ABSTRACT

British audio engineer, born in Newbury, Berkshire. He was an apprentice for a radio firm, then worked for Western Electric in the late 1920s. He joined Crystalate Gramophone Record Manufacturing Co., Ltd., and remained with the company until 1937, developing improvements in studio equipment. His moving-iron cutting stylus made it possible to raise the upper limit on the recordable spectrum, from 8,000 Hz to 12,000 Hz. Haddy worked with Decca Record Co., Ltd., when the firm acquired Crystalate in 1937, and supervised research on various wartime devices. The most important of these for the history of sound recording was his work on the detection of sonic differences between German and British submarine propellers. Since the differences lay in the upper frequency range, Haddy managed to raise the response of his cutter head to 15,000 Hz. After the war, his innovation was applied to Decca’s Full Frequency Range Recording (ffrr) system, marking the beginning of high fidelity recording. Later he conducted major research in stereo, and in videodisc technology. In 1970 he received the Audio Engineering Society’s Emile Berliner award “for pioneering development of wide-range recording and playback heads and for his significant part in the international adoption of the 45/45 stereo disc recording.”