began work as a teen for Ampex, and actually worked on some of the very first videotape recorders, and actually being one of the inventors of the medium.  After graduating college, he left behind the videotape world and served as an adviser to the United Nations while stationed in India.  When he returned back to his native Britain, he began his own company, which would become the famous Dolby Laboratories and be forever synonymous with tapes with his DNR, or Dolby noise reduction.  His inventions had inducted him into superstar inventor status and into the Forbes 400, citing Dolby as having a networth of nearly $3 billion.

Dolby received several awards including Academy Awards and Emmy Awards, honorary doctorates form Cambridge and The University of York, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Along with others awards, he received OBE by the Queen in 1983, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall Of Fame in 2004.

Sound as we know it, was forever changed by this man.