Len Davis, Glensound founder and former chief design engineer, has passed away after a short illness. Glensound designs and builds high quality audio systems for the broadcast and commercial audio market, and the company’s success is largely as a result of Len’s renowned design skills.
Len joined the Designs Department of the BBC as a graduate engineer in 1960 and designed the first telephone balancing unit for the broadcaster’s first ever phone in programme ‘It’s Your Line’. He left the Beeb in 1966 to concentrate on growing his successful public address hire company, Glensound Services, originally started in his spare time. Len designed and manufactured his own equipment for the company – all realised in his garden shed!
Len’s design skills were well known to his old BBC colleagues, and in 1969 they commissioned him to design and manufacture a distribution amplifier for Princes Charles’ investiture, the ceremony acknowledging a new Prince of Wales.
This was the first of hundreds of products that Len designed for the BBC, as Glensound Services became Glensound Electronics Ltd, leading to several world firsts, including designing the world’s first battery operated portable ISDN commentary mixer in 1994. Len retired from running Glensound in 2005, but many of his designs are still used today across the broadcast world, from BBC local radio consoles, to over 10,000 ISDN codecs.
Len leaves behind his wife Gill, son Gavin and daughter Tina. With limited attendances currently allowed at funerals, Len’s family have asked anyone who would like to pay their sympathies to Len to do so by contributing to a Just Giving charity. This will go towards research for a cure for Parkinson’s and also support for Parkinson’s sufferers. The Installation team would like to extend Len’s family our heartfelt sympathies at this difficult time.
