主题：[公告]Albert Neville Thiele 2012年10月一日不幸辞世

at associated companies in Scandinavia and the U.S.

On his return to Australia, he led the design team that

developed EMI’s earliest Australian television receivers.

Appointed Advanced Development Engineer in

1957, he was responsible for applying advanced

technology in EMI Australia’s radio and television

receivers and electronic test equipment.

Neville’s next job was with the Australian Broadcasting

Corporation (ABC) as Senior Engineer, Design and

Development, where he designed and assessed

equipment and systems for sound and television

broadcasting.

industry. In 2009, Sydney University conferred a Doctorate

of Science in Architecture (honoris causa) to him.

His other interests included bushwalking, music, and

theater. He also narrated the soundtrack of Bruce Petty’s

film “The Mad Century 1900–2000” for SBS Independent.

Radio performers needed to hone their vocal skills, particularly when the vernacular of the Queensland accent was present, and budding artists also needed to improve the quality of their recordings. This required audio equipment. At this time Neville’s interest in electronics became increasingly dominant. He made a resistance-type microphone based on the 1924 design Reisz Laboratorium (Berlin) microphones of the young engineer Georg Neumann and pressed into service a combina-tion of an amplifier driving (not amplifying) a gramophone pick-up and an Edison gramo-phone player mechanism with lead screw, as a recorder. One of his microphones and some of these recordings still survive

Equipment costs money. By this time, Neville was earning some as a junior clerk in the Commonwealth Bank. But times were tough. Neville took to designing equipment on paper as best he could and through experi-ment before committing funds. This habit was to last for the whole of his life. He metic-ulously maintained records of his work, ideas, and experiments. A series of over 80 foolscap volumes survives to describe his personal thoughts during his years at EMI and ABC. 

Neville wanted training in electrical engi-neering. His then employer, the bank, wanted actuaries. The compromise was an evening course at Queensland University in

mathematics but with a major in economics and with accounting included—an arts degree. This mix was destined not to last, however it did provide access to the under-graduate theater culture, thus sustaining Neville’s enthusiasm for the performing arts

By this time, Australia had joined the war. Neville enlisted and was immediately posted to an infantry battalion as a machine gunner. He likened this posting to being given a tar-get tattoo and waving a football rattle at the enemy. Fortunately, Neville’s skills in diag-nosing and fixing faults in telecommunica-tions equipment on the spot were noticed, and he became a signals technician despite central command repeatedly demanding he be returned to the original posting.

On return from war service in New Guinea, fate introduced Neville to Lexie (they had almost met at the same primary school). After an extended internationally

based courtship they married. They raised two wonderful children and Lexie independ-ently achieved fame as an artist. At the end of the war Neville applied for and received a Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Albert Neville Thiele 1920–2012  OBITUARIES Scheme (CRTS) scholarship. This time the venue was University of Sydney and the course was engineering.