The Bose Corporation is an American company based in Framingham, Massachusetts that researches, develops and manufactures audio equipment, including speakers, amplifiers, and automotive sound systems. The company was founded in 1964 by Dr. Amar G. Bose, a professor of electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As of 2003, the company employed about 8,000 people worldwide and had revenues of over $1 billion. Dr. Bose remains the CEO.

During the company's first year in business the company engaged in sponsored research while developing the first loudspeaker product, the model 2201, which dispersed 22 small mid-range speakers over an eighth of a sphere, designed to fit into the corner of a room, which reflected the speaker's sound as a mirror would for light in a corner cube, giving rise to an acoustical image of a sphere in vastly larger room. Dr. Bose used an electronic equalizer to adjust the acoustial output for flat total radiated power.

However, although these speaker systems emulated the characteristics of an ideal spherical membrane, the listening results were disappointing, leading Bose to further research that eventually clarified the importance of a dominance of reflected sound that is characteristic of live performances, leading to a revised speaker design in which eight of nine identical small mid-range drivers (with electronic equalization) were aimed at the wall behind the speaker and one driver aimed forward, thus insuring a dominance of reflected over direct sound in home listening spaces, similar to the dominant reflected sound fields listeners experience in live performances.

Before hearing his new design for the first time, although confident that his new design would produce a more faithful replication of the "live" listening experience, Dr. Bose was unsure as to whether his new "direct/reflected" design would be a small audible improvement or a large one over his earlier design and the best commercially available loudspeakers. The new pentagonal design, named the Model 901, although it apparently violated many widely-held beliefs about "proper" HiFi technology, was an immediate commercial success and the Bose Corporation grew rapidly during the 1970s.

A second area of research and development that has played an important role at Bose Corporation is two-state, non-linear power processing and conditioning. Several early patents were awarded to Dr. Bose and other Bose engineers and this technology is one of the key elements in an innovative project that the company disclosed in 2004, an automobile shock absorber that uses electromagnetic principles instead of the hydraulics that are common today.

List of products

• Bose QuietComfort Noise-cancelling headphones

External links

• Corporate website
• Active Suspension website