Marie Killick's story - Marie Louise Killick

These sections focus on Marie’s life and invention, her historic legal victory and the tragic aftermath for her and her young family.

Her life

My mother, Maria Louise Killick’s story is of one woman’s courage and tenacity in her ten-year fight against the huge musical combine Pye Radio. Pye stole her patented idea for a stylus that greatly improved sound reproduction when used to play the gramophone records of the time. After 12 years of research into her papers, press reports of the case, personal memories and four re-writes of my book A Sound Revolution, it is finally finished! …

Her invention

A gem of an idea: Edison had brought sound recording into the world. It was, it seemed, a marvel: to be able to record and replay that recording on a phonograph was indeed groundbreaking technology at the time. However, the crackle, hiss and distortion that accompanied the sound that the steel needles of the day produced marred the beauty of the music and the human voice …

Her historic legal victory

It had been a long journey for Marie in her battle with Pye Ltd, involving many years of burning the midnight oil; immersing herself in Patent Law; gathering the evidence of Pye’s infringement of her Patent covering the truncated sound reproducing stylus. A journey that had brought in its wake a lot of stress and upheaval for her and the family. Now finally she had reached her destination – the High Courts of Justice in the Strand, London …

The tragic aftermath

The case of Marie Louise Killick v Pye Radio in December 1957 made legal history. The case came before Justice Lloyd-Jacob in the Chancery Division of the Royal Courts of Justice, London. It lasted for over many days and judgement was given in Marie’s favour on 21 December – ruling that Pye Radio had infringed her Letters Patent 603606 for a truncated record stylus. The court made an injunction to prevent Pye from manufacturing her stylus and instructed that any remaining styli be destroyed. She was awarded full heads of damages and costs. Pye appealed to the Appeal Court. This came before three Judges, who upheld the lower court’s judgement that Pye had infringed Marie’s patent. There only remained for Marie to have her damages claim assessed and to restart manufacture of her stylus Sapphox …

A Sound Revolution

A Sound Revolution is the true story of Marie Louise Killick’s valiant fight against powerful men in the musical world. They had pirated her invention of a stylus that was to revolutionise the quality of sound reproduction of gramophone records.

Despite winning her ten-year legal battle in The Royal Courts of Justice in London, her opponents, Pye Radio, found other means to ensure she never received her damages – worth millions. Manoeuvred into bankruptcy, she spent three years trying to prevent the Official Receiver from settling her damage claim against Pye Radio for a derisory sum. She died at the age of 49, penniless and homeless.

During her fight she was ‘kidnapped’, her supporters were assaulted and even her solicitor was frightened off the case. During the fight, she was hounded from pillar to post and forced to spend six weeks with her children living in a builder’s yard. Truly a story of enormous courage and tenacity on her part to bring the men who had robbed her to justice!

Buy the book!

In the People Talk audio feature below, you can hear a short introduction to A Sound Revolution and an extract.

Marie Killick – first caller to the Samaritans

In November 1953 an English clergyman set up the first telephone helpline for people considering suicide. The Reverend Chad Varah began the pioneering service from a room in his own church house. This 9-minute BBC World Service programme tells the story of the helpline and the first call Chad Varah received, on 2nd November. It was from “a woman with a family, who was absolutely desperate.” Though anonymous in the programme, that woman was Marie Killick, as told here in The Good Samaritan.