Sidney Harman

Sidney Harman, who died on Tuesday aged 92, was an American pioneer in the stereo industry during the 1950s, manufacturing high-fidelity audio equipment that brought professional studio sound into people’s homes for the first time; he also owned the magazine Newsweek. 

Sidney Harman in 1955 with Hi-Fi equipment Photo: EPA

 

With a work colleague, Bernard Kardon, and $10,000 capital, Harman went into business in 1953 and developed the world’s first integrated hi-fi system. The Harman Kardon unit had a handsome wooden case that made it look more like a piece of furniture than the assortment of metal boxes with dials, knobs and messy wires that audio enthusiasts usually endured. But the unit had more that just looks; it also sounded better.

“We knocked the hell out of them,” Harman recalled. “Nobody had heard anything like that in his living room.”

Before Harman Kardon, radio listeners wanting high quality, interference-free FM sound had to wire a tuner to a preamplifier, a power amp and speakers. Harman Kardon’s all-in-one hi-fi mono receiver, the Festival D1000, was followed, in 1958, by the first stereo unit, the Festival TA230. Latterly Harman’s company developed sophisticated touch-screen computer systems for cars.

But Harman was no mere geek. He was a generous philanthropist and served as under-secretary of commerce in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Prodigiously well-read, he could recite tracts of Shakespeare by heart, and laced his conversation with literary references.

Harman remained driven even in old age. Last year, two days before his 92nd birthday, and to the general astonishment of the media world, he bought the ailing Newsweek magazine for a token $1, and with it liabilities of $47 million. He merged it with the Daily Beast website and appointed its British-born editor, Tina Brown, to the magazine’s editorial chair.

Sidney Harman was born on August 4 1918 in Montreal to American parents, and grew up in New York City, where his father ran the office of a hearing-aid firm. To earn extra money, Sidney took a paper round, picking up discarded magazines en route and reselling them at sweet shops.
After taking an Engineering degree at City College of New York, he worked for a company making public address equipment. He was general manager, Bernard Kardon the chief engineer.
The pair experimented with the company’s amplifiers to draw exceptionally clear sound from 78rpm discs. But when their boss refused to manufacture the system commercially, they set up their own firm in 1952 and the following year were credited with creating the first modern hi-fi radio receiver by linking an amplifier and a tuner. Three years later Harman became sole owner when Kardon sold him his stake and retired.
In 1977 Harman joined the Carter administration and sold out to the Beatrice foods conglomerate for $100 million. When the new owners struggled to make a success of the business, Harman left public life, bought it back – at a profit – and despite fierce competition from Japan rebuilt the business to become a world leader in high-end audio equipment. When he retired as chief executive officer in 2007, the company’s sales amounted to $3.5 billion.
Last year Harman’s personal fortune was estimated by Forbes magazine at $500 million. He donated millions to education and the arts, including the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
Sidney Harman’s second wife, Jane, was a former Democrat congresswoman who unsuccessfully ran for the office of governor of California in 1998 in a campaign largely financed by her husband. She and their two children survive him, with four children from his previous marriage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8451682/Sidney-Harman.html