Ray Dolby honoured by Royal Academy of Engineering

Ray Dolby, founder and Chairman of Dolby Laboratories, has formally accepted an honorary Fellowship to the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The Academy, which aims to foster new engineers and supply the British government with advice, has elected 37 new fellows this year, of which three are Honorary Fellows. Apart from Ray Dolby, Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London and Sir Christopher Gent, Deputy Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, have also received honorary fellowships.
“We invited Ray Dolby to become an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Engineering in recognition of both the invention of his ground-breaking noise reduction system, and also for his work in developing technologies that have become audio standards for the audiovisual industry. We are proud to have the founder of this international company join some of Britain’s brightest minds among the UK’s engineering elite,” said President Lord Broers.
Ray Dolby significantly altered the recording industry with his noise reduction system, which dramatically lowers background noise and hiss added by the recording process with none of the side effects inherent in previous attempts at noise reduction. With the removal of tape noise, multi-track recording techniques blossomed in the late 1960s and 1970s, and higher fidelity sound became possible in the cinema.
Today, even more sophisticated Dolby technologies are available, allowing people to enjoy thrilling surround sound in the home, in the car, while playing video games, and on television broadcasts and personal computers.
(GB)