William Bachman
- Birthdate
- 1908/10/29
- Birthplace
- Williamsport, PA, USA
Biography
William S. Bachman (IRE Student member, 1932; Associate, 1936; Member ,1945; Senior Member, 1954; and Fellow, 1956) was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania on 29 October 1908. He received an E.E. degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in 1932.
From 1932 to 1946, he was associated with the General Electric Company, as Engineer in the Radio Receiver Engineering Department, having made contributions to the development and design of loudspeakers, radio and phonograph combinations, and phonograph pickups. Among his developments, the most familiar is the G.E. variable reluctance pickup. In 1946, he joined Columbia Records, Inc., as Director of Engineering and Research, and in this capacity, contributed to the development and production engineering of LP (long playing) records, the heated stylus disk recording technique, viscous damped reproducer arms and program controlled automatic groove-spacing equipment.
Bachman was active on numerous industrial committees and in 1962, was a Past Chair of the Technical Committee of the Record Industry Association of America. He served for many years on the Board of Editors of the IRE. He was granted the Audio Engineering Society Berliner Award for outstanding developments in disk recording and reproduction. In 1962, he was an Fellow of the IRE and the Audio Engineering Society.
