Ray Dolby awarded for using his head, not his mouth.............
LOS ANGELES--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--Aug. 20, 1997--Ray Dolby, founder and chairman of Dolby Laboratories Inc., will be the 44th recipient of the American Electronic Association's coveted Medal of Achievement, which will be presented at the association's annual meeting dinner on Sept. 9 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif.
In noting the honor being given, George Sollman, 1997 AEA chairman and vice chairman of Centigram Communications Corp., said: ``Ray Dolby is a true entrepreneurial pioneer in the field of sound recording and reproduction. From the high-quality cassettes we play on our car stereos to the latest digital surround sound in movie theaters, we are constantly touched by the magic of this American inventor.''
Medal of Achievement recipients preceding Dolby include William Hewlett and David Packard of Hewlett-Packard; Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove of Intel; Thomas J. Watson Jr. of IBM; Alexander M. Poniatoff of Ampex; and Robert Galvin of Motorola.
Earlier this year, Dolby was named a recipient of the U.S. National Medal of Technology and also received the IEEE's Masura Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award and received an honorary doctor of science degree from Cambridge University.
Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories Inc. in 1965, dedicated to the development of new audio noise-reduction techniques. Since then, consumers have purchased more than 630 million audio products licensed to use Dolby technologies. More than 7,000 feature films have been released with Dolby-encoded soundtracks, and more than 43,000 movie theaters worldwide have installed the equipment to play them.
Dolby's latest digital audio technology, Dolby Digital, is the leading digital system used by the film industry, having been used on 1,000 films and with more than 10,000 theaters equipped to play back this revolutionary technology.
Dolby Digital was also chosen as the audio standard on the two most-talked-about developments in home entertainment -- the new digital video discs (DVD) and the digital television (DTV) system, set to debut next year.
Dolby's career spans more than 40 years. Beginning with Ampex Corp. in 1949, Dolby worked on various audio and instrumentation projects and played a major role in the invention of the world's first practical videotape recorder.
In 1961, he earned his doctorate in physics from Cambridge University, and while there he served as a consultant to the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority. In 1963, Dolby took up a two-year appointment as a United Nations adviser in India.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted Dolby a Scientific and Engineering Award in 1979 and an Oscar in 1989, when he was also presented an Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
He is a fellow of the British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society and of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which has awarded him its Samuel L. Warner Memorial Award, Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal, Progress Medal and honorary membership. He is also a fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society and a recipient of its Silver and Gold Medal awards.
In 1986, Dolby was made an honorary officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Dolby holds more than 50 U.S. patents and has written papers on videotape recording, long-wavelength X-ray analysis and noise reduction. He and his family live in San Francisco, where he is a member of the boards of directors of the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera.
CONTACT: Dennis Davidson Associates Inc., Los Angeles
Mort Segal or Elliott Chang, 213/954-5858
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