Henry kloss biography

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Henry Kloss (February 21, 1929 – January 31, 2002) was a prominent American audio engineer and entrepreneur who helped advance high fidelity loudspeaker and.

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Henry Kloss

Birthplace: Altoona, PA, USA
Fields of study: Audio, Television

Biography

Henry Kloss was an audio engineer whose speakers and radios won a devoted following for introducing the smooth, deep tones known as the “Boston sound” to home audio.

Kloss was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and received an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the early 1950s, he partnered with engineer Edgar Vilchur, his former teacher, to form Acoustic Research. They developed a revolutionary product, the AR-1. Sized for a bookshelf, it was an “acoustic suspension” speaker whose quality challenged the conventional wisdom that rich bass tones required large cones and magnets and giant boxes.

His next venture, in the 1960s, was KLH, a company he formed with two partners that reimagined the radio. KLH’s Model 8 FM radio had high selectivity, meaning it could grab stations otherwise lost in a crowded dial. KLH also created some of the original audio devices to use transistors. Kloss then founded another company, Advent, where he designed premium-quality

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In the sleepy town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, during the twilight of the Roaring Twenties, a future luminary of sound, Henry Kloss, entered the world. Born on February 21, 1929, Kloss was handy with tools from a young age. In his childhood, he was known for his precocious building skills, adding fixtures and even rooms to the tiny cabin he shared with his mother and two sisters.

Kloss’s playground wasn’t the typical sandbox or baseball diamond, but a wonderland of wires, tubes, and the guts of radios. Born in an era when radio was king, a time when families gathered around the radio like we cluster around our flat-screens today, he grew up deeply influenced by the technological marvels of his time.

From his early years, Henry Kloss was not just captivated by radios but became deeply engrossed in understanding and improving their sound quality. His childhood bedroom in Altoona transformed into a makeshift lab, where he experimented with the mechanics of sound, going beyond simply enjoying the stories transmitted through the airwaves.

Kloss’s journey to MIT in 1948 was a signif

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Henry Kloss

Imagine you’re watching Jeopardy!, the category is “Audio Architects” – meaning famous audio-equipment inventors – and the clue for $500 is “Between 1954 and 2000, this inventor founded or co-founded six audio-equipment companies, each based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

The vast majority of viewers, and even champion-level contestants, wouldn’t have a clue, unable to venture even a wild guess. Some might deduce – logically, but incorrectly – that the answer is Amar Bose, based on both his notoriety and the geographical reference provided. But a sizable number of audiophiles from New England would probably hit the buzzer with the winning question as quickly as they could name the inventor of the Dolby noise-reduction system (Ray Dolby): “Who is Henry Kloss?”

Overview

With an insatiable appetite for innovation and a legacy some have understandably called “immeasurable,” Kloss was a maverick among inventors both in and outside of the audio sector. A bona fide brainiac who preferred getting his hands dirty to working in the sterility of a lab, his achievements i