Amar Bose, founder of Bose Corp., manufacturer of quality speakers and headphones, has died:
Acoustics pioneer Amar Bose, founder and chairman of the audio technology company Bose Corp., known for the rich sound of its small tabletop radios and its noise-canceling headphones, has died. He was 83.
Bose died Friday, company spokeswoman Carolyn Cinotti confirmed. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Bose began his acoustics research and was on the faculty for more than 40 years, also announced his death but provided no other details.
Bose founded his company, based in Framingham, Mass., in 1964. The company’s products include sleek Wave system radios with “lifelike, room-filling sound,” home theater accessories, computer speakers and cushioned QuietComfort headphones for reducing background noise such as airplane engines.
Amar Gopal Bose was born Nov. 2, 1929, in Philadelphia. His father, who emigrated from India, ran an import business; his mother was a schoolteacher. His father’s business suffered during World War II, and the teenage Amar launched a radio repair shop at the family’s home.
He enrolled at MIT, where he received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate, all in electrical engineering.
Here’s the snippet from the obituary that caught my eye:
Bose declared in a 1993 interview with the Sunday Times of London that he had no interest in material wealth.
“Company directors who pay themselves dividends get enjoyment out of the money, but I wouldn’t have that,” he said. “It’s not that I’m a good person. I am just doing what I enjoy the most. I don’t want a second house, I have one car, and that’s enough. These things don’t give me pleasure, but thinking about great little ideas gives me real pleasure.”
I don’t think that was just true of Dr. Bose. I think it’s true of everyone. Once your basic needs are satisfied—you have food, a roof over your head, and so on—money as such becomes decreasingly important. That doesn’t mean that work is less important—far from it. It does mean that it becomes increasingly important that you take pleasure in your work and enjoy the company of those with whom you are working, factors that are all too rare.
I think that for the ultra-rich money is largely a way of keeping score. They’re less interested in it for what it can buy than for what it means, for power, and because they enjoy the process by which they’re making it.
Interesting piece on Bose. We have a Bose combination CD/radio, which lives up to it’s reputation of being a fine product.
Downplaying material wealth is not an uncommon attitude, though, among many ‘rich’ people who got where they got through meaningful enjoyment of their work. Money becomes a non-important by-product of their success, secondary to the pleasure derived from their given field of work. They often live simply, something brought out in the book, ‘The Millionaire Next Door,’ depicting people, with ample wealth, living quiet, low-key lives — spurning the lavishness that so often is associated with people of extraordinary means. The joy, the so-called personal pay back, is realized through what they do, not how much money they make. And, the challenge is to do what they do well, and continually improve upon their performance/products
Frank Gehry has a similar take regarding his architectural career, where he has never felt it was work, but more like play, reminiscent of childhood experiences where he would be transfixed building with blocks.