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Entrepreneur and
engineering whiz Amar
Bose can at last look
back with a pleasing
sense of vindication at
24 years of research on
a revolutionary auto
suspension system
which seemed like a
pipedream when he
began. Here¶s what
Automobile magazine
has to say about his
latest scientific
breakthrough: ³We
have just returned from
The Mountain (aka Bose
Corporation
headquarters in
Framingham,
Massachusetts) where
we witnessed the first mega-breakthrough in car suspensions since the gas-pressurized
shock. Is that hyperbolic enough for you?´

Supplanting almost 100 years of traditional spring-and-shock-absorber suspension systems,

this new system from Bose uses electromagnetic motors in place of traditional shocks.

The motors, mounted on

each wheel, receive input
from sensors throughout
the vehicle and react to
bumps and potholes
instantaneously, using
downward force to
extend the wheel into
potholes while keeping
the car level and the
driver virtually unaware.
As the wheel pops back
up onto the road, the
suspension recaptures
nearly all the energy
expended. 

The system also improves handling, virtually eliminating body roll in tight turns and
minimizing pitching motion during braking and acceleration. ³This is the first time a
suspension system is the same for a sports car and for a luxury car,´ says Amar Bose.

The premise was simple, as Automobile magazine put it: ³Develop a suspension system that
would offer the magic carpet ride of a fine luxury automobile, yet provide the crisp handling
of a high-performance sports car.´ Easier said than done. Luxury automakers like Lotus,
Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz have tried and failed. 

For Bose, the search began

with a question he asked
himself several decades ago.
³I wondered,´ he told Popular
Science magazine, ³what a
car suspension could do
without hardware constraints,
if you could have any force
you wanted, at any time,
between the body and the
wheel.´

In 1980 he decided to work

on it. As is his wont, he
ignored the 100-year-old
beaten track of automakers
who had perfected fluid-based
suspension hardware. He
threw away the hardware
model, and along with it the
limitations. 

A shock absorber can only

absorb energy. Fluid inertia
makes hydraulic systems too
sluggish. 

Bose focused on figuring out

mathematically what kind of
performance was theoretically
possible. Five years of
mathematical analysis
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revealed a tremendous
    6
 



  



  
   


  performance gap. There was
  






 no way any adjustments to


 



6






 

 existing shock-absorber
      
   technology could close it. So
     
 

 

 Bose engineers focused on an
  electromagnetic solution. All
 they needed was four things:
(a) high-efficiency, high-
power linear motors and (b) amplifiers, (c) extremely complex control algorithms to
stabilize the motors and (d) superfast microcomputers to run the system. So what if none of
this stuff existed? Bose decided to tackle the first three and hope the industry came up with
the fourth.

Bose¶s suspension team took on the challenge of designing high-speed linear motors,
control algorithms and high-efficiency amplifiers. They expected the computer industry to
get to the point after a while on their fourth essential item, high-speed processing. They
began testing designs and software. By 1989, the team developed a prototype ready to be
tested on the road.

In place of traditional shock absorbers, the prototype had linear electromagnetic motors
installed at each wheel. Based on technology Bose pioneered at MIT, power amplifiers
deliver electricity to the motors in response to signals from the control algorithms. The
nimble motors are so quick and forceful, they can extend downward to roll the tire through
a deep rut and then retract so fast that the all a motorist senses is a mild stirring. On the
far side of the pothole, the motor operates as a generator, so the suspension requires less
than a third the power of a typical car air- conditioning system.

So what is this wonderful suspension system actually like? Proud Bose engineers have been
taking people on test runs, and those who have experienced it are dazzled. 
An Automobile magazine
critic describes his
experience: ³To witness
the miracle, we were
strapped into a retrofitted
Lexus LS400 perched atop
a Bose-designed ride
simulator (itself an
engineering tour de force
that will most likely
replace the towering
three-story edifices
currently used by car
companies around the
world). The initial
experience programmed
into the simulator
emulated a terribly choppy
road with a whole lot of
high frequency energy
µexciting¶ the wheels. Butts
wiggled and stomachs
hopped up and down. It
was a buckboard. A
martini shaker. The
research engineers
working the controls were
just a little too jolly
watching the journalists
shaken, not stirred.

³Next, in Bose mode, we

attacked the same horrid
road, but inside the
passenger compartment,
we were sailing along on a 

cruise ship. The teensiest

of cradle rock. ³Looking at 6 










a mirror on an adjacent 


  
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wall of the garage, we 

 



could see our LS400¶s tires 6








 
chattering and bashing 
 
 
 


along, as if they belonged    






 
  

  

 



   


to another car, not the

 
 



 





one in which we were
blissfully rocking along. It 
was mind-boggling,
unbelievably astonishing, no less than earth shattering.´ 

There you have it. An amazing technological breakthrough that is remarkable not just for its
intrinsic value, but also because of the way it was done: 24 years of faith in innovation and
research. In today¶s age of tight-fisted bean counting executives with one eye constantly on
stock prices, how the on earth is it possible?
For the answer you have to look at one man²a trailblazing septuagenarian who at a very
frisky 75 still manages to have the insatiable curiosity of a toddler. 

Throughout his life, Amar Gopal Bose has had the avid curiosity of a child, the tenacity to
follow it through, and the gumption to flout conventional thinking. 

He was a legendary MIT professor

with a cult following, and Bose
Corporation, a company he built
from scratch, has made
breakthroughs across a mind-
boggling range of fields²
acoustics, aviation, defense,
nuclear physics, you name it. 

By the time he was 13, he could

fix radios, and when his father¶s
business went belly-up during
World War II, young Amar helped
support the family by fixing radios
after school.


At his alma mater MIT, when he


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he threw away the syllabus and
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confronted his students with nine

blackboards. He urged students to
ask tough questions, expected
section leaders to think out loud to illustrate the problem-solving process, abolished exam
time limits and allowed open books. 

His classes developed a cult following. One was described as Life 101. Many classes drew
mathematicians, physicists, biologists. 

William H. Brody, now the president of Johns Hopkins University, says of him: ³He would
walk into a lecture to 350 students, and you could hear a pin drop. He commanded a lot of
respect, because of the force of his intellect and his total dedication to the students. His
class gave me the courage to tackle high-risk problems; it equipped me with the problem-
solving skills I needed to be successful in several careers. Amar Bose taught me how to
think.´
At the end of the day it¶s Bose¶s way of thinking that
remains such a unique gift: Simply put, it is just a
wondrously dogged courage to chase an idea to its
very limit. Bose Corporation may have a billion-dollar
turnover, but Bose says he started the company to
chase ideas, not make money. And he kept his
company private so he could do that.

³I would have been fired a hundred times at a
company run by MBAs,´ he told Popular Science
magazine. ³But I never went into business to make
money. I went into business so that I could do
interesting things that hadn¶t been done before.´

So number crunchers¶ myopic obsession with the

bottom line was out, a commitment to pure research
was in. There have been instances where Bose has


allowed a project to continue even when he thought it 

' 6 #
 
may not succeed.


In 1983 engineering graduate student Ken Jacob enrolled in Bose¶s acoustics class during
his final semester at MIT. Jacob planned to design sound for Broadway productions. ³Within
20 minutes of the start of that first lecture,´ Jacob said, ³all my plans had changed.
Professor Bose connected everything I had learned and put all the pieces together. I said,
I¶ve got to work for this guy.¶´

Jacob was true to his word. He became director and chief engineer of Bose¶s Live Music
Technology Group. In 1994 he unveiled the Bose Auditioner program, a software tool that
allows acoustic engineers to hear precisely what a proposed audio system will sound like
from any seat in a large venue even before building construction begins. 

On the day that Jacob unveiled the project, Bose admitted

that he hadn¶t expected it to succeed. ³He let me work on
that with a team of five engineers for 10 years²most of the
time thinking that it was impossible,´ Jacob says, shaking
his head in disbelief.
Bose says it¶s the principle of allowing bright minds to search
for answers that was more important to him. ³I thought the
computational power wouldn¶t be there,´ he says. ³But the
problem was tough enough and the team was talented
enough that I thought their research would yield something
good.´ The funny thing was that Bose was proved wrong:
The program works today.

6


 
 




The program has been used to design
public address systems at the Staples
Center in Los Angeles, the Sistine
Chapel, and even Masjid al-Haram, the
grand mosque at Mecca, a challenging
environment, full of reverberating
marble, with a history of failed audio
solutions.

Popular Science, in a long, admiring

essay, sums it up best about the merit of
Amar Bose¶s mindset and contribution.

³The value of Amar Bose²and by

extension, his company²isn¶t so much in 

the things he has invented, but in the

sense of possibility he inspires,´ the -  



 

magazine wrote. ³Bose reminds us that 

we could all afford to be much more 
skyward-looking, far-fetched and
curious, and that we could all believe more strongly in our own potential to create.´