Audio pioneer Ray Dolby was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame last week, in recognition of his invention of the Dolby noise reduction system that electronically reduces the tape hiss and other noise inherent in analog audio tape recording and playback.
With Dolby noise reduction, sound is passed through an encoder as it is recorded, and then played back through a decoder, dramatically lowering background noise and hiss added by the recording process, with none of the side effects inherent in previous attempts at noise reduction.
Dolby was honored at a ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame headquarters in Akron, Ohio, along with 19 other inventors who include: Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip, the inventors of insulin; Harry Coover, the inventor of Superglue; Ivan Getting and Bradford Parkinson, co-inventors of Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
Other legendary inventors in the National Inventors Hall of Fame are Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, and Thomas Edison. To qualify for this distinction, an inductee’s invention must have contributed to the welfare of society and have promoted the progress of science and the useful arts.
For more information visits www.dolby.com.
