General Forum

Re: Let's do an article!

soundproof — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:59:16 GMT

Well, you'll find various stabs at explanations, some quite fanciful - that it connotes from both 'god(ly)' and 'beautiful', for instance -- but the very sensible and obvious explanation is that in Denmark the company is known as B&O (you'll rarely find anyone saying Bang & Olufsen in regular speech, for instance. And even if you're searching for B&O goodies at dba.dk or lauritz.dk, you'll find more with B&O than with Bang & Olufsen.)

B&O - Beh-oh-Ô (with the latter Ô as the o in wolf.) And the ampersand (&) oh-sound is swallowed by Danes. BehÔ became Beo-, a nice prefix for the various products.

BTW - in connection with my research into B&O I found that the naming convention was changed in 1994, in October I think. Previously it was Beomaster, afterwards it was BeoMaster. Whenever I've written copy for B&O, and this has been translated into other languages, I have to pore over the versions to ensure that classic pre-1994 watershed moment names aren't changed to BeoXxxxx.

And now that Andy has a Beolab 5000, which is not a speaker, it might be fun to know that the -lab for laboratory was given to the amplifier (!) to highlight the accuracy and precision that was also illustrated with the slide-rule controls on the fascia - and naturally the tuner was called Beomaster 5000 just to confuse us. If nothing else, BehO do love their surprises! But they did sort it out nicely with -Vox, -Lab, -Center, -Vision, -Master, -Sound and -Com in the end.

Re: Let's do an article!

9 LEE — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:00:15 GMT

ooh - you tease!!

Explain...

Re: Let's do an article!

soundproof — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:00:30 GMT

Ah - the origin of Beo.

There are the various fancy explanations proffered in retrospect, and then there's the down to earth Jutlander inspired truth ...

Let's do an article!

9 LEE — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:59:17 GMT

Hello everyone!

I receive around 20 emails a day from BeoWorld visitors and members asking various things - sometimes offering valuable input such as adding to descriptions of products on the main site and giving us manual scans and tech specs. There are some extremely generous people out there, and i thank them. We also (just a valuably) have members and visitors suggesting new articles and areas.

I consider this email a 'constructive ticking off' !! I agree, we should have an article specifically related to this..

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http://www.beoworld.org/article_view.asp?id=3

Yes, I found this article very interesting. However, do you think it is possible to include an article specifically about the word "Beo" and where it came from. It it mentioned breifly in this article (one sentence), but there is so much more to now! First of all, how is it pronounced. Being from the States, it is not necessarily obvious. Is it "Bay-o" or is it "Bee-o"? What does the term Beo mean? What does Beolit mean, for that matter? And how is it pronounced? Is it Bayo-lit, Bayo-lite, Beeo-lit, Beeo-Lite?

Does it have something to do with the plastic used to make the radio? Is it related to the US version of Bakelite? It is hard for me to believe that you have this wonderful website and the word "Beo" is not clearly historically described or defined. How can you even know what BeoWorld is if you don't know what "Beo" is? I should think someone in your organization could tell us the story behind it. Sorry to seem so daft, but don't you think this should be pretty!

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I would love to hear the thoughts and views of our members, and hopefully we can construct a definitive article from it !!

Lee