Norman Pickering

Norman C. Pickering (9 July 1916, Brooklyn, NY — 18 November 2015, East Hampton, NY) was an influential American audio engineer, inventor, Audio Engineering Society co-founder, luthier and instruments designer, best known for creating one of the first "high-fidelity" phonograph magnetic cartridges. Pickering made various inventions in the aeronautics industry and ultrasound medical diagnostics and was a renowned expert on violins. Norman learned to read music in early childhood from his mother, a pianist, and began playing violin at seven; he switched to French horn after a baseball injury. Pickering studied at Newark College of Engineering since his father, a marine engineer, insisted that music wasn't "manly enough," graduating in 1936. He still pursued a graduate scholarship at Juilliard School and performed with Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1940. As Pickering was equally interested in the technical aspects of music production, he opened a recording studio in Indianapolis. Norman was soon hired as an acoustic researcher by C.G. Conn Limited. During World War II, the Sperry Gyroscope Company took over C. G. Conn's manufacturing plant, converting it from musical instruments to wartime needs. Norman Pickering was transferred to Sperry's research laboratory on Lond Island, working on airplane vibration control designs. In 1945, Pickering began working on his most famous invention, an advanced phonographic cartridge. Norman felt that 78" shellac records might have enough "fidelity" but greatly suffered from subpar reproduction. He began tweaking with a pickup, a device directly responsible for transferring physical needle vibrations into electrical impulses for amplification. Norman introduced reliable viscous resonances damping; soon enough, his pickups achieved a much better high-frequency response while reducing record wear. In November 1945, he formally launched "Pickering & Company," initially marketing new gear for professional use at recording studios and radio stations. In 1948, Norman Pickering was among the founding members of the Audio Engineering Society, alongside Ted Lindenberg of Fairchild, C. J. LeBel and NBC's Chester Rackey. He was a visiting professor of acoustics at The City College Of New York between 1952 and 1955. Norman Pickering pursued luthiery in the 1980s and began making violins. He consulted D'Addario and served as the Violin Society of America president.