ABSTRACT
Born in Switzerland and a child prodigy and natural entrepreneur, the 19-year-old Studer founded his first company in 1931, building and marketing radio receivers. While the designs were very good, the cost/profit ratio involved put him out of business before the company could become firmly established. After passing an important radio engineering exam, Studer began still another technical-business career in 1948, in Zurich, by building still another electronics equipment factory. The first products were specialized oscilloscopes, but he eventually decided to specialize in audio technology, specifically tape recorders. The experience gained from the adaptation of U.S. tape recorders for the European market helped him to design and build such equipment himself, with extremely high reliability and overall performance quality being the goals. In 1960 he began a cooperating enterprise with EMT Wilhelm Franz GmbH, which led to a worldwide expansion of Studer/Revox products. Sticking to the concept of quality over quantity, over the years, Studer built his company, now named Revox, into an organization known for superior tape-recording equipment, including the A36 (1956) and A77 (1967) models. In 1978 Studer was awarded an honorary doctorate in technical sciences by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and in 1982 the Audio Engineering Society awarded him its highest award, the gold Medal.
