Thomas Greenway Stockham (December 22, 1933 – January 6, 2004) was an American scientist who developed one of the first practical

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital signal (signal processing), digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical sampling (signal processing), ...

recording systems, and pioneered techniques for digital audio recording and processing. He also led the development of the

Digital Audio Tape Digital Audio Tape (DAT or R-DAT) is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a Compact Cassette, using 3.81 mm / 0.15" (commonly referred to as 4 mm) magnetic t ...

(DAT) system.

Life and career

Stockham was born in

Passaic, New Jersey Passaic ( or ) is a City (New Jersey), city in Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was List of municipalities in New Jersey, the state's 16th-most-populous ...

.Gilpin, Kenneth N
"Thomas G. Stockham Jr., 70, Digital Pioneer"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', January 31, 2004. Accessed December 3, 2017. "Thomas Greenway Stockham was born on Dec. 22, 1933, in Passaic, N.J. He earned his bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. degrees at M.I.T." Stockham attended

Montclair Kimberley Academy Montclair Kimberley Academy (MKA) is a co-educational private school for students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade located in Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. ...

, graduating in the class of 1951. Known as the "father of

digital recording In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is s ...

", he earned an Sc.D. degree from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1959 and was appointed Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Early in his academic career at MIT, Stockham worked closely with Amar Bose, founder of

Bose Corporation Bose Corporation () is an American manufacturing company that predominantly sells audio equipment. The company was established by Amar Bose in 1964 and is based in Framingham, Massachusetts. It is best known for its Home audio, home audio syste ...

, on the use of digital computers for measurement and simulation of room acoustics and for audio recording and enhancement. While at MIT, he noticed several of the students using an MIT

Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...

TX-0 The TX-0, for ''Transistorized Experimental computer zero'', but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64Kilo-, K of 18-bit words of magnetic-core memory. C ...

mainframe computer installed at the campus to record their voices digitally into the computer's memory, using a microphone connected to an

analog-to-digital converter In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a Digital signal (signal processing), digi ...

and a loudspeaker connected to a

digital-to-analog converter In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC, D/A, D2A, or D-to-A) is a system that converts a digital signal into an analog signal. An analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performs the reverse function. DACs are commonly used in musi ...

, both attached to the TX-0, running the Expensive Tape Recorder application that fellow MIT students David Gross and

Alan Kotok Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 – May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital, or DEC) and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book '' Hackers: Heroes of th ...

wrote for the TX-0 from 1959 to 1962. This application led Stockham to using the TX-0 for his own digital audio experiments starting in 1962. In 1968, he left MIT for the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

, and in 1975, founded Soundstream, Inc. The company developed a 16-bit digital audio recording system using a 16-track

Honeywell Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building automation, industrial automa ...

instrumentation tape recorder as a

transport Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...

, connected to digital audio recording and playback hardware of Stockham's design. It ran at a

sampling rate In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or s ...

of 50 kHz, as opposed to the

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...

sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Soundstream Inc. was the first commercial digital recording company in the United States, located in Salt Lake City. Stockham was the first to make a commercial digital recording, using his own Soundstream recorder in 1976 at the Santa Fe Opera. In 1980, Soundstream merged with the Digital Recording Company (DRC) and became DRC/Soundstream. Stockham played a key role in the digital restoration of

Enrico Caruso Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic first lyric tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles that r ...

recordings, described in a 1975

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

paper. These acoustic recordings were the first to be digitally restored by computer, and were released on the album ''Caruso - A Legendary Performer'', issued in 1976 by

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...

Watergate investigation

In 1974, he investigated President Richard Nixon's White House tapes, alongside fellow members of the panel of persons nominated jointly by the White House and the Special Prosecution Force. It was he who discovered that the 18 minutes of erasures were not accidental, as Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods claimed. Stockham was able to discern several distinct erasures and even determined the order of erasure. Stockham's team reached agreement on seven conclusions detailed in their 87-page report to Chief Judge John J. Sirica:

Development of audio technology

Stockham led the development of the

(DAT) format, a user-recordable digital tape that was popular for a time in the 1990s. The continually lowering price of

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

s led to DAT being used only in certain roles, and its last major manufacturer,

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

, phased out development starting in 2005. Stockham received wide recognition for his pioneering contributions to digital audio. He received, among many others, the Gold Medal award from the

Audio Engineering Society The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is a professional body for engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or product ...

in 1987, a Technical Emmy award in 1988, the Poniatoff Gold Medal from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, a

Grammy The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious a ...

award from

NARAS National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc. (NARAS), doing business as The Recording Academy, is an American Learned society, learned academy of musicians, producers, recording engineers, and other musical professionals. It is widely kno ...

in 1994, the IEEE Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal in 1998 and a Scientific and Engineering award from the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., with the stated goal of adva ...

in 1999.

References

External links

* * * *
An article on Soundstream and the introduction of commercial digital recording in the United States
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stockham, Thomas 1933 births 2004 deaths MIT School of Engineering alumni Montclair Kimberley Academy alumni People from Passaic, New Jersey University of Utah faculty Grammy Award winners Emmy Award winners