Originally Posted by
robertbartsch
JCROBSO:
JBL pioneered so many innovations, over the years many other brands have adopted some of them. The are several companies the make drivers with edge wound Voice Coils today. In the 50s & 60s JBL speakers were the only one with this, they also pioneered large voice coils. I remember Electro Voice adds 30 years ago stating the 2 1/2" voice coils were better and now they have large voice coils.
John
******
Well, my new Altec VOTT system (circa 1973) had 3" edge wound voice coils and Alnico V magnents, so - weren't these inovations true for both Altec and JBL?
I thought the promotional flyiers I used to collect from both manufacturors at the time alluded to the fact that these construction techniques "were" a patented process.
Since patents typically run for 15 years, I assume (i) JBL and Altec licensed the patent technology and (ii) the patents on these ran out some time during the mid 1970s but that would be a guess on my part.
I thought the original patents on edge-wound coils were held by Bell Labs or Western Electric but I could be wrong. I checked the historical information on this site from both Altec and JBL and they allude to many important inovations but I did not see any discussion on edge wound coils which I beleive were the most significant inovations in "modern" transducer design.
I'm sure the promotional material from both companies in the early 1970s discussed the background for the edge-wound coils including who originated the concepts (Bell Labs or Western Electric) but I can't re-size the files listed on our cite here.