History

Harald Bode was born in 1909 in Hamburg, Germany. At the age of 18 he lost his parents and started studying. He graduated from the University of Hamburg in 1934.

In 1935, he began his pioneering work in the field of electronic musical instruments and with funding support provided by Christian Warnke his earliest work was completed in 1937. The Warbo Formant Organ, an archetype of today's polyphonic synthesizer, was a four voice key-assignment keyboard with two formant filters and dynamic envelope controller.

Eventually it went into commercial production by a factory in Germany and it became one of the earliest polyphonic synthesizer products, along with Novachord by Hammond. In 1959-1960 Bode developed modular synthesizer and sound processors. In 1961 he wrote a paper exploring the advantages of newly emerging transistor technology over older vacuum tube devices; he also served as AES session chairman on music and electronic for the fall conventions in 1962 and 1964. 

His ideas were adopted by Robert Moog, Donald Buchla and others.
After retiring from the chief engineer of Bell Aerospace in 1974, he composed TV-advertising spots and gave live concerts. He also founded and headed the Bode Sound Company from1972-1986. Also in 1977, Harald was invited as a chief engineer of the Norlin/Moog Music after Robert Moog left.

Instruments designed by Bode include the Polychord 1949, the Bode Organ (1951, later known as the Estey Organ), the Clavioline 1953 and a modular synthesizer / sound processor 1959, and 1960, the Bode Ring Modulators and Bode Frequency Shifters 1961 and 1974.
The Bode Vocoder was created in 1977. The Barberpole Phaser (1981) was his final instrument.
The Barberpole Phaser was his last  instrument in production, only 4 have been produced.

He died in New York, NY, United States 1987.