Henry Kloss
Encyclopedia
Henry Kloss was a prominent American audio engineer and businessman who helped advance high fidelity
loudspeaker
and radio
receiver
technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss was an undergraduate student in physics
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(class of 1953), but never received a degree. He was responsible for a number of innovations, including 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 Video Beam 1000.
, at least during the period he was directly associated with them. Kloss was well-known for his informal management style, dressing casually, and riding a beat-up bicycle through the streets of Cambridge.
(AR) with Edgar Villchur
in 1954. Villchur, a former teacher of Kloss, had conceived a novel way of building an accurate loudspeaker. Together they developed the AR Model 1, which changed the way that speakers were designed. Until then, speakers of quality had to be quite large. By using an enclosure with a sealed air cavity behind the speaker cone which acted as a spring
to damp woofer
motion, they were able to make less-expensive, bookshelf-size speakers
. Although they were inefficient in power consumption compared to ported designs, they had extremely low distortion. The AR-1 was the first commercial acoustic suspension
loudspeaker.
Kloss began his custom of eponym
ous 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. 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. Kloss created the first solid state
record player, the KLH Model Eleven. In 1962, he collaborated with Ray Dolby
of Dolby Laboratories
to develop the B version of the Dolby noise reduction system
to reduce tape hiss. This resulted in the KLH Model Forty reel-to-reel tape recorder, Dolby's first foray into the consumer product market. By 1967, Kloss had left KLH. KLH was eventually sold to Kyocera
, and production was shifted overseas. By 1979, nearly all of the original design and engineering team had left the company.
Kloss founded Advent Corporation in 1967. The name came from the legal description the advent corporation ("advent" means approaching in Latin
) used in the incorporation
documents before the actual name is selected. The original goal had been to develop a projection television, but by 1968 he had quit KLH
to build a remarkable dual driver speaker system with 10 inch (25 cm) woofer called simply The Advent Loudspeaker (later colloquially called the Large Advent after introduction of The Smaller Advent Loudspeaker). It rivaled the sound of the then top-line AR Model 3a (which used three drivers and a 12 inch (30 cm) woofer), but only cost about half as much. He then went to work on increasing the fidelity of cassette tapes, a format that had originally been meant to be used only for dictation
. Kloss introduced the Advent 201 in 1971, incorporating Dolby B along with chromium dioxide tape
in the first popular high fidelity cassette deck
.
The Advent Video Beam 1000 was finally released in 1972, the first large screen projection television for home use. This led to founding Kloss Video Corporation in 1977. He invented the Novatron
tube there, which increased the efficiency of projection TVs.
Eventually, long after Kloss’ departure, Advent ran into hard times and never emerged from a bankruptcy declared in March 1981. Kloss’ own Video Corporation passed on reacquiring the New Hampshire based brand, which was later merged into International Jensen.
was founded in 1988. That company was quite successful, producing dozens of different models. They also produced table radio
s and high quality speaker systems for computer
s. Kloss left Cambridge SoundWorks in 1996. The company is now a subsidiary of Creative Technology
.
, with long-time associate and former Cambridge SoundWorks
co-founder Tom DeVesto. There, he made the Model One (mono
) and Model Two (stereo
) table radios using MOSFET
technology to increase selectivity; they have elements similar in appearance to his legendary KLH Model Eight radio mentioned earlier. The high-quality tuner
combined with a good speaker arrangement led some reviewers to call these modern radios "Bose killers." However, the Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 had used some similar technology, leading to a lawsuit between Cambridge and Tivoli Audio.
High fidelity
High fidelity—or hi-fi—reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound or images, to distinguish it from the poorer quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment...
loudspeaker
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that produces sound in response to an electrical audio signal input. Non-electrical loudspeakers were developed as accessories to telephone systems, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube made loudspeakers more generally useful...
and radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
receiver
Receiver (radio)
A radio receiver converts signals from a radio antenna to a usable form. It uses electronic filters to separate a wanted radio frequency signal from all other signals, the electronic amplifier increases the level suitable for further processing, and finally recovers the desired information through...
technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss was an undergraduate student in physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(class of 1953), but never received a degree. He was responsible for a number of innovations, including the acoustic suspension loudspeaker
Acoustic suspension
The acoustic suspension woofer is a type of loudspeaker that reduces bass distortion caused by non-linear, stiff mechanical suspensions in conventional loudspeakers...
and the high fidelity cassette deck
Cassette deck
A cassette deck is a type of tape recorder for playing or recording audio compact cassettes. A deck was formerly distinguished from a recorder as being part of a stereo component system, while a recorder had a self-contained power amplifier...
. In 2000, Kloss was one of the first inductees into the Consumer Electronics Association
Consumer Electronics Association
The Consumer Electronics Association is a standards and trade organization for the consumer electronics industry in the United States. The Consumer Electronics Association is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $173 billion U.S...
's Hall of Fame. He earned an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for his development of a projection television system, the Advent Video Beam 1000.
Career
During the course of his career, Kloss founded or co-founded several significant audio and video equipment manufacturing companies, most of which were located in Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, at least during the period he was directly associated with them. Kloss was well-known for his informal management style, dressing casually, and riding a beat-up bicycle through the streets of Cambridge.
Kloss Industries
In the early 1950s, Kloss built (but did not design) the Baruch-Lang speaker in his loft in Cambridge while he was a student at MIT. 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").Acoustic Research
Kloss co-founded Acoustic Research CorporationAcoustic Research
Acoustic Research was a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that manufactured high-end audio equipment. The brand is now owned by Audiovox. Acoustic Research was well known for the AR-3 series of speaker systems, which used the 12-inch acoustic suspension woofer of the AR-1 with newly designed...
(AR) with Edgar Villchur
Edgar Villchur
Edgar Marion Villchur was an American inventor, educator, and writer widely known for his 1954 invention of the acoustic suspension loudspeaker which revolutionized the field of high-fidelity equipment...
in 1954. Villchur, a former teacher of Kloss, had conceived a novel way of building an accurate loudspeaker. Together they developed the AR Model 1, which changed the way that speakers were designed. Until then, speakers of quality had to be quite large. By using an enclosure with a sealed air cavity behind the speaker cone which acted as a spring
Spring (device)
A spring is an elastic object used to store mechanical energy. Springs are usually made out of spring steel. Small springs can be wound from pre-hardened stock, while larger ones are made from annealed steel and hardened after fabrication...
to damp woofer
Woofer
Woofer is the term commonly used for a loudspeaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds, typically from around 40 hertz up to about a kilohertz or higher. The name is from the onomatopoeic English word for a dog's bark, "woof"...
motion, they were able to make less-expensive, bookshelf-size speakers
Bookshelf speaker
A bookshelf loudspeaker is a compact loudspeaker, generally sold for consumer-grade home audio applications as part of a shelf stereo pair or home theater package, that is compact in size and intended to be placed on a raised surface, i.e...
. Although they were inefficient in power consumption compared to ported designs, they had extremely low distortion. The AR-1 was the first commercial acoustic suspension
Acoustic suspension
The acoustic suspension woofer is a type of loudspeaker that reduces bass distortion caused by non-linear, stiff mechanical suspensions in conventional loudspeakers...
loudspeaker.
KLH
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous products by lending his last name's initial to KLH
KLH (company)
KLH is an audio company founded in 1957 as KLH Research and Development Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, by Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and J. Anton Hoffman originally to produce loudspeakers. KLH had sales of $17 million, employed over 500 people and sold over 30,000...
as a founder in 1957, along with Malcolm Low and J. Anton Hofmann (son of pianist Józef Hofmann
Józef Hofmann
Josef Casimir Hofmann was a Polish-American virtuoso pianist, composer, music teacher, and inventor.-Biography:...
) 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
Electronic selectivity
Selectivity is a measure of the performance of a radio receiver to respond only to the radio signal it is tuned to and reject other signals nearby in frequency, such as another broadcast on an adjacent channel....
, the Model Eight. 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. Kloss created the first solid state
Solid state (electronics)
Solid-state electronics are those circuits or devices built entirely from solid materials and in which the electrons, or other charge carriers, are confined entirely within the solid material...
record player, the KLH Model Eleven. In 1962, he collaborated with Ray Dolby
Ray Dolby
Ray Dolby is the American engineer and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR. He was also a co-inventor of video tape recording while at Ampex. He is the founder of Dolby Laboratories.-Biography:...
of Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories, Inc. , often shortened to Dolby Labs, is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction and audio encoding/compression.-History:...
to develop the B version of the Dolby noise reduction system
Dolby noise reduction system
Dolby NR is the name given to a series of noise reduction systems developed by Dolby Laboratories for use in analog magnetic tape recording. The first was Dolby A, a professional broadband noise reduction for recording studios in 1966, but the best-known is Dolby B , a sliding band system for the...
to reduce tape hiss. This resulted in the KLH Model Forty reel-to-reel tape recorder, Dolby's first foray into the consumer product market. By 1967, Kloss had left KLH. KLH was eventually sold to Kyocera
Kyocera
is a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...
, and production was shifted overseas. By 1979, nearly all of the original design and engineering team had left the company.
Advent Corporation
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
) used in the incorporation
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
documents before the actual name is selected. The original goal had been to develop a projection television, but by 1968 he had quit KLH
KLH (company)
KLH is an audio company founded in 1957 as KLH Research and Development Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, by Henry Kloss, Malcolm S. Low, and J. Anton Hoffman originally to produce loudspeakers. KLH had sales of $17 million, employed over 500 people and sold over 30,000...
to build a remarkable dual driver speaker system with 10 inch (25 cm) woofer called simply The Advent Loudspeaker (later colloquially called the Large Advent after introduction of The Smaller Advent Loudspeaker). It rivaled the sound of the then top-line AR Model 3a (which used three drivers and a 12 inch (30 cm) woofer), but only cost about half as much. He then went to work on increasing the fidelity of cassette tapes, a format that had originally been meant to be used only for dictation
Dictation machine
A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorders....
. Kloss introduced the Advent 201 in 1971, incorporating Dolby B along with chromium dioxide tape
Chromium(IV) oxide
Chromium dioxide or chromium oxide is a synthetic magnetic substance once widely used in magnetic tape emulsion. With the increasing popularity of CDs and DVDs, the use of chromium oxide has declined. However, it is still used in data tape applications for enterprise-class storage systems...
in the first popular high fidelity cassette deck
Cassette deck
A cassette deck is a type of tape recorder for playing or recording audio compact cassettes. A deck was formerly distinguished from a recorder as being part of a stereo component system, while a recorder had a self-contained power amplifier...
.
The Advent Video Beam 1000 was finally released in 1972, the first large screen projection television for home use. This led to founding Kloss Video Corporation in 1977. He invented the Novatron
Novatron
Novatron is a trademark referring to one of various products:*2D and 3D machine control products*Photographic lighting equipment.*The Mellotron keyboard musical instrument*A series of Schmidt video projection monitors developed by Kloss Video Corporation...
tube there, which increased the efficiency of projection TVs.
Eventually, long after Kloss’ departure, Advent ran into hard times and never emerged from a bankruptcy declared in March 1981. Kloss’ own Video Corporation passed on reacquiring the New Hampshire based brand, which was later merged into International Jensen.
Cambridge SoundWorks
Cambridge SoundWorksCambridge SoundWorks
Cambridge SoundWorks is a North Andover, Massachusetts based consumer audio manufacturer and retailer. The company is now a subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd..-History:...
was founded in 1988. That company was quite successful, producing dozens of different models. They also produced table radio
Table radio
Table radio is a term used to describe a small, self-contained radio receiver used as an entertainment device. Most such receivers are limited to radio functions, though some have compact disc or audio cassette players and clock radio functions built in; some models also include shortwave or...
s and high quality speaker systems for computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s. Kloss left Cambridge SoundWorks in 1996. The company is now a subsidiary of Creative Technology
Creative Technology
Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal...
.
Tivoli Audio
Kloss briefly went into retirement, but soon found himself co-founding another company, Tivoli AudioTivoli Audio
Tivoli Audio is an American electronics company based in Boston, Massachusetts, mainly making radios and other sound reproduction equipment. The company was started by Tom DeVesto. Tivoli Audio emphasizes a simple and functional design without redundant switches, knobs or lights. Henry Kloss...
, with long-time associate and former Cambridge SoundWorks
Cambridge SoundWorks
Cambridge SoundWorks is a North Andover, Massachusetts based consumer audio manufacturer and retailer. The company is now a subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd..-History:...
co-founder Tom DeVesto. There, he made the Model One (mono
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
) and Model Two (stereo
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
) table radios using MOSFET
MOSFET
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor is a transistor used for amplifying or switching electronic signals. The basic principle of this kind of transistor was first patented by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925...
technology to increase selectivity; they have elements similar in appearance to his legendary KLH Model Eight radio mentioned earlier. The high-quality tuner
Tuner (radio)
A radio tuner is a subsystem that receives radio broadcasts and converts them into audio-frequency signals which can be fed into an amplifier driving a loudspeaker. FM tuner, AM tuner, Digital Audio Broadcasting DAB tuner, etc. are types of radio tuner dealing with transmissions using different...
combined with a good speaker arrangement led some reviewers to call these modern radios "Bose killers." However, the Cambridge SoundWorks Model 88 had used some similar technology, leading to a lawsuit between Cambridge and Tivoli Audio.
External links
- About KLH.
- KLH Model Eight table radio illustrated.
- Audiovox (current owner of Acoustic Research and Advent brands)
- Advent fan page
- Cambridge SoundWorks
- About Tivoli Audio.