A genius from Poland, a native of Poland - Stefan Kudelski
He was called the king of life, not without a hint of envy. His intellectual education and wide connections between his parents gave him a unique start, but he had already earned his own success. Achievements in the field of electronics brought him a fortune and a lot of awards, including four Oscars and two Emmys.
The son of military emigrants, Stefan Kudelskibuilt one of the best recording devices, developed accurate synchronization of sound with film and miniature portable tape recorders.
Mother's Patent
He was born in Warsaw, from where he brought Lviv Polytechnic his father Tadeusz, Casimir Bartel, prime minister of five pre-war governments. At the villa of the Kudelski family in Mokotów they visited, in particular, the Builder of Gdynia Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski and Warsaw President Stefan Starzynski even became little Stefan's godfathers. During the summer holidays, Stefan's mother Irena took Stefan in her Bugatti to his hometown of Stanisławow, where many of the city's Art Nouveau buildings were designed by Stefan's grandfather, architect Jan Tomasz Kudelski.
It was in Stanislavov (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) that Stefan was caught by an explosion. The Second World War. Together with his parents, following the emigration route of the Polish government, he soon left the country for France. The family also had to flee when Tadeusz was exposed as a member of the French resistance. They took refuge in neutral Switzerland, where Stefan was able to go to school again and create his first inventions.
It all started with a Swiss watch. The mother decided to use her son's technical capabilities to raise funds to support the family. In a workshop set up by his parents, the teenage Stephane assembled Swiss watches from parts, which he then carried in a backpack across the green border to France.
In his free time, Stefan worked on his own projects. The result of his youthful passions were, among other things, devices for cleaning the air from dust using a high frequency generator and a device for measuring the accuracy of clocks using quartz oscillators and the first patented invention - a device for clock calibration. Stefan developed this instrument when he was 15 or 16 years old. The teenager could not patent the invention under his own name, so his mother Irena became the author and owner of his first patents.
Oscar-winning tape recorders
In 1948 Stéphane, a graduate of the Ecole Florimond in Geneva, began to study engineering physics at the Federal Polytechnic University of Lausanne. He was not happy, because he wanted to study in the USA, at the more prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the limited family budget did not allow dreams to come true. Soon, a combination of circumstances intervened in the life of the young inventor. Like every university student, he was interested in technological innovations. By the time he entered college, radio was no longer something new. Stefan oversaw the work of the Swiss radio broadcasters, who brought in trucks with large-sized recording equipment that cut grooves in traditional audio discs. Intrigued, he looked at the awkward equipment. He quickly realized that reducing its size would be a valuable innovation.
He asked his father for money to implement his ideas, but he refused the loan, offering his son only a garage for a large workshop. After two years Stefan dropped out of college. He decided he knew enough sound knowledge and its preservation. He announced to his parents that he would not waste time on further education and that he was starting to implement the device, arguing that someone else could design it. Decades later, his alma mater would award Kudelsky an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contributions to technology.
The designer realized his ambitious plans and was out of competition. In 1951 he patented his the first portable voice recorder the size of a shoeboxwhich he named "Award"referring to the Polish language. It was a homemade tube tape recorder with a spring-loaded tape recorder. The device was bought by Radio Genève for a hefty sum of 1000 francs.
This amount was enough to open own company "Kudelski" in the suburbs of Lausanne. A year later, in 1952, the Nagra tape recorder won first prize at the CIMES (Concours International du Meilleur Enregistrement Sonore) international competition in Lausanne. And in the same year, the awarded model was taken by a team of Swiss climbers on an expedition to Everest. Although the summit was not reached, the apparatus was tested in difficult mountain conditions.
Kudelski constantly worked on improving his invention. He took care of the careful manufacture and reliability of the devices.. If some components did not meet the technological requirements, the workers had to manufacture the missing elements on the spot, on their own. It turned out to be a breakthrough invention. Tape recorder Nagra III, patented in 1957. It was the first portable tape recorder with recording quality comparable to that of a studio.
Battery-powered, electronically controlled transistorized instrument belt speed on drums, it quickly became the favorite working tool of radio, TV journalists and filmmakers. In 1959, the recording made its film debut when director Marcel Camus used Kudelski's equipment during the filming of Black Orpheus. The NP Nagra III version could synchronize sound to film footage, which meant the studio could cut production costs and eliminate the need to carry heavy and cumbersome equipment.
In the coming years, almost all film studios will use Nagra recorders; for example, the 1965 Bob Dylan tour later used in the film Don't Look Back was recorded using Kudelski's equipment.
The Nagra system brought him as much as possible in total four Academy Awards: Two Science and Technology Awards (1965 and 1977) and two Academy Awards (1978 and 1990) and two Music Industry Emmy Awards (1984 and 1986).
From the Moon to the bottom of the Mariana Trench
Special services also became interested in Kudelsky's tape recorders. The administration of US President John F. Kennedy placed the first "special" order. They asked Kudelsky for miniature versions of reel-to-reel tape recorders. This is how the so-called black series of tape recorders for agents and the White House; devices interacted with a small microphone that could be hidden, for example, in a watch. The fulfillment of this order opened all the doors for the Kudelsky company, everyone wanted Nagra tape recorders. In 1960, the Swiss oceanographer Jacques Picard, a member of the crew of the American submersible Trieste, delivered a recording to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and nine years later, Neil Armstrong used the Kudelski instrument when he took his first step on the moon.
The Nagra SNS model is introduced, among other things, important evidence of the Watergate scandal that caused US President Richard Nixon to leave office. Kudelski's company at that time already controlled 90 percent. global audio market. In 1977, Stefan Kudelski started manufacturing nagrafaxes, devices for obtaining weather maps for the needs of the navy. The original Nagra equipment was sold to non-professionals under a different brand, for example, as Sony devices or with the logo of the German concern AEG (Telefunken).
3. Headquarters of the Kudelski group in Chezo-sur-
-Lozanna
Kudelski considered the Ampex Nagra VPR 5 magnetoscope one of his most important achievements. camera and audio recording function. This high-end device was created in collaboration with Ampex, and the challenge was to adapt the equipment to digital technology. These recorders were based on the pulse coding method and innovative solutions such as electronic memory.
In 1991 Stefan Kudelsky handed over the company to his son Andre Kudelski. Although the company has spread its wings under new management, Nagra's old, handmade and precision analog tape recorders are still serviced, purchased and resold by the company.
Stefan Kudelski was included in the prestigious list in 1998. Switzerland's 100 Greatest Geniuses. He died in 2013.
