Peter Mauzey (born 1930 in

Poughkeepsie, NY Poughkeepsie ( ), officially the City of Poughkeepsie, separate from the Town of Poughkeepsie around it) is a city in the U.S. state of New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie ...

), is an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

associated with the development of

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electro ...

in the 1950s and 1960s at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He served as an adjunct professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

while employed as an engineer at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

(later

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

) in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

. Mauzey began working with electronic music pioneer Vladimir Ussachevsky while still a student at Columbia in 1951.Lysloff, Rene T. A. Music and Technoculture. Music/culture. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2003. He worked at the university radio station WKCR, and introduced Ussachevsky to the use of

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnet ...

feedback as a source and modifier of

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...

which could be incorporated into music. He helped build the

RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer (nicknamed ''Victor'') was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, wi ...

and became the first director of engineering at the new center in 1959. According to Thom Holmes' ''Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture'' he was "the lead engineer of the center".Holmes, Thom. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2008. p.209 Mauzey and his staff developed a large variety of customized equipment designed to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines,

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for t ...

mixing consoles, and analog triggers designed to facilitate interoperability between other (often custom-made) synthesizer equipment.

Robert Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesi ...

, who developed the music synthesizer into a practical instrument, learned his trade from Mauzey as a Columbia student in the early 1960s.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mauzey, Peter Living people American electrical engineers 1930 births