BOWERS & WILKINS Quality from Inception WRITTEN BY
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owers & Wilkins is a major international company, with a network of distribution that reaches across 61 countries. However, in 1965 it started life with John Bowers hand-assembling speakers in the back of the electrical store he ran with Roy Wilkins in Worthing, West Sussex, UK. Bowers was a passionate music fan, who felt his needs were poorly served by the loudspeakers of the day. His stated aim was to develop a loudspeaker that neither added to nor subtracted from recorded sound. Following a bequest from an elderly customer called Miss Knight, Bowers founded B&W Electronics Ltd, and began designing and build-
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ing loudspeakers in the garages at the rear of the shop. The first of these was the P1, and the profit from these loudspeakers allowed Bowers to invest in the company’s first calibration equipment. Bowers & Wilkins has always aimed to produce the finest loudspeakers across a broad price spectrum, and the Domestic Monitors in the form of the DM1 and DM3 soon provided a more affordable option. The Domestic Monitor has lived on for many generations of superb, affordable loudspeakers, right up to the current award-winning 600 Series. The 1970s brought technological advances that not only changed the way Bowers & Wilkins made loud-
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speakers, but the way the whole world did. It also saw the launch of several iconic, groundbreaking products, the first of which was the DM70. Without this loudspeaker Bowers’ dream of the perfect transducer might have remained just that. Critics agreed that the sound from its 11-module, electrostatic midrange/high-frequency unit was a revelation, while its cool, curved slim-line cabinet changed the shape of loudspeaker design forever. In 1974, extensive trials of driver cone materials revealed that Kevlar®, a fabric used in bulletproof vests, could break up standing waves as efficiently as it stopped bullets. The ochre yellow Kevlar mid-range cone was to become a Bowers & Wilkins