Albert Kahn, an inventor who co-founded Electro-Voice Incorporated, a pioneering company in audio technology, died of pneumonia on June 15 in Cassopolis, Mich. He was 98.

Kahn and local machinist Lou Burroughs founded a radio service shop in the basement of Century Tire and Rubber Company in South Bend, Ind.

Three years later, they developed a portable public-address system for Knute Rockne that allowed the legendary University of Notre Dame football coach to simultaneously instruct his players during drills on four adjacent fields.

Rockne called the system his “electric voice,” and Kahn and Burroughs changed the company’s name to Electro-Voice.

In 1940, Electro-Voice revolutionized tank and aircraft communications by introducing the noise-canceling microphone to the American military, tech nology that is still in use today. Such microphones allow users to speak in their normal voices while greatly reducing background noise.

The company invented the stereo magnetic phono cartridge in 1957. Six years later, it received the first Academy Award ever given for an audio product, for developing a shotgun microphone that improved the quality of sound recorded to film.

Kahn was president of the company from its founding until 1969, when Gulton Industries Incorporated acquired it. In 1970, he co-founded radio equipment maker Ten-Tec Incorporated in Sevierville, Tenn., and remained involved with that company until his death.

Kahn was born July 9, 1906, in La Salle, Ill., and moved to South Bend, Ind., in 1912. He lived in the area near the Michigan-Indiana border the rest of his life.