Alan and Doreen Blumlein wedding photo
The sound reproduction systems for the early ‘talkie’ movies often had only a single loudspeaker. Because of this, the actors all sounded like they were in the same place, regardless of their position on screen.
In 1931, the electronics and sound engineer Alan Blumlein and his wife Doreen went to see a movie where this monaural sound reproduction occured. According to Doreen, as they were leaving the cinema, Alan said to her ‘Do you realise the sound only comes from one person?’ And she replied, ‘Oh does it?’ ‘Yes.’ he said, ‘And I’ve got a way to make it follow the person’.
The genesis of these ideas is uncertain (though it might have been while watching the movie), but he described them to Isaac Shoenberg, managing director at EMI and Alan’s mentor, in the late summer of 1931. Blumlein detailed his stereo technology in the British patent “Improvements in and relating to Sound-transmission, Sound-recording and Sound-reproducing systems,” which was accepted June 14, 1933.
Intelligent sound engineering 