AMAR BOSE

BOSE SYSTEMS
(1929 AD)

 “I studied violin from age 7 to 14. Iloved music, and in my ninth year at MIT, I decided to buy a hi-fi set. I figured that all I needed to do was look at the specifications. So I bought what looked like the best one,turned it on, and turned it off in five minutes,the sound was so poor.”These were Bose’s own words. The quest had begun. Those high-ended and high quality stereo systems failed to reproduce the realism of live performance. His research and innovations in the speaker technology and acoustics led him to the present pinnacle where his products can be found in Olympics stadiums, Broadway theatres, the Sistine Chapel, and the Space Shuttle.That was Amar Gopal Bose, the founder and Chairman of Bose Corporation. With a net worth of $1.8billion, he was listed on the 2007 Forbes 400.

Bose was born on 2^nd November,1929 in Philadelphia. His father, Noni Gopal Bose, was a freedom fighter who fled India iin the 1929s to save himself from British prosecution. Amar Bose studied at Abington Senior High School and later obtained a Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT).

            Though he was born and brought up America, he was an Indian at heart. He recalls“The food we ate was Indian, and both my mother and father were very deep into the ancient philosophy of India, so it could well have been an Indian household.”

            He started supplementing his home income even at an early age by repairing radios,model trains, etc. He redcalled later:

        “At 23, I realized that I could fix anything electronic. It was amazing, I could just do it. I started a business of repairing radios. It grew to be one of the largest in Philadelphia.”

           Then Bose spent a year in the research labs at NV Philips Electronics. Netherlands. In the spring of 1956, he came to India to teach on a Fulbright scholarship and he used to read about acoustics at night. He met his future wife Perma, there itself.

           He returned to MIT as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. He survived a kind of apartheid:

“The prejudice was so bad in the United States at that time that    a dark person with a white person would not be served in a restaurant . My father, mother, and I would try it occasionally. We would sit there, and the food would never come.”

He was disenchanted with the poor quality of even the high-ended systems and started making researches into acoustics, psycho acoustics and spatial acoustic. Reflecting his extensive studies in the concert halls, he said:

“We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of   incidence of sound arriving at the ears  of the audience,  then took the measurements back to MIT and analysed them.”

He went ahead and  started designing systems that could reproduce and emulate the concert hall experience in a domestic setting.

He got patents but needed money. MiT professor Y.W.Lee poured all his lifetime earnings and in 1964, Amar founded Bose Corporation. When his 901® Direct/Reflrcting® speaker system was released in 1968, the response was unprecedented and they stood high and mighty for 25 years. His researches into  Spatial Acoustics and the human perception of sound resulted in full,rich sound with all the ambience of concert music.

“I really wanted to do research. That has never changed.” He often said. With that spirit, his improvements  continued to grow unabated. With his acoustic waveguide speaker technology, he developed award-winning Wave® radio, Wave® music system and Acoustic Wave® music systems. Acoustimass®  speaker technology brought high  quality sound to palm-sized speakers.

However the industry was no bed of roses and he conceded:

“There were a couple of times when we were within two weeks of being non-existent. We passed narrowly over the fire.”

Because there was no dearth of ideas and innovation loomed large! He developed audio-demonstrator technology called Auditioner® with which designers and builders can actually feel the sound from Bose Systems in their building even while the building is still in a blueprint.

In 1972, he was elected Fellow of IEEE, probably the first person of Indian origin in electronics for his contributions to loudspeaker design, two-state amplifier-modulators, and nonlinear systems.

He continued his love for the research. Home entertainment and automotive audio systems that he developed were simply superb and the experience was heavenly. With the philosophy of research where one hundred percent of their earnings were reinvested in the company, and a great deal of that went into research, his systems conquered international acclaim and demand. His Acoustic Noise Cancelling® headsets are used in the space shuttle. All military and most commercial aircrafts use the designs that process power from jet engines with Bose suspension system, ElectroForce® linear motion system along with his proprietary software and hardware.

Bose retired from MIT in 2000.He married Ursula Boltzhauser, a senior manager at Bose Corporation, after divorcing his first wife. He received 2007 Distinguished Service Citation awarded to those individualswho have  significantly improved the industry or their respective organizations.