Innovation is where great ideas are brought to life.
These days when we think about innovative companies, Apple floats to the top. There is another company I would like to talk about and that is Bose.
In 1964 the Bose Corporation was founded by Dr Amar Bose. He started with two employees and their primary customers were the military, NASA and other government agencies. He carried on his teaching at MIT during the day and worked at his company at night.
In 1966, Bose released its first commercial product called the 2201. It was a speaker with 22 transducers and required two empty corners within a room to work properly. It was a marvelous invention, but a commercial flop.
Bose was all about research, so they continued on their quest for knowledge. Their next project involved understanding how we hear and simulated this by placing two small microphones in the ears of a mannequin. They analyzed sound sent to a pair of headphones placed over the mannequin’s ears. By feeding different signals to each side of the head phones they stumbled upon a technology that lead to the 901 Direct Reflecting loudspeaker.
The 901 direct reflecting loudspeaker was so revolutionary, it continued in production until 2017. Of course, there were several revisions and upgrades along the way, making it better with each new iteration. The concept behind this speaker was that instead of projecting the sound at you, it projected the sound away from you toward the walls in a room. This made for a very large sound stage creating a sound much larger than the boxes it was coming from.
The 1970’s were a period of great growth and when Bose entered the professional audio area. Bose found out people were repurposing the 901 speaker for use in PA systems. Musicians and sound engineers loved them. This led to the release of the 800 series speakers, which were widely used in concert and live music venues.
The innovations go on and on at Bose, too many to list here. Check out The Bose Innovation timeline It provides a great map of where Bose started and how it progressed over time. Of course, my favorite Bose innovation is in the form factor of the L1 Pro 16 portable line array PA. This makes performing in small venues possible and still provides a lot of punch. Virtually every sound system company has a version of this product to sell. Have an awesome day. Cheers!