pioneer, famous for making
high-quality Bose audio systems and speakers for home
users, auditoriums and automobiles, has died.
He was 83.
Bose's death was announced yesterday by his company
Bose Corp's president, Bob Maresca, and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Bose was
on the faculty for more than 40 years.
Bose died yesterday at his home in Wayland,
Massachusetts. His death was confirmed by his son, Dr
Vanu G Bose.
"Dr Bose founded Bose Corporation almost 50 years ago
with a set of guiding principles centred on research and
innovation," Maresca was quoted by New York Times as
saying in a statement. "That focus has never changed."
Bose was born on November 2, 1929, in Philadelphia. His
father, Noni Gopal Bose, was a Bengali freedom fighter
who was studying physics at the Calcutta University
when he was arrested and imprisoned for his opposition
to British rule.
Noni Gopal Bose escaped and fled to the US in 1920,
where he married an American schoolteacher.
At 13, Amar Bose began repairing radio sets for pocket
money for repair shops in Philadelphia.
As founder and chairman of the privately held company,
Bose focused relentlessly on acoustic engineering
innovation.
His speakers, though expensive, earned a reputation for
bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.
And by refusing to offer stock to the u, Bose was
able to pursue risky long-term research, such as noise-
cancelling headphones and an innovative suspension
system for cars, without the pressures of quarterly
earnings announcements.
A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music, Bose
was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced
stereo system he purchased when he was an MIT
engineering student in the 1950s.
His interest in acoustic engineering piqued, he realised
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 realisation, using basic concepts of physics, formed
the basis of his research.
In the early 1960s, Bose invented a new type of stereo
speaker based on psychoacoustics, the study of sound
perception.
His design incorporated multiple small speakers aimed
at the surrounding walls, rather than directly at the
listener, to reflect the sound and, in essence, recreate
the larger sound heard in concert halls.
In 1964, at the urging of his mentor and adviser at MIT,
Dr Y W Lee, he founded his company to pursue long-
term research in acoustics.
"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," Bose,
in a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine, had
said.
The Bose Corporation initially pursued military
contracts, but Bose's vision was to produce a new
generation of stereo speakers.
Though his first speakers fell short of expectations, Bose
kept at it.
In 1968, he introduced the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting
speaker system, which became a best seller for more
than 25 years and firmly entrenched Bose as a leader in a
highly competitive audio components marketplace.
Unlike conventional loudspeakers, which radiated sound
only forward, the 901s used a blend of direct and
reflected sound.
Later inventions included the popular Bose Wave radio
and the Bose noise-cancelling headphones, which were
so effective they were adopted by the military and
commercial pilots.
A Bose software programme enabled acoustic engineers
to simulate the sound from any seat in a large hall, even
before the site was built.
In 1982, some of the world's top automakers, including
Mercedes and Porsche, began to install Bose audio
systems in their vehicles, and the brand remains a
favourite in that market segment.
Bose's devotion to research was matched by his passion
for teaching. Having earned his bachelor's, master's and
doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the MIT in
the 1950s, Bose returned from a Fulbright scholarship at
the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and joined
the MIT faculty in 1956.
He taught there for more than 45 years, and in 2011,
donated a majority of his company's shares to the
school.
--
A. B.
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