Heinz Bohlen

{{Short description|Electronics and communications engineer}}

Heinz P. Bohlen (26 June 1935 – 2 February 2016{{citation needed|date=February 2016}})"[http://bohlen-pierce-conference.org/participants/heinz-bohlen Heinz Bohlen]", Bohlen-Pierce-Conference.org.{{YouTube|id=Pxf6Ae94JqU|title=BP2010 Heinz Bohlen Lecture (1of3)

}} was a microwave electronics and communications engineer.

He designed and described numerous non-octave musical scales (alternative musical tunings and temperaments), many based on combination tones, including the Bohlen–Pierce scale in 1972 (independently discovered by John R. Pierce in 1984, also a microwave electronics and communications engineer, six years later and Kees van Prooijen in 1978),"[http://ziaspace.com/_microtonality/BP/inventors/ the {{sic|two|nolink=1|correct=three}} inventors of the bohlen-pierce scale] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120426155530/http://ziaspace.com/_microtonality/BP/inventors/ |date=2012-04-26 }}", ZiaSpace.com. the A12 scale, and the 833 cents scale.

Bohlen began to question and investigate tunings in the early 1970s when a friend and graduate student at the Hamburg Hochschule für Musik und Theater asked him to begin recording concerts at the school. Bohlen asked students why all their music used twelve-tone equal temperament, including the octave, and, dissatisfied with the answers, began to investigate alternate tunings.