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Part 1 Acoustics Chapter 1 Audio and Acoustic DNA—Do You Know Your Audio and Acoustic Ancestors? by Don and Carolyn Davis Introduction . 5 Genesis . 5 1893—The Magic Year . 6 Bell Laboratories and Western Electric . 7 Harvey Fletcher (1884–1981) . 9 Negative Feedback—1927 . 10 Harry Nyquist (1889–1976) . 10 The dB, dBm and the VI . 10 Bell Labs and Talking Motion Pictures. 11 Motion Pictures—Visual versus Auditory . 11 The Transition from Western Electric to Private Companies . 11 Audio Publications . 12 The “High” Fidelity Equipment Designers . 13 Sound System Equalization . 13 Acoustics . 14 Professional-Level Audio Equipment Scaled to Home Use . 15 Edwin Armstrong (1890–1954) The Invention of Radio and Fidelity . 16 Acoustic Measurements—Richard C. Heyser (1931–1987) . 17 Calculators and Computers . 18 The Meaning of Communication . 19 Bibliography. 20 3 Audio and Acoustic DNA—Do You Know Your Audio and Acoustic Ancestors? 5 Introduction separate term. The interesting meaning of this word along with entrepreneur-tinkerer allows one a meaning- This chapter is the DNA of my ancestors, the giants ful way to divide the pioneers whose work, stone by who inspired and influenced my life. If you or a hun- stone, built the edifice we call audio and acoustics. dred other people wrote this chapter, your ancestors Mathematics, once understood, is the simplest way would be different. I hope you find reading the DNA of to fully explore complex ideas but the tinkerer often my ancestors worthwhile and that it will provoke you was the one who found the “idea” first. In my youth I into learning more about them. was aware of events such as Edwin Armstrong’s con- Interest in my audio and acoustic ancestors came struction of the entire FM transmitting and reception about by starting the first independent Hi-Fi shop, The system on breadboard circuits. A successful demonstra- Golden Ear, in Lafayette, Indiana in early 1952. The tion then occurred followed by detailed mathematical great men of hi-fi came to our shop to meet with the analysis by the same men who earlier had used mathe- audio enthusiasts from Purdue: Paul Klipsch, Frank matics to prove its impossibility. In fact, one of the McIntosh, Gordon Gow, H.H. Scott, Saul Marantz, mathematician’s papers on the impossibility of FM was Rudy Bozak, Avery Fisher—manufacturers who exhib- directly followed at the same meeting by a working ited in the Hi-Fi shows at the Hollywood Roosevelt and demonstration of an FM broadcast by Armstrong. the Hilton in New York City. We sold our shops in Indi- The other side of the coin is best illustrated by James anapolis and Lafayette in 1955, and took an extended Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), working from the trip to Europe. In 1958 I went to work for Paul Klipsch non-mathematical seminal work of Michael Faraday. as his “President in charge of Vice.” Mr. Klipsch intro- Michael Faraday duced me to Lord Kelvin, the Bell Labs West Street per- had a brilliant mind that sonnel, as well as his untrammeled genius. worked without the Altec was the next stop, with my immediate manager encumbrance of a for- being “the man who made the motion picture talk.” At mal education. His Altec I rubbed against and was rubbed against by the experiments were with greats and those who knew the greats of the inception of an early Volta cell, the Art. This resulted in our awareness of the rich sense given him by Volta of history we have been a part of and we hope that shar- when he traveled to ing our remembrance will help you become alert to the Italy with Sir Humphry richness of your own present era. Davy as Davy’s assis- In 1972 we were privileged to work with the leaders tant. This led to his in our industry who came forward to support the first experiments with the independent attempt at audio education, Synergetic electric field and com- Audio Concepts (Syn-Aud-Con). These manufacturers passes. Faraday envi- represented the best of their era and they shared freely sioned fields of force around wires where others saw with us and our students without ever trying to “put some kind of electric fluid flowing through wires. Fara- strings on us.” day was the first to use the terms electrolyte, anode, cathode, and ion. His examination of inductance led to the electric motor. His observations led his good friend, Genesis James Clerk Maxwell, to his remarkable equations that The true history of audio consists of ideas, men who defined electromagnetism for all time. envisioned the ideas, and those rare products that repre- A conversation with William Thomson (later Lord sented the highest embodiment of those ideas. The men Kelvin) when Thomson was 21 led Faraday to a series and women who first articulated new ideas are regarded of experiments that showed that Thomson’s question as as discoverers. Buckminster Fuller felt that the terms to whether light was affected by passing through an realization and realizer were more accurate. electrolyte—it wasn’t—led to Faraday’s trying to pass Isaac Newton is credited with “We stand on the polarized light past a powerful magnet to the discover shoulders of giants” regarding the advancement of the magneto-optical effect (the Faraday effect). Diamag- human thought. The word science was first coined in netism demonstrated that magnetism was a property of 1836 by Reverend William Hewell, the Master of Trinity all matter. College, Cambridge. He felt the term, natural philoso- Faraday was the perfect example of not knowing pher, was too broad, and that physical science deserved a mathematics freed him from the prejudices of the day. 6 Chapter 1 James Clerk Max- were the technical societies formed around the time of well was a youthful Newton where ideas could be heard by a large receptive friend of Faraday and a audience. Some of the world’s best mathematicians mathematical genius struggled to quantify sound in air, in enclosures, and in on a level with New- all manner of confining pathways. Since the time of ton. Maxwell took Far- Euler (1707–1783), Lagrange (1736–1813), and aday’s theories of d’Alembert (1717–1783), mathematical tools existed to electricity and mag- analyze wave motion and develop field theory. netic lines of force into By the birth of the 20th a mathematical formu- century, workers in the lation. He showed that telephone industry com- an oscillating electric prised the most talented charge produces an mathematicians and electromagnetic field. experimenters. Oliver The four partial differ- Heaviside’s operational ential equations were calculus had been super- first published in 1873 and have since been thought of seded by Laplace trans- as the greatest achievement of the 19th century of forms at MIT (giving them physics. an enviable technical lead Maxwell’s equations are the perfect example of in education). mathematics predicting a phenomenon that was unknown at that time. That two such differing mind-sets as Faraday and Maxwell were close friends bespeaks 1893—The Magic Year the largeness of both men. At the April 18, 1893 meeting of the American Institute These equations brought the realization that, because of Electrical Engineers in New York City, Arthur Edwin charges can oscillate with any frequency, visible light Kennelly (1861–1939) gave a paper entitled itself would form only a small part of the entire spec- “Impedance.” trum of possible electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell’s That same year General equations predicted transmittable radiation which led Electric, at the insistence of Hertz to build apparatus to demonstrate electromag- Edwin W. Rice, bought netic transmission. Rudolph Eickemeyer’s J. Willard Gibbs, America’s greatest contributor to company for his trans- electromagnetic theory, so impressed Maxwell with his former patents. The genius papers on thermodynamics that Maxwell constructed a Charles Proteus Steinmetz three-dimensional model of Gibbs’s thermodynamic (1865–1923) worked for surface and, shortly before his death, sent the model to Eickemeyer. In the saga of Gibbs. great ideas, I have always G.S. Ohm, Alessandro Volta, Michael Faraday, been as intrigued by the Joseph Henry, Andre Marie Ampere, and G.R. Kirch- managers of great men as hoff grace every circuit analysis done today as resis- much as the great men tance in ohms, potential difference in volts, current in themselves. E.W. Rice of amperes, inductance in henrys, and capacity in farads General Electric personi- and viewed as a Kirchhoff diagram. Their predecessors fied true leadership when and contemporaries such as Joule (work, energy, heat), he looked past the mis- Charles A. Coulomb (electric charge), Isaac Newton shapened dwarf that was (force), Hertz (frequency), Watt (power), Weber (mag- Steinmetz to the mind netic flux), Tesla (magnetic flux density), and Siemens present in the man. Gen- (conductance) are immortalized as international S.I. eral Electric’s engineering derived units. Lord Kelvin alone has his name inscribed preeminence proceeded as an S.I. base unit. directly from Rice’s As all of this worked its way into the organized extraordinary hiring of thinking of humankind, the most important innovations Steinmetz. Audio and Acoustic DNA—Do You Know Your Audio and Acoustic Ancestors? 7 Dr. Michael I. Pupin of A. Campbell, and their fellow engineers developed filter Columbia University was theory so thoroughly as to be worthwhile reading today. present at the Kennelly paper. Steinmetz was not at the April 18, 1893 meeting, but Pupin mentioned Oliver sent in a letter of comment which included, Heaviside’s use of the word It is, however, the first instance here, so far as I impedance in 1887. This know, that the attention is drawn by Mr.