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Henry Kloss AI simulator
(@Henry Kloss_simulator)
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Henry Kloss AI simulator
(@Henry Kloss_simulator)
Henry Kloss
Henry Kloss (February 21, 1929 – January 31, 2002) was a prominent American audio engineer and entrepreneur who helped advance high fidelity loudspeaker and radio receiver technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss (pronounced with a long o, like "close") was an undergraduate student in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (class of 1953), but never received a degree. He was responsible for a number of innovations, including, in part, the acoustic suspension loudspeaker and the high fidelity cassette deck. In 2000, Kloss was one of the first inductees into the Consumer Electronics Association's Hall of Fame. He earned an Emmy Award for his development of a projection television system, the Advent VideoBeam 1000.
During the course of his half-century career, Kloss founded or co-founded several significant audio and video equipment manufacturing companies, most of which were located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least during the period he was directly associated with them.
After entering MIT as a student in 1948, Kloss bought woodworking tools which he used to make enclosures in his Cambridge loft for a loudspeaker cabinet designed by an MIT professor and his grad student, the Baruch-Lang speaker. This corner speaker had four 5" drivers ("and 15 holes"), and sold for $25 (or $30 for the Deluxe Model "with a handsome frame and grill cloth").[citation needed]. Henry dropped out of MIT after being drafted. He was assigned to work in New Jersey, and took a night course in high fidelity taught by Edgar Villchur at New York University.
Kloss was an early adopter of new technology, including the transistor, Dolby noise reduction, and chromium dioxide magnetic recording tape.
Kloss co-founded Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR) with Edgar Villchur in the summer of 1954. Villchur, a former teacher of Kloss, had designed what he called the "acoustic suspension" loudspeaker, an elegant solution to the problem of bass harmonic distortion. Villchur had written and was awarded a patent for the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker system [US Patent No. 2,775,309, December 15, 1956], and had built a prototype of the design at his home in Woodstock, New York. Villchur had tried to sell the patent to both Altec Lansing and Bozak, manufacturers of large speakers at the time, but neither company was interested. Altec told Villchur, "if something like what you describe was possible, our engineers would have already discovered it".[citation needed]
After class one afternoon in the spring of 1954, Villchur and Kloss rode from New York City to Woodstock in Villchur's 1938 Buick, to allow Kloss to hear the prototype. After this, they jointly decided to manufacture the new speaker design which became known as the "AR-1", the first commercial acoustic-suspension loudspeaker system. Villchur was 100% responsible for the design and patent of the system; Kloss was responsible for perhaps 75% of the mechanical design of the speaker cabinet and system.
Kloss began his custom of eponymous products by lending his last name's initial to KLH as a founder in 1957, along with Malcolm Low and J. Anton Hofmann (son of pianist Józef Hofmann), who had also been investors in AR. At Cambridge-based KLH, Kloss continued to build speakers such as the classic KLH Model Five and Six, and produced one of the first small FM radios with high selectivity, the Model Eight. The KLH Nine was the world's first full range (flat from 40 Hz - 20 kHz) electrostatic loudspeaker (1960). The tweeter was mounted near the middle, with ten woofer panels occupying the remaining area. Prototypes were completed at JansZen Laboratory and put into field tests starting in 1957, and once perfected, the speakers were put into production at KLH.
Though KLH was sold to the Singer Corporation in 1964, Kloss remained at the firm for a short time to assist in the development of additional speakers and electronic music products, and the firm continued to attract design and engineering talent. In 1967, he collaborated with Ray Dolby of Dolby Laboratories to develop the lower-cost "B" version of the Dolby noise reduction system to reduce tape hiss. This resulted in the KLH Model Forty reel-to-reel tape recorder, the first appearance of Dolby technology in the consumer product market.
Henry Kloss
Henry Kloss (February 21, 1929 – January 31, 2002) was a prominent American audio engineer and entrepreneur who helped advance high fidelity loudspeaker and radio receiver technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss (pronounced with a long o, like "close") was an undergraduate student in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (class of 1953), but never received a degree. He was responsible for a number of innovations, including, in part, the acoustic suspension loudspeaker and the high fidelity cassette deck. In 2000, Kloss was one of the first inductees into the Consumer Electronics Association's Hall of Fame. He earned an Emmy Award for his development of a projection television system, the Advent VideoBeam 1000.
During the course of his half-century career, Kloss founded or co-founded several significant audio and video equipment manufacturing companies, most of which were located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least during the period he was directly associated with them.
After entering MIT as a student in 1948, Kloss bought woodworking tools which he used to make enclosures in his Cambridge loft for a loudspeaker cabinet designed by an MIT professor and his grad student, the Baruch-Lang speaker. This corner speaker had four 5" drivers ("and 15 holes"), and sold for $25 (or $30 for the Deluxe Model "with a handsome frame and grill cloth").[citation needed]. Henry dropped out of MIT after being drafted. He was assigned to work in New Jersey, and took a night course in high fidelity taught by Edgar Villchur at New York University.
Kloss was an early adopter of new technology, including the transistor, Dolby noise reduction, and chromium dioxide magnetic recording tape.
Kloss co-founded Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR) with Edgar Villchur in the summer of 1954. Villchur, a former teacher of Kloss, had designed what he called the "acoustic suspension" loudspeaker, an elegant solution to the problem of bass harmonic distortion. Villchur had written and was awarded a patent for the acoustic-suspension loudspeaker system [US Patent No. 2,775,309, December 15, 1956], and had built a prototype of the design at his home in Woodstock, New York. Villchur had tried to sell the patent to both Altec Lansing and Bozak, manufacturers of large speakers at the time, but neither company was interested. Altec told Villchur, "if something like what you describe was possible, our engineers would have already discovered it".[citation needed]
After class one afternoon in the spring of 1954, Villchur and Kloss rode from New York City to Woodstock in Villchur's 1938 Buick, to allow Kloss to hear the prototype. After this, they jointly decided to manufacture the new speaker design which became known as the "AR-1", the first commercial acoustic-suspension loudspeaker system. Villchur was 100% responsible for the design and patent of the system; Kloss was responsible for perhaps 75% of the mechanical design of the speaker cabinet and system.
Kloss began his custom of eponymous products by lending his last name's initial to KLH as a founder in 1957, along with Malcolm Low and J. Anton Hofmann (son of pianist Józef Hofmann), who had also been investors in AR. At Cambridge-based KLH, Kloss continued to build speakers such as the classic KLH Model Five and Six, and produced one of the first small FM radios with high selectivity, the Model Eight. The KLH Nine was the world's first full range (flat from 40 Hz - 20 kHz) electrostatic loudspeaker (1960). The tweeter was mounted near the middle, with ten woofer panels occupying the remaining area. Prototypes were completed at JansZen Laboratory and put into field tests starting in 1957, and once perfected, the speakers were put into production at KLH.
Though KLH was sold to the Singer Corporation in 1964, Kloss remained at the firm for a short time to assist in the development of additional speakers and electronic music products, and the firm continued to attract design and engineering talent. In 1967, he collaborated with Ray Dolby of Dolby Laboratories to develop the lower-cost "B" version of the Dolby noise reduction system to reduce tape hiss. This resulted in the KLH Model Forty reel-to-reel tape recorder, the first appearance of Dolby technology in the consumer product market.