Shorin, Aleksandr

Born Nov. 23 (Dec. 5), 1890, in St. Petersburg; died Oct. 21,1941, in Ulianovsk. Soviet inventor in radio engineering, telegraphy, and sound recording.

Shorin entered the St. Petersburg Electrical Engineering Institute in 1911. His studies were interrupted, however, in 1914, when he was drafted into the army. He served at the Tsarskoe Selo radio station, where he began his work in radio engineering. Shorin graduated from the institute in 1919 and took a teaching position there. He was a member of the staff of the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory from 1919 to 1922, head of the radio division of the Weak-current Plant Trust from 1922 to 1927, and a member of the staff at the Central Laboratory of Wired Communications from 1927 to 1934. In 1934, Shorin was named director of the Institute of Automation and Remote Control (now the Institute of Problems of Control) of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Shorin is credited with a number of inventions. Among them are a start-stop printing telegraph, radio-teleprinter repeaters, loudspeaker systems, and sound-recording equipment. His name is closely associated with the birth and development of sound films in the USSR. Shorin received the State Prize of the USSR in 1941; he was also awarded the Order of Lenin.