Ray Milton Dolby OBEh (January 18, 1933 – September 12, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He was also a co-inventor of video tape recording while at Ampex. He was the founder of Dolby Laboratories. He was also a billionaire and a member of the Forbes 400 with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion in 2008 although as of September 2012 it was estimated to have declined to $2.4 billion.

Biography

Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon. He was raised in San Francisco, California and attended Sequoia High School (class of 1951) in Redwood City, California.

As a teenager, in the decade following World War II, Dolby held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex in Redwood City, working with their first audio tape recorder in 1949. While at San Jose State University and later at Stanford University (interrupted by two years of Army service), he worked on early prototypes of video tape recorder technologies for Alexander M. Poniatoff and Charlie Ginsburg. As a non degree-holding "consultant", Dolby played a key role in the effort that led Ampex to announce quadruplex videotape in April 1956.

In 1957, Dolby received his B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford. He subsequently won a Marshall Scholarship for a Ph.D. (1961) in physics from Cambridge University, where he was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College.

After Cambridge, Dolby acted as a technical advisor to the United Nations in India, until 1965, when he returned to England, where he founded Dolby Laboratories. In that same year, 1965, he officially invented the Dolby Sound System, although his first U.S. patent was not filed until 1969, four years later.

Dolby was a Fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society.

Ray Dolby and his wife Dagmar had two sons, Tom and David.

Dolby died of leukemia on September 12, 2013, at his home in San Francisco at the age of 80.

Dolby noise reduction

The Dolby noise-reduction system works by increasing the volume of low-level high-frequency sounds during recording and correspondingly reducing them during playback. This reduction in high-frequency volume reduces the audible level of tape hiss.

Awards and honors

• 1971 — AES Silver Medal
• 1983 — SMPTE Progress Medal For his contributions to theater sound and his continuing work in noise reduction and quality improvements in audio and video systems and as a prime inventor of the videotape recorder
• 1985 — SMPTE Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal
• 1986 — honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE)
• 1988 — Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor from the German Eduard Rhein Foundation
• 1989 — 61st Academy Awards — Academy Award, Scientific or Technical
• 1989 — Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS)
• 1992 — AES Gold Medal
• 1995 — Special Merit/Technical Grammy Award
• 1997 — U.S. National Medal of Technology
• 1997 — IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award
• 1999 — honorary Doctor degree by the University of York
• 2000 — honorary Doctor of Science degree from Cambridge University
• 2003 — Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
• 2004 — inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame
• 2010 — IEEE Edison Medal
• 2014 — Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame