AMAR BOSE: The Steve Jobs of Pro Audio!
The name Steve Jobs is used in this article to paint the proper picture of Amar Bose and his innovative contribution to the world of Pro Audio. He was virtually unknown up until the time of his recent death on July 12, 2013. Amar Gopal Bose was born on November 2, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Amar Bose was the founder and chairman of the Bose Corporation. The success of the Bose Corporation, with all of its widely respected audio products helped Amar Bose to become a billionaire. I felt that this article was so important because hardly anyone knows anything about Amar Bose and his undeniable contributions to technology and pro audio. The products that the Bose Corporation has presented to the world have changed our concept as to what quality audio products could sound like. Amar Bose and his corporation took research, sound and innovation to the next level. Amar Bose: The Steve Jobs of Pro Audio!
Amar Bose is the product of an Indian Father and an American mother who was a school teacher. Amar showed an interest in electronics and business when as a youth he started a small business repairing toy trains and radios. Amar Bose attended MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where he earned a BS in Electrical Engineering. He later earned a PHD in Electrical Engineering from MIT as well. His thesis was written on nonlinear systems.
After Amar graduated from school he eventually became an Assistant Professor at MIT. During those years Mr. Bose bought what he thought was a high end stereo system. He was quite disappointed with the lack of sound quality it had. He felt that the stereo system should be able to reproduce the sound of an actual live performance. The disappointment would spur Amar Bose on to start in-depth speaker research. The research Amar Bose embarked on would eventually lead him to focus on the inadequacies of the sound of the so called high end speaker systems available at the time. The Bose research team conducted extensive research in acoustics. This lead Amar Bose to invent a stereo speaker system that would be able to reproduce sound in a home setting that could only be created in a concert hall. Amar Bose would eventually focus on Psycho Acoustics which is the study of sound perception. This would be the sonic foundation of his companies line of products. Amar Bose sought and received powerful patents in 2 fields that continue to be vitally important to the Bose Corporation to this day. These patents cover the areas of: a. Loudspeaker Designs and, b. Non Linear 2 State modulated, Class D, power processing. Far from its humble beginnings the Bose Corporation now has more that 9,000 employees worldwide. The Bose Corporation creates products for the home, car, and professional audio, as well as continuing acoustic research. Amar Bose never took the Bose Corporation public, which enabled him to pursue long term, nontraditional acoustic research. Mr. Bose was quoted in a 2004 Popular Science interview as saying: “I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBA’s. But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.” Speaking of his company he also says: “One of the best decisions I ever made was keeping the company privately held, so we can take short term pain for long term gain. Public companies have to look good every 90 days to please the markets, so they can do that.” Amar Bose also spoke about the future: “The future isn’t in solving the problems to which we already know the answers. It’s in learning how to work through the problems you’ll experience in life, in any subject.”
Amar Bose and his team has also started and completed a re-imagined car suspension that would make a car handle better and perform much more smooth than any car before. Concerning this car suspension Vice President of the Bose Corporation, Bob Maresca quoted Bose by saying: “Amar was very excited.” “Bose said a car with this suspension could corner as well as any race car, but it would have a smoother ride than any luxury car.”
It is quite interesting that a man who has left such a rich empire of audio technology that fills the spaces of businesses, cars, apartments, boats, and homes worldwide with sound, end up being so unknown. Amar Bose continued to teach as a Professor at MIT until the year 2000. He taught at MIT for over 45 years. He was well respected for his unorthodox teaching methods which required his students to think, as well as learn data. In 2011 Amar donated most of his companies shares to MIT. This act of Bose falls in line with his companies slogan: “Better Sound Through Research.” I really felt that the man behind the Bose Corporation should be acknowledged for his contributions to lives of others. Amar Bose died on July 12, 2013 in Wayland, Massachusetts.
Interview with AMAR BOSE before his death:
Category: Entertainment News, Life Style, Tech Talk
About the Author (Author Profile)
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
