The Inventor of Stereo

Preface

Alan Dower Blumlein – a British genius?

Who was Alan Dower Blumlein? Incredibly, very few people have heard of Alan Dower Blumlein. Other than those whose fields of interest cross into the realms of his work, he is almost unknown. Yet this man is one of the twentieth century’s foremost scientists, inventors and engineers. His achievements were enormous and many of them still affect our lives, nearly sixty years after his death.

If you were to ask most schoolchildren, ‘who do you think invented television, or radio, or perhaps the jet engine?’ even if they do not know the exact name of the person, I feel reasonably sure that they will have heard of John Logie Baird, Gugliomo Marconi or Frank Whittle. Yet none of their text books will mention ...