LONDON, February 8, 2018 – Universal Music is proud to announce that pioneering EMI engineer Alan Dower Blumlein’s ground-breaking invention of stereo sound is being celebrated as part of a major campaign launched by the UK government, marking the 400th anniversary of the grant of British patent number one. The campaign, titled ‘GREAT for Imagination’,… Read more »

Alan Blumlein was a senior sound engineer at EMI’s Central Research Laboratories (CRL) on the Hayes factory site. He joined the company when Columbia and The Gramophone Company merged in 1931. Over his lifetime he was a prolific inventor, developing huge technological advances within the sound engineering field. After a night at the cinema with… Read more »

Past exhibition “Made in Hayes” in London ran from June 2013 to 2017.  The original article, posted in June 2014, was amended in May 2026. The Old Vinyl Factory development is based on the old “His Master’s Voice” EMI factory site in Hayes. The newly converted office blocks hosted the ‘Made in Hayes’ exhibition about… Read more »