Our History

Dr Leslie Kay is innovative stimulator of Bay Advanced Technologies Ltd. Our history is based on his work of the past 45 years helping the Blind to "See with sound" like a bat.

1950's

During the Cold War Dr Leslie Kay worked as a scientist for the British Navy developing underwater sonar technology using sound waves and auditory neural processing to find submerged objects such as submarines, torpedoes and mines.

1959

The Queen Mother's visit to a major school for the blind to open some new facilities, including a swimming pool, sparked Dr Kay's interest. He wondered how the children would find their way about in water and decided to make a sonic device for them to use in the pool. The thought of enabling the blind to "see with sound" has occupied him ever since.

Dr Kay discovered that bats use the kind of sonar that he had studied when working for the British Navy. With a colleague, Professor Donald Griffin, Dr Kay studied bats to establish the importance of wideband frequency sweep rather than a simple tone pulse.

1965

Leslie Kay early on put aside his idea of an underwater device in favour of developing a hand-held sonic torch. This device identified the object signatures by recognising complex tonal patterns projected by different objects.

For the Sonic Torch and the entirely new concepts it embodied Dr Kay became the first recipient of the Britain's National Scientific Achievement Award. It was the first commercial use of ultrasonic echolocation in air and the first commercial electronic device for blind persons.

Along side with the sonic torch he invented the binaural sonic glasses for blind children. Then, as Head of the Electrical Engineering Department at Canterbury University of New Zealand, Dr Kay developed the necessary wide bandwidth, wide angle ultrasonic transducers and the associated binaural electronic processing system to realize his "impossible invention" - the binaural Sonicguide.

1971

For this special achievement Dr Leslie Kay become the first engineer to be honored with Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand to which the elite scientists of New Zealand belong.

But these devices are just a part of many prototype equipment Dr Kay developed including a fish finder, a diver's sonar, an ultrasound device to listen to the heart valves moving, and an ultrasound imaging system to look into metals.

1978

Dr Kay invented the Trisensor (KASPA), new sensing device for the Blind that paints a cognitive picture of their world.

1987

He is honored by Queen Elizabeth II and made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).

1993

The Sonicguide was manufactured well into the late 1990's. Many blind individuals have used the Sonicguide for over 30 years. The technology worked and its demise was purely a commercial matter.

1998

Dr Leslie Kay become the inaugural winner of the Saatchi & Saatchi Innovation in Communication Award for his research into the development of ultrasound technology for the Blind and especially for the remarkable cognitive innovation embodied in (KASPA).

2003

With the advent of a miniaturised low-cost Sonic Torch, Dr Kay was able to develop the ‘K’ Sonar. The idea for combining the cane with the sonic torch was first suggested in the early 1970's. However it only became a reality when technological improvements and miniaturization made it possible, thus providing an urgently required solution to the mobility needs of the Blind.