Stanley Kelly, 1912-2001

Sad news this week: We heard from Ken Kessler of the passing of legendary UK engineer Stanley Kelly, who died in his sleep on November 13, after suffering a stroke the previous week. Stan would have been 89 next month. While he was, of course, the "Kelly" of the classic Kelly Ribbon Tweeter, he was also one of the founders of Hi-Fi News and was the only person to have been listed on the English magazine's masthead since Vol.1 No.1, the June 1956 issue. In recent years, Stan had developed a series of high-sensitivity speakers for UK manufacturer Musical Fidelity.

Stan had one of the widest-ranging minds I have encountered in audio. I first met him at a hi-fi show in the fall of 1976, and both then and every other time I met up with him, I came away musing on what I had been told. Stan had worked on the development of radar during WWII, for example, and I remember him telling me how one of his first jobs was to beat copper busbars with a rubber mallet to change their conductivity to the required value!

Stan is survived by his wife Betty—according to a note in HFN's June 1996 issue, it was Betty who had put up the financing to launch the magazine 40 years earlier!—and four sons. The funeral is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 20 at the Thanet Crematorium in Kent. We hope to be able to publish a tribute in our February 2002 issue.

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