Bowers & Wilkins

&W heritage

Throughout his lifetime, John Bowers, the founder of B&W Loudspeakers, strove relentlessly to get as close as possible to a transparent reproduction of recorded sound.

Born in 1923, near Worthing on the south coast of England, John spent the war years as a special operations executive in clandestine radio contact with allied resistance operatives in occupied Europe. He specialised in electronics and radio-transmission and after the war he opened a retail hi-fi store in Worthing with his business partner Roy Wilkins.

One of John’s passions was classical music. An avid concertgoer, he was disappointed by the sound reproduction that the best equipment of the day offered and set about improving the quality by modifying existing loudspeakers. Eventually, he started building his own designs in the workshop at the back of his hi-fi store.