Lansing discovery- WHOA!

[Robh3606]

Geez what a great thread. How did I miss this. Great stuff Steve.

Rob

[Steve Schell]

Moldyoldy, I have also enjoyed many evenings surfing for old speaker patents, and this is now made much easier with the marvelous Google patent search tool. They say there is nothing new under the sun, and this seems to be true with loudspeakers. Most of the times I thought I had come up with a new idea, invariably a patent describing much the same thing would surface sooner or later.

The large corporations actively patented their engineers' designs in the early years, and Western Electric in particular tried to enforce them vigorously. The only patent I am aware of during the years of Lansing Mfg. Co.'s operation is Dr. Blackburn's patent on the radial slit phasing plug, and it was not assigned to the company as you have mentioned. There are few Altec patents before the 1970s; I have only found a couple by Paul Veneklasen relating to microphones.

It does make sense that a patent assignee would be stated at time of filing. Otherwise an engineer who made a tremendous discovery would be tempted to leave his company and take the invention with him.

Writing and filing a patent can be an arduous experience. I can see how many might find it not worth the trouble. For many products, the difficulties of manufacturing may be enough of a barrier to entry by competitors.

It is interesting to note that the majority of Altec's enduring speaker designs were based on the products of Lansing Mfg. Co., not Western Electric. This is the tale seldom told in most historical accounts of Altec Lansing, and the founders of this site have done their bit over the past few years to correct the record on this.

Earl, I don't think that John Hilliard was involved in the design of Blackburn's radial slit phasing plug. Although he was an essential part of the Shearer team, the need for the design change from the circumferential plug didn't occur until after that collaboration had ended.

Thanks guys for the other comments. I will take more pictures of the 801 as soon as I figure out the macro feature of my camera.

[moldyoldy]

I may have found a possible reason why Lansing reverted back to use of Wente’s annular phase plug design after using Blackburn’s radial.

Wente’s design, http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2037187 , provides a plane wave front at the horn throat, while Blackburn’s design (linked above) issues a spherical wavefront.

Many, many moons later, in the Altec patent for the Tangerine radial phase plug, http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4050541 , Henricksen cites both previous designs in his application for patent of a radial slit design that provides the preferred planar wavefront, as well as offering ease of manufacture. (Image below)


(Added)
Then again, there's always the $ angle. Perhaps Blackburn demanded just compensation for use of his design that Lansing couldn't/didn't want to pay. It appears that Blackburn wrote the patent himself, as there is no entry for the commonly used patent attorney.

(Added later)
If one increased the human factor in the equation even further...perhaps Blackburn's version was merely a Trojan Horse, and never intended for long-term continued production...That could create a sizable series of f'd-up serial numbers of "existing stock" annular units....

[Steve Schell]

Fascinating stuff! I'll have to reread Blackburn's patent for the reference to the spherical wavefront.

Wente was definitely attempting to assemble a planar wavefront in his phasing plug, and the accompanying horn design (patent #1,992,268) takes this into account. In his multicellular horn (the first!), the cells begin in a plane that subdivides the wavefront. They then curve gently to establish their individual axes.

The earliest multicellulars built by Lansing Mfg. Co. were built this way, as were (presumably) the Shearer System prototype horns built at MGM by Bob Stephens. Within a short time the Lansing horns were changed to a straight cell design with spherical grouping at throat and mouth, as later seen in the Altec multicellulars. I have suspected but have seen no proof that this change may have resulted from a charge of patent infringement by W.E., as with the circumferential phasing plug.

The molded Tangerine plug was surely much easier to manufacture than the Blackburn plug, which required forty passes with a mill cutter. The Lansing driver held the plug in place with a rolled lip on the center pole, a more secure arrangement than the CA glue used on the Tangerines!

[moldyoldy]

Fascinating stuff! I'll have to reread Blackburn's patent for the reference to the spherical wavefront.

Page 4, column 2, lines 28-39

[macaroonie]

Tannoy ran like this for 50 years ish probably more. They have now moved on to a new core see pic. Just for your interest.

[Earl K]

Thanks Steve & moldyoldy for all this / I just love the history .

- Here's Peaveys' Patent for their improved Radial Slit phase plug. I've glanced at it a few times now / but can't quite comprehend how it's different enough from Uredas ( Altec tangerine ) patent to warrant the "award" . ( Maybe it's because Uredas' specifies the use of prime numbers when choosing the number of radial slits )

Earl, I don't think that John Hilliard was involved in the design of Blackburn's radial slit phasing plug.

- I hope you wrote that with the required dollop of irony

- Building on irony ; I've long found it ironic that there are those that seek to discredit James B. Lansing by pointing out he was primarily a self-taught engineer .
- This, while the outfit ( Altec ) that bought out Lansing, was peopled by well schooled & properly "papered engineers".
- They didn't buy Lansing to suppress & bury Lansings' products so they could introduce their own versions ) / no / on the contray , they milked Lansings' basic products for the next 50 years .
- Did Altec care about protecting the Lansing trade name ? / "U-betcha" / just look at the "cease & desist" orders directed at James B.
- Admit it or not ( today ) / Altec brass at the time, could recognize a mortal threat to their enterprise ( from this "self-taught" engineer ) .

So - I happen to love my 288-8Ks for a bunch of reasons

[moldyoldy]

Well put, Earl!

For me, it's about the technology more than the technologists. I can't drive my speakers with a Lee DeForest, but I can with his invention. By piecing together who improved the fritzit with a better doodad, I'm getting a better understanding of the technology, which is my objective. I've learned an incredible amount lately just reading the old patents, largely because they point out flaws in prior art you seldom hear of elsewhere.

There are many ways to reconstruct history, the 2 common ones being;
A. Gather as much data you can that supports the history you want to believe.
B. Objectively compile all relevant data to reflect the most likely true history, pretty or not.
The temptation to use the former is great, particularly if you have an agenda that will benefit.
I'd like to compliment Steve for what appears to be following the latter.

(But just in case, I threw in those 'added' maybe/what-ifs)

[Steve Schell]

Moldyoldy, I read Blackburn's comments on the spherical wavefront. The best I can figure, he must be describing a concave wavefront (duplicating the dome shape of the diaphragm in miniature) as the inner and outer paths through the slits are nearly identical in length.

That is very interesting speculation about Dr. Blackburn perhaps seeking royalties for the radial phasing plug! Never thought of that angle. Darn it, we are looking into these matters too late in the game to receive definitive answers to some of these questions, but the pursuit is fun anyway.

Earl, we have run across a sometimes virulent anti Jim Lansing bias among some, but definitely not all ex-Altec employees and service personnel since beginning research for this web site. One Altec veteran from the mid to late 1950s told me that there were some strange looking speaker prototypes sitting on the shelf in the old Santa Monica Boulevard plant. These had allegedly been built by Jim Lansing, and the employees would examine them and proclaim that ol' Jim must have been off his rocker.

This notion that Jim was a skilled tool and die man but certainly not an engineer really falls apart with the least bit of scrutiny. There is no evidence, for example, that anyone else contributed to the designs for the JBL D-101, D-130, D-130A, D-131, D-208, D-175, H-1000, N-1000 or any of the cabinet and system designs of the late 1940s. Though lacking an engineering degree to frame and hang on the wall, Jim was perhaps the best and most practical sort of engineer. He could conceptualize a product, build the tooling, build examples to test and evaluate, then produce the product efficiently in quantity. A friend of mine who has studied his work carefully has mentioned that Jim must have worked quickly to accomplish as much as he did.

There are some common threads that run through all of Jim's work, from the earliest Lansing Mfg. Co. products to the last JBL products produced by him. His designs were invariably simple, elegant, practical, ingenious in subtle ways and groundbreaking in their performance. These are elements of timeless and enduring design, and it is no coincidence that many of his creations had lifespans of several decades and that aspects of them live on in modern products 58 years after his death.

So why the anti Jim Lansing bias at Altec? There are probably several reasons. Jim left Altec in 1946 to begin a company that would become Altec's chief rival. To honor Jim's central role in the development of the Altec product mainstays would have effectively honored their competitor. After Jim's suicide in late 1949, it was probably all too easy to dismiss him as an odd, unfortunate character. Through the years this prejudice was passed down through the ranks. Whatever the reasons, most Altec corporate historical accounts are strangely silent when it comes to the contributions of what should be their central figure. All we usually read is "...purchased the nearly bankrupt Lansing Manufacturing Company..." blah blah blah.

[Tom Brennan]

In the old days many engineers didn't have degrees. If you engineered you were an engineer.

Engineering is rife with guys who have degrees but no mechanical inclination or intuitive sense of how things work; I often ran into such bozos when I was a boilermaker, get them out in the field and they were lost.

Not that they were all that way of course, I met many good engineers too, especially with Bechtel. But Bechtel pays good and expects results, kind'a odd eh?

[intotubes]

Engineering is rife with guys who have degrees but no mechanical inclination or intuitive sense of how things work; I often ran into such bozos when I was a boilermaker, get them out in the field and they were lost.

That's been my experience. Good engineers are rare.

[glen]

So why the anti Jim Lansing bias at Altec? There are probably several reasons. Jim left Altec in 1946 to begin a company that would become Altec's chief rival. To honor Jim's central role in the development of the Altec product mainstays would have effectively honored their competitor.

I think you've got this right Steve.
It would have been easy for the head honchos at Altec to relegate Jim to simply overseeing the manufacturing process when they had many of the best audio engineers in the U.S. on their staff. They could even have been satisfied with accquiring the manufacturing facilities alone and relegated him to a back office to rot.

The fact that so many of his designs were readily adopted and widely marketed by Altec is ample evidence that such prejudice did not exist during his years at Altec, or at least that any such prejudice at the time was not strong enough to overshadow the merit of his designs. I often wonder what contributions he might have made if he had stayed with Altec and continued designing new products there, without the headache and heartbreak of dealing with another economically failing company weighing on his mind.

He initially set his sights on a new consumer market when he left Altec.
But the combination of wanting to capitalize on the "Iconic" and "Lansing" names which were part of the intellectual property that Altec bought as part of the Lansing Manufacturing deal AND the beginings of Jim Lansing's expansion into the theater sound market surely ruffled many feathers at Altec.

It must have also been incredibly gaulling for the college educated engineers of the 50s 60s and 70s to have their efforts constantly overshadowed by the enduring popularity of products designed by a self-educated engineer who left the company in the 40s. In fact NO-ONE who worked at Altec succeeded in eclipsing Jim Lansing's designs, and when those original products lost traction in the marketplace Altec itself faltered.

And the company who's products suceeded Jim Lansing's Altec designs was JBL. It must've been like he was an ever-present ghost that haunted and taunted Altec. No wonder they were frustrated and angry and bore him ill will.

[Steve Schell]

Glen, you are a deep thinker. Of course I've known that for awhile now.

During Jim Lansing's five year stint as an Altec Lansing VP, he was said to have expressed dissatisfaction with his role there. He said "I'm just a name to them", and complained that he was not really allowed to participate in company decisions. He did tough it out for five years though, as a five year non-competition clause had been included in his agreement to sell Lansing Mfg. Co.

Jim was evidently held in high esteem while at Altec, as he is pictured several times in the Altec Exchange newsletters of the period, the captions respectfully conveying his importance. There was however only a tiny mention of his departure from the company.

I am not sure whether Jim understood that his use of the term "Iconic" would upset the Altec brass until it happened. He had chosen the name in 1937 for his small two way system. When he left Altec in 1946 the Iconic had just been replaced in Altec's line by the 604 Duplex. It is possible that he thought that since Altec had abandoned the product, he would be free to use the name for his new two way system. As it turned out he had only built a few D-101 15" drivers embellished with the Iconic label before Altec got wind of what he was doing and objected.

Again with the name Lansing, I am not sure that he realized that naming his new company "Lansing Sound Incorporated" would cause a stir. He was never known to be a great businessman. He did make the necessary changes immediately once he was contacted by Altec. Of course, having just spent five frustrating years at Altec, another possibility is that he realized what he was doing and wanted to tweak them just a bit.

Altec applied for a trademark for "Iconic" on October 20, 1947. I'm sure this was after the skirmish with Jim was over. I'm not sure whether this application covered the word itself or just the (somewhat strange) artwork.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield...te=luvdqo.3.31

[CONVERGENCE]

According to the unofficial Altec site George Carrington designed the Altec Duplex and J. Lansing provided the tooling for manufacturing.

SO the ALTEC duplex should be renamed The Altec Carrington Duplex in his honor.

.................................................. ..............................

GGeorge Carrington designedeorge Carrington

[moldyoldy]

In its 1943 catalog, Altec Lansing claimed the “First Time in History” , they had produced a compact two-way loudspeaker called the Duplex. The term Duplex was never trademarked to a loudspeaker, but is generally interpreted as a wide range loudspeaker with dual, independantly driven, integral sources in coaxial alignment. While the '43 model may technically be the first such loudspeaker to be called a "Duplex", it was preceded by several other patented speakers of such similar design as early as 1929. They just weren't called duplexes.

In 1947, George Carrington filed (Altecs first) patent application for a Loudspeaker with Expanding Horn , and while it resembles in appearance the earlier Duplexes, it’s actually just a single source with a single coil, that uses an aluminum dust cap with a horn placed in front of it. Two months before filing this patent, Altec had applied for Trademark name rights to DIA-CONE, suggesting the combination of a diaphragm and cone, as embodied in Carringtons patent. (Edited) In the 1947 Altec catalog, the embodiment of Carrington's invention can be seen as the 603 Dia-Cone .

(Added)

So, since Jim Lansing was an integral part of Altec Lansing at the time of Altecs 1943 introduction of the 604-type “Duplex”, the question of who was the first Altec employee to attach an existing HF driver to the back of an existing LF driver, with an existing horn on the front is of relevance only to those obsessed with such trivia. Although the 604-type Duplex became very popular, and had some unique features compared to prior art, the question “were the differences from prior art signifigant enough to warrant a patent” is raised. Since no such patent was ever issued in the name of the parties in question, the answer is obviously “No”.