i3 - November/December 2018 - 43

Consum

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Techno

logy

INVENTOR, ACOUSTIC SUSPENSION SPEAKER
(1917 - 2011)

T

here is not a more
important innovator
in the development
of modern consumer sound
reproduction than Edgar Villchur.
He invented and patented the
acoustic suspension speaker,
which became the basis for
nearly all loudspeakers that
followed and founded Acoustic
Research to sell them. Villchur
also invented the direct-radiator
tweeter, one of the first dome
tweeters, the independent
suspension turntable, and
technology used in nearly every
hearing aid sold.
Edgar Marion Villchur was
born in Manhattan on May 28,
1917, the only child of Russian
emigres Mark and Mariam. He
earned both his undergraduate
and his master's degree in art
history from the City College of
New York in 1939. The following
year, Villchur was drafted into the
Army Air Corps, where he trained
as an electronics technician and
was made responsible for his
squadron's radio operations in
the Pacific, rising to captain.
After the war, Villchur opened
a radio shop in Greenwich Village,
repairing and building custom
Hi-Fi sets, taught the first college
course in sound reproduction at
New York University and married
Rosemary Shafer with whom he
had two children. He also worked
for the American Foundation for
the Blind, inventing a turntable

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Techno

There is not a more important innovator in
the development of modern consumer sound
reproduction than Edgar Villchur.

that automatically dropped the
tone arm slowly onto a record, a
technology he later added to AR
turntables.
In 1952, Hi-Fi speakers were
huge boxes to effectively
reproduce bass, featuring
open backs because speaker
designers discounted the
effect of the cabinet. Villchur
began tinkering with smaller,
closed-back designs in his
basement workshop, replacing
the nonlinear mechanical spring
with a linear air cushion to reduce
distortion. He built a prototype
from a plywood box, and his wife,
a draftswoman during the war,
sewed the pattern for the flexible
surround out of mattress ticking.

acoustic suspension and his new
direct-radiator tweeter, patented
in 1959, would later be displayed
at the Smithsonian Institution's
Information Age exhibit. In 1961,
he invented the independent
suspension turntable that reduced
skipping, motor noise and
vibration. The smaller AR-4 in 1964
was a hit with college students.
Villchur promoted his new
speakers by sponsoring "live
versus recorded" concerts around
the country. A string quartet would
alternately play a piece of music
or mime it to their own recording
played through the AR speakers,
with listeners rarely able to detect
a difference.
Sales soared and by the mid1960s, AR had captured nearly a
third of the home speaker market.
Competing speaker brands began
licensing Villchur's design, then
copying them, and a new market for
smaller home speakers was born.
Villchur was president of
AR, known for its progressive
employment and liberal repair
policies along with star-studded
ads, until 1967 when he sold
the company. He then founded
the Foundation for Hearing Aid
Research, and developed a
prototype of the multichannel
compression hearing aid. But
he purposely didn't patent the
design, altruistically allowing
hearing aid makers to widely
deploy the design that has
become the industry standard. 

Speaking to his acoustics
class at NYU in spring 1954, he
hinted at his ideas being more
effective for producing bass.
One student, Henry Kloss, stayed
after class, eager to learn more.
Student and teacher perfected
the design, which received a
patent in 1956. Villchur tried
unsuccessfully to license
the technology, but speaker
makers thought the design
impossible. So Villchur founded
Acoustic Research (AR) in Kloss'
Cambridge, MA, loft, and the pair
produced the AR-1, introduced
at the New York Audio Show in
1954, along with its successor,
the lower-priced AR-2, in 1956.
The AR-3 combined both

logy

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

43
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