Who was Alan Dower Blumlein?

January 18, 2020 Comments Off

Jen Pedler tells the story behind a blue plaque on the Haymills Estate, Hanger Hill. You can hear more and discover a smorgasbord of 1930s suburban architecture on her Suburbs, Stations and Subways walk coming up on 25th January.

I had never heard of Alan Dower Blumlein until I came across the blue plaque marking his former home but when you spot a blue plaque to someone you know nothing about it’s always fascinating to find out more and I certainly wasn’t disappointed when I researched this one further.

The simple inscription ‘Electronics engineer and inventor’ doesn’t really do justice to a man who was one of the most significant engineers and inventors of his time. The other thing the plaque tells us is that he died young, aged just 38, in 1942. It was his death in a tragic wartime accident that probably led to his slipping into obscurity.

After struggling at school – his sister claimed that he didn’t learn to read properly until aged 12 – he won a scholarship to the City and Guilds College, part of Imperial College, and graduated with a first class honours degree in Electronic Engineering after studying for just two years of what was normally a four year course.

He went on to work for several electronics companies including Columbia Records which later became EMI. Over a period of 13 years he filed 121 patents covering the fields of sound recording, television and radar. His most significant patent was that relating to the recording of stereo sound – a method to record two channels into a single record groove.

One of the first live stereo recordings, recorded by Blumlein, was of the London Philharmonic Orchestra performing Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony at what is now Abbey Road Studios in 1934. His contribution was finally recognised in 2015 when the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) posthumously honoured him by unveiling a ‘Milestone’ plaque at Abbey Road Studios in a ceremony attended by his son and grandson.

During World War Two Blumlein was working on a top secret radar project, H2S, which would facilitate air to ground mapping and enable more accurate direction of bombing raids.

In June 1942 he was on board a Halifax bomber testing a prototype of this system when the plane caught fire and crashed in Herefordshire killing everyone on board. Immediately following the crash a team led by Bernard Lovell, physicist and radio astronomer and first director of Jodrell Bank, raced to the scene to retrieve the top secret radar equipment. The bodies were not recovered until the following day.

In view of the top secret nature of the operation Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that the cause of the crash was kept secret, even from the relatives of the deceased, and Blumlein’s death was not officially announced until three years later. Colleagues continued the development of the H2S system and it contributed to more accurate bombing during the later years of the war.