Poul B. Madsen
Poul
Madsen didn’t just found three companies, he started the whole audiologic equipment business. And furnished
the hearing industry with a wealth of innovations from 1955 until his passing in 1997.
Born in Odense, Denmark, in 1923, he was apprenticed to (now world-famous) Bang & Olufsen as a radio technician and later acquired a small radio repair shop in Odense. In the hectic post-war years, Madsen was determined to make his own way and exploit his talents as an “electronics whiz”. And it turned out that he was blessed with the ability to convert the theoretical models of doctors and scientists into smoothly functional and commercially viable instrumentation.
Madsen entered the world of audiology in the early 1950’s when he met Dr. Ole Bentzen, one of the leading pioneers of audiology in Denmark, who persuaded him to design and produce audiometers for the hearing center then being set up in Odense
The initial success of this venture led Poul Madsen to start his first company, Amplex, in Odense. His first product, a clinical audiometer was named after Ole Bentzen and called the OB 1.
Madsen
moves to Copenhagen
Dr. K. Terkildsen of the
University Hospital of Copenhagen (Rigshospitalet) and Engineer Scott-Nielsen had been experimenting
for some time with impedance measurements of the middle ear. By 1960, they needed someone to convert
their drawings into a working instrument so they turned to Poul Madsen. Since this collaboration presented
an opportunity to move to Copenhagen, Madsen sold Amplex to the Krogsø family* and founded Madsen Electronics.
Working closely together with Terkildsen and Scott-Nielsen, Poul Madsen fabricated the world’s first electro-acoustic “impedance bridge”, the ZO 60.
On his first trip to Europe, Dr. James Jerger (quoted in Audiologists’ Desk Reference vol. 1, JW Hall and Gus Mueller) visited Prof. Ewertsen at the University Hospital of Copenhagen shortly after the 5th International Congress of Audiology in Bonn, W. Germany. “They showed me a new electroacoustic gadget they were trying out in the clinic…called an “impedancemeter” since it measured impedance characteristics of the middle ear.
On returning to the USA, Jerger described the Madsen impedancemeter to his department at Evanston and predicted that “it would probably have a very significant impact on audiometric evaluation”. In 1961, Jerger had moved to Washington D.C., where he purchased the first Madsen ZO 61 in the USA.
Spreading
the word about impedance measurements
The 1960s
saw Madsen Electronics expand to a full product line of both portable and stationary audiometers and
impedance bridges (forerunners of today’s middle ear analyzers). Madsen, Terkildsen and Scott-Nielsen
traveled the world holding seminars on impedance measurements. Because of the speed and objectivity
with which it detected middle ear abnormalities, this application gained rapid acceptance in Europe
and, later, in the USA**.
In fact, such was the interest in the new technique of impedance measurement that Poul Madsen decided to cross the Atlantic permanently and so, in 1969, he moved to Canada where he set up Madsen Electronics, Inc., in Toronto. This company was dedicated to developing and producing impedance bridges, and to selling Madsen Electronics equipment throughout the Americas.
Madsen Electronics
celebrates 25th Jubilee
Both Madsen Electronics
companies went on to achieve many “firsts” over the next two decades – including the first commercially
available ABR/ERA instrumentation and the first PC-compatible audiologic equipment – and in 1985, Poul
Madsen and friends from all over the world gathered in Herlev, Denmark, to celebrate the company’s 25th
Jubilee.
Poul
Madsen celebrates
the company's 25yh Jubilee totether with
collaborators, and good friends, Sven Scott-Nielsen
and Poul Osterhammel
By the mid-1980s, both branches of the company had taken the technological leap to developing testing systems featuring monitors and menu-driven user interfaces: the ZO 174 for immittance measurement and the IGO-HAT 1000 for measuring insertion gain. This latter technique measured hearing instrument (H.I.) performance at the eardrum and has since become the universal standard for verifying H.I. fit (more commonly known now as real ear measurement).
A change
of life
Unfortunately, the late 1980s proved
to be a challenging time economically for both Madsen companies, and first the Canadian and then the
Danish subsidiaries were sold in 1988. Madsen Electronics, Inc., continued under the management of George
Pay, but it had become a sales subsidiary covering the North American market by the time it was moved
to Minneapolis to join GN Danavox Inc. in 1991. All production and R&D had been transferred to Herlev
by 1990.
Poul Madsen continued to live in the Toronto area for the rest of his life and joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto as an adjunct professor in 1991. Until his passing on November 15, 1997, Madsen worked on research into otoacoustic emissions and other audiologic measurement techniques. He was also active in some local audiologic ventures in Thailand and China, and he served on a number of standards committees. He was an honorary member of many audiologic and otologic societies around the world including the Acoustical Society of America.
Madsen’s substantial contribution to audiology is commemorated in the form of an annual Award for Applied Biomedical Engineering at the Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto.
Poul
Madsen, the man
Although many remember Poul
Madsen as an energetic entrepreneur and engineer, the fact that he never became rich as a result of
his ideas and work suggests that he was more interested in people and technology than business.
In fact, those who worked with him and for him recall how warm and hospitable he was, how he relished bringing business associates and employees into his home – and feeding them Danish herrings washed down with Danish snaps.
And as he often seemed to spend more time traveling than at home, he succeeded in his prime goal, which was to communicate the benefits of audiologic screening, diagnosis and treatment as widely as possible.
Or in the words of his motto: “Helping the world to better hearing”.
* Krogsø changed the company’s name from Amplex to Kamplex. Following a subsequent change of ownership, the name was changed again and became Danplex. Danplex joined Madsen Electronics under the auspices of GN ReSound audiological equipment division in 1999.
** In 1969, and using the ZO 70, Jerger and his group at Baylor tested a consecutive series of about 400 patients and published the results in a seminal paper entitled “Clinical Experience with Impedance Audiometry”.