Ray Dolby

Ray Dolby
Dolby (left) being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, 2004
Born	Ray Milton Dolby (1933-01-18)January 18, 1933 Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Died	September 12, 2013(2013-09-12) (aged 80) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Education	San Jose State University 1951–1952, 1955 Washington University, St. Louis 1953–1954 Stanford University, B.S.E.E., 1957 Pembroke College, Cambridge, Ph.D., 1961
Spouse(s)	Dagmar Bäumert (m. 1966)
Children	Tom Dolby David Dolby
Engineering career
Discipline	Electrical engineering, physics
Institutions	Dolby Laboratories
Projects	Dolby NR
Significant design	Surround sound
Awards	National Medal of Technology (1997) Honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (1987)
Military career
Service/branch	U.S. Army
Years of service	early 1950s
Notes

Ray Milton Dolby, OBE (January 18, 1933 – September 12, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He helped develop the video tape recorder while at Ampex and was the founder of Dolby Laboratories.

Dolby was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Esther Eufemia (née Strand) and Earl Milton Dolby, an inventor. He was raised in San Francisco and attended Sequoia High School (class of 1951) in Redwood City, California. As a teenager in the decade following World War II, he held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex in Redwood City, working with their first audio tape recorder in 1949. While at San Jose State College and later at Stanford University (interrupted by two years of Army service), he worked on early prototypes of video tape recorder technologies for Alexander M. Poniatoff and Charlie Ginsburg. As a non degree-holding "consultant", Dolby played a key role in the effort that led Ampex to unveil their prototype Quadruplex videotape recorder in April 1956 which soon entered production.