André Charlin

André Marie Bernard Charlin (20 March 1903 – 28 November 1983) was a French audio engineer and entrepreneur. He was a prolific inventor and filed many patents for radio amplifiers, movie sound recording equipment, and music recording. He founded and operated companies to make his equipment and to make the recordings.

André Marie Bernard Charlin
Born(1903-03-20)20 March 1903
Paris, France
Died28 November 1983(1983-11-28) (aged 80)
Paris
NationalityFrench
OccupationSound engineer and inventor

Early years (1903–30)

André Marie Bernard Charlin was born on 20 March 1903 in Paris.[1][2] He was the second of four children of Georges Charlin (1869–1915) and Louise Rogonot (1879–1930).[2] At the age of 13 he was a talented flutist. His father died that year and his uncle Edmond Ragonot, an electrical engineer, took an interest in the boy and helped him build his first radio receiver.[1] Towards the end of World War I (1914–18) he built an amplifier, and in 1922 he filed his first patent for an electro-dynamic speaker diaphragm embedded in a screen. He sold the rights to this invention to the Compagnie Francaise Thomson-Houston in 1927.[3] He completed his military service in 1926. That year he was granted patents for a push-pull electrostatic loudspeaker and for a variable reluctance pick-up system. He started a small business making radios and loudspeakers.[1] Charlin married Madeleine Blanchard (1907–2006) on 7 October 1926.[2] In the years that followed Charlin was granted many patents for improvements to amplifiers.[1]

Movie equipment (1930–49)

Charlin became involved in cinematography at a time when sound was starting to be added to motion pictures, and began to build equipment for synchronous sound playback. At first this used 33 rpm records. The first "talkies" appeared in 1931, and Charlin began working on ways to improve sound quality through better recording technology. He founded a recording studio in 1933 that produced the sound tracks for many prewar movies, including in 1934 a stereo sound track for Abel Gance's 1927 silent movie Napoléon. He moved into techniques for film projection with a 1935 patent for "Cyclope" focussing and a 1938 patent for "Actua Colour" to project colour films which was used in over 1,000 movie theatres by 1948. During World War II he turned to making dynamos to power the lamps of bicycles. In 1949 Charlin stopped producing cinema equipment and sold all his related patents to Philips of the Netherlands.[1] Early in the 1950s Radio-Cinema, a subsidiary of the Compagnie générale de la télégraphie sans fil, acquired Charlin' company.[4]

Records (1949–83)

Charlin returned to recording music.[1] In 1949 Charlin produced the first European microgroove vinyl record, L'Apothéose de Lully by François Couperin, conducted by Roger Désormière.[3] Charlin developed a recording head in 1954 and a technique for stereo recording in 1958.[1] He recorded many world famous artists, including twelve microgroove recordings of the famous Portuguese conductor Pedro de Freitas Branco. Most of the recordings were] made at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris with an orchestra assembled for the purpose. Two of them received the Grand Prix du Disque.[3] In 1955 he recorded Pierre Cochereau playing Bach fugues on the organ of Notre-Dame de Paris. Charlin mistook Cochereau's mordents as wrong notes, and repeatedly stopped him. Perhaps as a result Cochereau played much more slowly than normal, and the recording was savagely attacked by the critics.[5]

Charlin briefly collaborated with Michel Garcin in developing Erato Records, then after breaking with his partner in 1962 created his Centre d'Enregistrement des Champs Elysees (CECE) label with Carl de Nys.[1] In 1963–64 Charlin patented the Tete Charlin, a dummy head for commercial stereophonic records with two high-quality microphones from the Schoeps company. The term "dummy head" refers to the device's vague resemblance to a human head.[6] During his career Charlin filed at least 80 patents and received 118 Grand Prix du Disque.[7] Charlin died in Paris on 28 November 1983.[8]

Notes
    1. Edenholm, Svalander & Willigens.
    2. Pierfit.
    3. Borges de Azevedo 2012.
    4. Chambost 2011, p. 7.
    5. Hammond 2012, p. 73.
    6. Brech & Paland 2015, p. 155.
    7. André Charlin – AudioFolia.
    8. R.L. 1984, p. 40.

    Sources
    • André Charlin (in French), AudioFolia, archived from the original on 2016-03-03, retrieved 2018-02-22
    • Borges de Azevedo, João (22 October 2012), "❛Enquête❜ Aux sources de la stéréophonie • L'ingénieur André Charlin et le chef d'orchestre portugais Pedro de Freitas Branco.", Appoggiature (in French), retrieved 2018-02-22
    • Brech, Martha; Paland, Ralph (2015), Kompositionen für hörbaren Raum / Compositions for Audible Space: Die frühe elektroakustische Musik und ihre Kontexte / The Early Electroacoustic Music and its Contexts, transcript Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8394-3076-7, retrieved 2018-02-22
    • Chambost, Emmanuel de (2011), "A History of CAMECA (1954-2009)", in Peter W. Hawkes (ed.), Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics, Academic Press, ISBN 978-0-12-385985-3, retrieved 2017-10-05
    • Edenholm, Anders; Svalander, Josef; Willigens, Jean-Marie, "André Charlin", André Charlin Homepage, retrieved 2018-02-22
    • Hammond, Anthony (2012), Pierre Cochereau: Organist of Notre-Dame, University Rochester Press, ISBN 978-1-58046-405-5, retrieved 2018-02-22
    • Pierfit, "André CHARLIN", geneanet (in French), retrieved 2018-02-22
    • R.L. (April 1984), "Charlin l'inventeur", HIFI Stereo (in French), retrieved 2018-02-22
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