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Len Davis, Glensound founder, passes away

Davis designed hundreds of products for the BBC as well as many world-firsts.

Glensound has announced its founder and former chief design engineer Len Davis has passed away after a short illness.

Davis joined the BBC’s Designs Department as a graduate engineer in 1960. While working for the BBC, he designed the first telephone balancing unit for their first ever phone in programme, It’s Your Line. He left the BBC in 1966 to concentrate on growing his successful public address hire company that he’d started in his spare time. The hire company, Glensound Services, used all his own designed and manufactured equipment which he made in the garden shed.

Among Davis’s key achievements are:

  • 1969 – Design and manufacture a distribution amplifier for Prince Charles’ investiture
  • 1971 – World’s first unitised mixer
  • 1977 – ‘Mobile International Control Room’ – World’s first integrated commentary solution
  • 1980 – World’s first assignable mixer
  • 1984 – Popularised coaxial commentators’ equipment designed for ITV for use at the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh.
  • 1992 – Start of several designs for UK Parliament in the House of Commons and House of Lords (which continue today)
  • 1994 – Designed world’s first battery operated portable ISDN commentary mixer
  • 2003 – Consulted on AES47, then designed the hardware for the first standard for network audio

Davis retired from Glensound in 2005, devoting his time to a new shed, and creating a CNC router to make pcbs and panels on at home.

The TVBEurope team extend our condolences to all Len Davis’s family and friends.