Last week saw the death of the audio pioneer Edgar Villchur - the founder of the Acoustic Research company and (unbeknownst to me) a pioneer in the development of hearing aids, too - at the age of 94.
After the jump, let's have a look at his career, which helped change the way we listen to music in our homes.
But first ...... you know the drill .......
Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention).
Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, and indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself.
While not a techie, I have been something of an audio buff (in part having worked my way through college playing in a band). Last year, I did a profile on James B. Lansing - of Altec and JBL fame - whose products are seen not only in home stereos and recording studios, but also in many guitar and bass amps and especially at concert sound systems. In addition, another diary told the story of the feud between the Hammond organ & Leslie speaker companies. But by contrast, I had not known much about Edgar Villchur - which this diary will try to rectify.
He was born in New York City in 1917, and earned a master's degree in art history at CCNY (the flagship campus of New York's City College). He was drafted into the Army during WW-II and was trained in maintenance and repair of radios, radar, and other equipment. He rose to the rank of captain and was in charge of the electronic equipment for his squadron.
He parlayed that experience into running an audio shop in New York’s Greenwich Village, repairing radios and building custom home high fidelity sets. He took courses in mathematics and engineering at New York University, read all he could on audio at the NY Public Library and - along with his work experience - applied for a night teaching job at NYU in the mid-fifties, for a course he developed called Reproduction of Sound. They accepted his proposal, the first time such a course had been offered anywhere. Later, he also became a columnist for (what is now today) Audio magazine.
At the same time, he worked at the American Foundation for the Blind - organizing their laboratory and designing or redesigning devices to make it easier for blind people to live independently. He improved the efficiency of the tone arm on the turntable made by the Foundation, and also redesigned it so that it descended slowly to the surface of a vinyl record - not only benefiting blind persons then, but which became a feature attraction of the AR turntables that his Acoustic Research company was to develop later.
Although AR made other products, its birth came largely due to the weak link in home audio at the time: speakers. At the time, small speakers were not capable of providing clear sound, which required something like the Klipschorn - built by another audio pioneer, Paul Klipsch - being 51 inches high, approaching refrigerator size.
He developed the concept of acoustic suspension - which was turned down by other companies, including another audio pioneer Rudy Bozak who thought it technically unworkable. He also developed the dome tweeter - enabling the tweeter to handle more power.
And so in 1952 Villchur formed Acoustic Research in the Cambridge, Massachusetts loft of a protegé of his, Henry Kloss - who later went on to found his own companies including KLH, Advent and Cambridge Sound Works. Their speaker designs resulted in bookshelf speakers able to reproduce sound in a way formerly limited to much larger models - which led the editor of Stereophile magazine to say, "A guy’s wife could accept their presence on the bookshelf in the living room."
Villchur's company did some things unusual for the time for a start-up company - they followed equal-opportunity employment practices, and employees received health insurance and profit sharing—benefits that were highly unusual in any but the largest firms in the 1950s and 1960s.
The company was also known for its liberal repair policies, fixing most products for free no matter how old they were, and in general providing excellent customer service. AR’s advertising was distinct from the sensationalistic ads of its competitors, instead concentrating on technical information and word-of-mouth. An advanced model speaker that Villchur developed, the AR-3, is exhibited at the The Smithsonian Institution’s Information Age Exhibit in Washington, DC.
After he sold the company to Teledyne in 1967, he wanted to enter a new field - and having already worked at the American Foundation for the Blind, he chose the field of hearing aids, since he felt that there was considerable room for improvement in these devices. He spent several years investigating the problem in his home laboratory in Woodstock, NY.
By 1973, he had come up with multichannel compression - a new concept in hearing aid design. Rather than apply for a patent, he decided to publish his findings and make them available to anyone who wanted to use them. ReSound, a hearing aid company in California, worked with Villchur to produce a compression hearing aid. Over the next two decades, his design became the industry standard for hearing aids.
Edgar Villchur wrote three books and over one hundred and fifty articles on high fidelity, sound reproduction, audio engineering, and hearing aid technology in both peer-reviewed scientific journals and popular magazines, including two articles written when he was ninety years old. At the 1995 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America he received the Life Achievement Award from the American Auditory Society.
All of this led the UK-based Hi-Fi News to rank him #1 among the "50 Most Important Audio Pioneers" (not on-line) in 2006. For someone unknown to the general public, such an award comes as a surprise - a most pleasant one.
Now, on to Top Comments:
--------------------------------------------
From Clarknt67:
in the diary by Geekesque about the Obama administration's unforced error on the jobs bill: tiggers thotful spot suggests a slogan so clever it makes me sad.
From Angie in WA State:
In the diary by Lisa Lockwood on the police attacks on Occupy Oakland protesters trying to come to the aid of someone laying on the ground injured - hey mister goes on to ask this question: "I don't wear a raincoat when there isn't any rain. Why do the police wear riot gear when there isn't any rioting?"
From the diary by jimstaro announcing a vigil for Scott Olsen - a Marine veteran who was hit by a police projectile at the Occupy Oakland demonstration - allenjo found a link to send donations for Scott Olsen and his family.
From Dragon5616:
In Meteor Blades' shocking post South Dakota kidnaps Indian children and sticks them in white foster care .... citisven calls it what it is -- colonial hubris.
From Cali Scribe:
In today's front-page piece on Politifact "fact-checking" OWS signs ... this thread started by Penman suggests some other fact-checking Politifact has been doing.
From brillig:
In Hunter's Occupy update 40 - he suggests that lawns may need person-status. Meteor Blades takes him to task for that.
From raina:
No one said whether or not a comment by the diarist in Top Comments (handled by brillig last night) could be nominated, but here's mine.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening .... ....
In yesterday's Midday Open Thread - which discussed (among other things) an article in Gawker which mocked Meghan McCain's report from Occupy Wall Street - qazplm asked "Why are we mocking her?", and notes in particular, "I think she tries. She has a lifetime of programming from her family, but best she can, she tries - and I have a real hard time faulting or mocking that".
And finally, yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
1) You're assuming it's ineptitude by RFK Lives — 207
2) Quarterly posturing for the base is completed by Dallasdoc — 173
3) The woozle union has come out in support. by ruleoflaw — 132
4) If the first thing that pops into by beltane — 123
5) Hellz yeah! by dharmafarmer — 107
6) Love it. Thanks. by ursoklevar — 107
7) None of the President's housing programs by Geekesque — 107
8) So far, here's the score: by DefendOurConstitution — 101
9) I don't recall such reactions by mrblifil — 96
10) Caligula by Frankenoid — 94
11) I think I just saw my daughter by no way lack of brain — 93
12) Change we can make believe in. by tiggers thotful spot — 93
13) Telling vicious lies in defense of the 0.1% by blue aardvark — 91
14) creeping 1964 Goldwaterism by annieli — 91
15) C is for by Khun David — 90
16) thank Ceiling Cat for his generous endorsement by Statusquomustgo — 88
17) Google's CEO has condemned it by DWG — 84
18) that's how I feel too!!! by Jill Richardson — 83
19) And this is Dems' Hope for 2012. by khereva — 83
20) This has nothing whatsoever by beltane — 81
21) His main job currently is to be by Geekesque — 81
22) occupy the sofa! by Debbie in ME — 81
23) Heh by Dallasdoc — 76
24) Thanx, Standing In Solidarity We Cannot Fail: by leonard145b — 76
25) No way... basement cat is just not that evil.... by Statusquomustgo — 75
26) I think you should read the fine print on by praenomen — 75
27) help me because i'm slow by Laurence Lewis — 75
28) Fucked doesn't even begin to describe our by nailbender — 74
29) They protect themselves against Republican by Geekesque — 73
30) This is a real wake-up call. I don't by blue jersey mom — 73
31) Here in Cleveland by anastasia p — 73
