Alec Reeves was born in Surrey, England in 1902.  He studied at Imperial College in London, and in 1923 he took a job working at International Western Electric.  When the firm was bought by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) two years later, Reeves moved to Paris to work at ITT’s laboratories there.

While in Paris, Reeves had the opportunity to work with some of the most brilliant minds of the time in engineering—including Maurice Deloraine and Henri Busignies, who went on to develop the HF/DF submarine detection system.  With them, Reeves designed and built the first radio and television lines extending across the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel.   In addition, Reeves made significant advances in microphone technology and short-wave radio.

It was during his time in Paris that Reeves came up with his most famous idea: PCM, or Pulse Code Modulation.  This was a new way of sending sound across distances.  The sound would be looked at or “sampled” millions of times per second, and these samples would be represented in binary code.  The frequent sampling made for better sound quality, and it is used today in a wide variety of CD, DVD and other digital technologies.

In 1937, however, PCM was simply an interesting theory.  The technology of the time was not up to handling millions of bits per second.  Reeves would have to wait decades to see his ideas put to use.

Alec Reeves held over 100 patents in his name and contributed to many important technologies.  But there’s little question that PCM had the greatest impact of all.  Without it, there would be no Internet, digital radio, television, mobile phones, CD’s or DVD’s.  It’s little wonder he’s known as the Father of the Information Age.