----- Original Message ----- From: "A. Lal" <alal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 5:02 AM Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Completely OT- Loudspeaker info a pop up question >I believe the Peerless you refer to was an altogether >different > comapany. The Peerless brand name was used by > Altec-Lansing in the > early days of hi fi. Altec (All Technical Products) was an > off-shoot of > Western Electric. WE pretty much wrote the book on all > aspects of sound > reproduction, Blumlien and EMI only made minor > contributions in > comarisison. Anyone interested in hi Fi should have a > look at early > numbers of the Bell System Technical Journal, by the way. > Later on Jim > Lansing left Altec and went on to found JBL (James B. > Lansing), now > part of the Harman group. I'm sure the older members of > the list can add > to this. Jerry, Richard? > > Today there are two companies making speakers under the > Peerless brand > name. One, in Denmark, is part of the DST group, the > other, in India, > makes low cost OEM drivers some of which were used in > KEF's and other > makers lower priced systems. At one time the two Peerless' > were linked > but now they operate as separate companies. > Peerless was indeed a brand name for transformers made by Altec-Lansing and Altec did start as the theater service division on Electrical Research Products Co. (ERPI) a marketing agent for AT&T-Western Electric. AT&T was always walking on eggs to avoid anti-trust action. The indirect marketing of its industrial sound equipment including motion picture sound equipment was part of this maneuvering. The work on stereo sound at Bell Labs was independant of the work done by Blumlein at EMI. Blumlein's contributions were NOT minor. Bell Labs research was more extensive in some ways because it was part of an overall research project into high quality tranmission systems. Dr. John Frayne, one of the developers of the Western Electric Stereo Disk system told me that when they did the patent search for this system they discovered to their embarrasment that WE and AT&T had already patented a great deal of the work. Then they discovered the early Blumlein patent which very specifically covered 45-45 stereo recording and a bunch of other stuff WE never knew about. There was a special edition of the Bell Laboratories Journal which was a compilation of all the stereo papers published in the BSTJ, it is quite rare but libraries with the BSTJ in their holding s may have it. In any case the papers will be in the journals. Bell Labs made many recordings at the time. Some of these have been released on CDs, they are worth having. Not many of Blumlein's recordings survive but some do. I don't know if any are commercially available. I've heard some of them. The stereo is quite remarkable. Partly this was due to using co-incident microphone technique but probably much is because of the acoustics of the studio. Bell Labs recorded in relatively dry environments using spaced microphones, EMI in halls at a distance using the equivalent of crossed figure 8 microphones. I don't have the USP number for Blumlein's patent. I am not even sure it was applied for in this country. The British patent was reprinted in an issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. With a little effort I can find it because I have it here. BTW, the first recording system to be employed by Bell Labs in their stereo system was sound on film. This was a very remarkable system employing companders (early versions of the Dolby system) and special moving coil light valves. It was a three channel system. Bell Labs early experiments were all three channel. All of this was remarkable work and none of it was commercially developed for nearly three decades. --- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles, CA, USA dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx