A professor of electrical engineering at the University of Utah, Stockham became interested in recording audio using digital means in 1949, when Bell Labs first digitized speech. “It became apparent,” he said later, “that if speech could be digitized, so could music,” and started researching the concept in earnest in 1962.
In 1975, he founded Soundstream, the first digital recording company, and demonstrated his digital recording techniques by remastering early Enrico Caruso recordings, and a live performance of the Santa Fe Opera. He says he was told that “when you get it in the field, it will fail.” But Stockham’s techniques led directly to compact discs and other digital recording systems.
And the CD led to more: “It was just a very logical step to go from sounds to pictures,” says Larry DeVries, a colleague at the University of Utah. “So nowadays we not only have CDs, we also have DVDs. It’s the same basic concept.” Stockham has long been known as the “father of digital recording” and was awarded Grammy, Emmy, and Academy awards for his accomplishments. He died January 6 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 70.