Hello Members,
1. David E. Blackmer died at his home in Wilton NH, 21Mr02. He was born in Urbana OH, 11Ja27, and in 1945 was a
member of the first graduating class of High
Mowing School of Wilton NH, which he later served as president of the Board of Trustees. He studied at MIT and Harvard University.
By nature he was drawn to overcoming difficult engineering problems by applying his truly remarkable mind in a process
he called "scaling glass mountains and slaying dragons."
Among his colleagues he was known as a genius. An inventor, he held many patents. He was involved in the design of the
telemetry for the Mercury space program. He was founder of the audio electronics companies dbx, Kintek (a.k.a. Colortek), and Earthworks
and co-founder of the medical electronics company Instrumentation Laboratory.
He enjoyed listening to a wide range of music, especially Bach. A hands-on engineering generalist with a love for precision
sound recording and reproduction technologies, he was a longtime Fellow of the Audio Engineering society.
During World War II he served in the U.S. Navy, where he studied radar electronics. He was an engineer for Lafayette Radio,
Trans-Radio Recording Studio, Epsco, HiCon Eastern and Raytheon and a life member of the IEEE. He was a lifelong collector of Scientific American, Analog
Magazine, Asimov Magazine and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
He enjoyed operating heavy equipment, studying history and cooking gourmet food. He had 10 children.
Memorial donations may be made to the High
Mowing School Memorial Fund, POB 850, Wilton NH 03086. (Monadnock Ledger 28Mr02) (I saw him many times at Monadnock Music concerts. He was interesting
to listen to and always gave the impression of working on a unique design.
For a while he ran a restaurant in Wilton, Cafe Pierrot, with live entertainment. A friend dined there frequently and said
the sound system was amazing clear and well balanced anywhere in the room, with ensembles from a folk group to a 15 piece orchestra. And in a
mill building, not a concert hall. He marveled at the number and variety of loudspeakers: some narrow and tall, wide and short, large and small. They
were hanging throughout the room. Blackmer was at the side of the stage adjusting the sound.
I went to Earthworks to discuss possible consulting the "interview" consisted of an hour of his talking
about his ideas and projects. He said he had a complete set of 1% resistors (for prototyping--at 1000 pcs per pkg that would be 500,000 resistors!).
He was a guest speaker, with Rene Jaeger, at an early BAS meeting in De72 (BASS Ja73)--DBH).
2. A complete list of BAS guest speakers (starting in 1972), with the issue of the Speaker in which the summary
was published, has been completed. For a copy, email me.
David Hadaway
President, Boston Audio Society
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