Edison Records
Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording and playing back sound, in 1877. After patenting the invention and benefiting from the publicity and acclaim it received, Edison and his laboratory turned their attention to the commercial development of electric lighting, playing no further role in the development of the phonograph for nearly a decade. Edison's original phonograph recorded on sheets of tinfoil and was little more than a crude curiosity, although one that fascinated much of the public. These earliest phonographs were sold mainly to entrepreneurs who made a living out of traveling around the country giving "educational" lectures in hired halls or otherwise demonstrating the device to audiences for a fee. The tinfoil phonograph was not fit for any real practical use and public interest soon waned.
Henry Kloss
Kloss co-founded Acoustic Research, Inc. (AR) with Edgar Villchur in the summer of 1954. Villchur, a former teacher of Kloss, designed a loudspeaker with an elegant solution to the problem of bass harmonic distortion, called the "acoustic-suspension" loudspeaker. 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, unsuccessfully, to sell the patent to both Altec Lansing and Bozak, large speakers companies 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." 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, Villchur and KLoss decided to manufacture this new speaker design that 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.