In praise of digital pioneers

February 27, 2012
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Most of the innovative heroes of digital technology are unsung. Their names are unknown or forgotten by the people who every day take their iPad, sound system or digital video playback for granted. Yet without the pioneering work of a few inspired individuals, very little of what we take for granted would be possible.

Every year since 1986, the International Film Festival in Berlin has presented the Berlinale Camera award to personalities or institutions that have made a unique contribution to the industry. This year, the judges awarded the silver and titanium trophy to Ray Dolby (pictured), founder of the eponymous company and the man who brought Dolby Digital surround sound to the cinema and the home.

Ray Dolby came to public prominence at the start of the 1970s when the Dolby “A” noise reduction used by recording studios was joined by the consumer version, Dolby “B”, which cut the hiss from pre-recorded music cassettes. Few fans of the Sony Walkman knew that Dolby took its name from its creator and was not a brand name dreamed up by a marketing department. What they did know was that the Compact Cassette technology, originally designed for dictation, now offered great music on the move.

The quiet American behind the technology was a Marshall Scholar, a beneficiary of the scheme that brings young Americans of high ability to study in the United Kingdom. He graduated in Physics at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1961 and set up the Dolby Labs in London with $25,000 in 1965, partly financed by relatives and friends.

Since the October 1977 screening of the original “Star Wars” at the Dominion Theatre in London’s Tottenham Court Road, the Dolby name has been synonymous with multi-channel cinema sound. That morning preview of Dolby Stereo heralded a transformation of the audio installations in cinemas around the world. With surround sound now commonplace, it is hard to comprehend the difference between the optical sound tracks of the day and Dolby Digital but those lucky enough to have been in the audience for that first presentation will never forget it.

Since then, the “Double D” logo and the Dolby brand has become one of the best known in the world. The licensing model the company has in place, which last year generated 83% of all revenues, will ensure the company’s future. In 2011, six out of every 10 TVs shipped contained Dolby technology, as did 40% of global set-top box deliveries. Company research shows that in a retail environment, the Dolby logo on the box makes purchase of both hardware and software more likely and the name Dolby provides an assurance of quality and compatibility for content creation and distribution systems everywhere.

The decline in income from packaged media – down by 7% in the fiscal year 2011 to 48% of total revenues – and the uncertain transition to digital delivery, however, is likely to mean that Dolby will struggle to return to its former dominant position. Increased competition in both sound and vision technology puts pressure on margins and although the company benefited initially from the revival of 3D in theatres, the domestic market looks set to adopt alternative technology.

At the 2011 AGM, Ray Dolby retired from the board of the company he founded and of which he, his family and affiliates maintain 90% control. He assumed the title of Founder and Director Emeritus and the right to attend board meetings but not to vote. By the time of his retirement, the man who never courted publicity had become a household name, except that is, for fans of heavy metal. As anyone who has seen Optimum Home Entertainment’s “This is Spinal Tap” will know, “You don’t do heavy metal in Dobly!” (sic)

If Ray Dolby is known around the world for his pioneering work in audio, the name Leonardo Chiariglione remains unfamiliar outside his profession. Yet he has been the driving force behind the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) since its inception in Ottawa in 1988. His commitment to international standards for compressing and delivering digital video spans the past 25 years. He says, “People have the same eyes and ears everywhere in the world. They deserve to have uniform standards.”

Most people in the industry acknowledged him as the “father of MPEG” and he is committed to universal and open solutions. “A lot of companies try to make a living out of inventing a proprietary video compression. I am sympathetic, but I don’t believe they are working for the progress of mankind,” he says.

A native of Turin, Italy, Chiariglione also left his native land to study overseas, in his case at the University of Tokyo. Since then, his fluency in Japanese, English, Italian and several other European languages has enlivened many international committees and conferences. The industry has garlanded him and his team with awards for their work including two Emmys, most recently in 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for the development of MPEG-4. Despite this recognition, this cultured student of classical Greek and Latin remains in the shadow of a four-letter acronym.

Although he is by no means impoverished, Chiariglione is not the majority shareholder in a company that generates almost $1 billion a year in revenue. His dedication to international standards has garnered neither fame nor fortune but it is certain that his name will be near the top of the list of pioneers when future historians deliver their verdict on the development of digital media.

This leaves us with William Bradford Shockley Jr. Despite his American parentage, Shockley was born in London 102 years ago, on Feb.13, 1910. It is unlikely that many people marked the anniversary of his birth or even know his name, but there is barely a person on the planet that has not benefited in some small way from his pioneering discoveries.

His parents took him back to California prior to World War I and he subsequently obtained his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began work at Bell Labs, the cradle of many high-tech discoveries.

In 1956, together with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in developing the silicon junction transistor, which is at the heart of almost every silicon chip today.

Under his own name, he founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1955 but the team he brought together at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View went their own way in 1957. They went on to found Fairchild, Intel, AMD and a host of other Silicon Valley success stories in the years that followed. Despite the head start, his own company was not successful and he became a professor at Stanford University. His backer sold the business five years later and it closed in 1968.

By all accounts, Shockley was a difficult man to work for and his extreme views on eugenics do not make him a sympathetic historical figure, so the fact that his name is almost unknown today is not a great loss to the record, apart from one minor detail. A mini-supermarket now occupies the San Antonio Road site and on the sidewalk is a rickety sign. It reads, “Site of first silicon device and research manufacturing company in Silicon Valley. The research conducted here led to the development of Silicon Valley.”

There is no mention of Shockley or of the talented team that gathered there in the 1950s, however briefly. It is hardly a fitting memorial for the man who “brought the silicon to Silicon Valley.”