Tom Stockham, inventor of digital audio, passed away yesterday at age 70. He is not only inventor of digital audio, engineer of the worlds first audio recording, and founder of Soundstream Recording in the mid 70's, he was also my professor and responsible for me and many others who learned to love this new form of recording. If you weren't aware, digital audio originated at the University of Utah. Ed Catmull, founder of Pixar was also a student of his.
I know many folks here won't know who he was, but I'll explain that from the very beginning, he fought hard to prevent CD's from being 44.1/16 bit because he knew that 44.1 sounded terrible.
I was fortunate to have had him as a teacher, and I was allowed to sweep floors in 1980 for him during the famous Tim Weisberg sessions. (First digital on radio) I was a senior in high school at that time. I showed him Vegas at the NAB show in 2001, and it was a wonderful experience to hear him comment on how far it had all come since 1980.
He also played a fairly important role in the case against Richard Nixon, recovering some of the erased media, and was one of the originals in KLH loudspeakers.
While he no longer taught and had Alzheimers, he could sometimes be found at Symphony Hall in SLC, simply because he loved to hear the quality of music, the room, and the quiet.
Do a search on his name, you'll quickly see how influential he was on what we all take for granted today.