In early 1940, Alan Blumlein and his team at the EMI Central Research Labs began work on the technology behind the Capacitance Altimeter. This device works by measuring the differences in charge between a low lying aircraft and the charge at earth’s surface, therefore enabling aircraft and other vehicles to fly at night and in… Read more »

The Trust would like to thank Ricky Ford for sending in his memory of EMI. Ricky was an EMI recording artist as has shared a little about his time with the label. It was 1961 in Bristol a truly daring and controversial musical called A MAN DIES was produced, it was the first RocknRoll religious musical.… 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 »

The Old Vinyl Factory is a new development based on the old “His Masters Voice” EMI factory site in Hayes. The newly converted office blocks currently host the ‘Made in Hayes’ exhibition about the heritage of the site and its roots in vinyl production. The EMI Group Archive Trust worked in collaboration with Cathedral Group… Read more »