HAL BEVERIDGE CORNER
Since
this is the first issue of the Newsletter, perhaps we might start with
some photos and a brief background of the man himself, the cause and the reason
for us reading this. Perhaps the corner might turn into a regular feature.
HNB - Harold Norman Beveridge - was born in 1914 in Canada and studied
electrical engineering at the McGill university in Montreal. After finishing his
studies he was employed by the U.S. Advanced Ballistic Missile Defense
Branch in Washington working on various defense projects. Later he was
manager of the Chicago division of Raytheon Co.and also worked in their Massachusetts
Waltham plant. He was involved with designing high power vacuum tubes and with
the early development of Radar systems. By the sixties Beveridge could
already count more than twenty inventions to his credit.
Harold Beveridge
c.1979
..and c.1978
An enlarged photo above can be
mirror-shine transducers (an early model 2).
Although his various
commitments compelled him to commute between the West and the East Coast, by
the mid fifties "Bev" had made his home in Santa Barbara. His last
professional enterprise was to establish, together with three other partners, a private
company - General Research Corp. - in Santa Barbara, providing defense-related consultancy to various private and public bodies.
More important from our perspective was the fact that throughout his life Bev was an avid
music lover. Wherever his work took him, he always bought season tickets
for himself and his wife and attended religiously all the local
Philharmonic concerts in whatever city he happened to find himself. Such was the case when he worked in Massachusetts - he
was a regular at the Boston Symphony concerts and often attended the Boston
Pops in the summer. When his son Rick was old enough,
about six, he would take him instead, whenever his wife couldn't join him
(read Rick's reminiscence).
Live music, be it a full symphony orchestra or an intimate chamber ensemble
- or, indeed, just an amateur Dixie band - was, and remained till the end
of his life, the best and only audio reference to which he compared his
transducers.
Beveridge was so enthralled by music that it became his life passion and
ambition to try and emulate the concert hall sound at home. Early on in his
endeavor, he decided that, with all the advanced technology, the
inherent limitations of a dynamic speaker would never produce a
satisfactory sound. So he turned his attention to electrostatic designs,
something that several people at the time were experimenting with - most
notably the British Peter Walker of Quad and the American Arthur Janszen -
and he never looked back.
His first efforts were all home made. While the first electrostatic panels
did indeed reproduce stunning high frequencies, the lows were diminished.
Bev experimented with various reflective screens in order to get a more
balanced spectrum. Once the idea of reflected (or re-channeled) sound took
hold, the road to the invention of the lens that bear his name was open.
It would be another several years before Bev would conceive the whole
principle of the Acoustical Wave Front Lens, as well as its actual implementation.
But the day, sometime in 1965, when he put the idea into practice and
realized that it worked, saw him in a state of such excitement the likes of
which "I have never seen my father, neither before nor
since", as Rick recalled.
By 1970 Harold Beveridge was retired. His acoustic ideas worked and he was
satisfied to build a pair of experimental speakers for his own use. He was reluctant to
embark on a new adventure to market the system commercially, but an offer
of a year's free labor from Rick had persuaded him to change his mind. Harold Beveridge,
Inc. (HBI) was born, a venture that later moved to be called the California
Audio Technology - the result of which you and I enjoy nowadays. At its peak, Harold Beveridge, Inc. employed over 40
people on the payroll and had a base of firm bookings for months in
advance.
Harold Beveridge died in good age in 1997, being looked after by his sons.
In many ways he could be considered a lucky person in that he was able to
turn the ideas that meant most to him - his inventions - into a reality
admired and appreciated by many. "This is what it's all been about for
the last twenty-five years as far as I am concerned", said a grinning
Hal to a reporter. When asked on a radio interview what was his
most significant contribution, he replied without hesitation "the
Acoustic Wave Front Lens".
To be able to accomplish one's life dream and witness it becoming a
reality in such a spectacular manner is a gift given to, or achieved by, a precious
few. His revolutionary ideas in acoustics are considered to be a major and
unique
contribution in audio history; even to date they have never been duplicated or
successfully implemented anywhere else.
Hopefully that legacy will be continued by Rick.
Harold Norman Beveridge