Altec Lansing
Altec Lansing, Inc. is an American audio electronics company founded in 1927.[4] Their primary products are loudspeakers and associated audio electronics for professional, home, automotive and multimedia applications.[5]
Company type
1927[2]
Alvis Ward[3]
Ike S Franco (Chairman)
Consumer loudspeakers, headphones, in-ear monitors
Infinity Lifestyle Brands
Engineers at Western Electric, who later formed Altec Services Company, developed the technology for motion picture sound that was introduced in 1927, with the release of The Jazz Singer.[6]
Originally, Altec Services Company serviced the theater sound systems the company founders had helped develop. In 1941, the Altec Services Company purchased the nearly bankrupt Lansing Manufacturing Company and melded the two names, forming the Altec Lansing Corporation, and with the manufacturing capabilities of the former Lansing Manufacturing Company, they quickly expanded into manufacturing horn loudspeakers.
In 1958 the Altec Lansing Corporation was purchased by James Ling who made it part of LTV Ling Altec. LTV spun off Altec which it loaded down with debt first. By 1974, the company was saddled with debt. It was reorganized under Chapter 11 as Altec Corporation and continued for 10 years. Altec filed a second bankruptcy. In 1984, Gulton Industries purchased the brand out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Gulton was acquired by Mark IV Audio. Since then, there has been a string of owners, purchased in 1986 by Sparkomatic,[7] with the Pro equipment still made by Mark IV Audio, Mark IV sold out to Telex, who closed down the Pro division and folded its products into Electro-Voice. In 2005 Altec Lansing Technologies was acquired by Plantronics, 2009 bought by Prophet Equity, and has been owned since 2012 by the Infinity Group, a company which acquires struggling companies.[8]
Popular loudspeakers included the Altec Lansing Duplex 600-series coaxial loudspeaker, studio monitors from the 1940s to the 1980s,[9] and the Altec "Voice of the Theatre" line of loudspeakers widely used in movie theaters, concert halls, and also in rock concerts from the 1960s to the 1990s, such as custom designs used at Woodstock Festival.
History[edit]
Conception and early products[edit]
In 1930 AT&T's Western Electric established a division to install and service loudspeakers and electronic products for motion-picture use. Named Electrical Research Products, Inc. and commonly referred to by the acronym ERPI, it became the target of an anti-trust suit brought by Stanley K. Oldden.[10] By 1936, Western Electric had shed its audio-equipment manufacturing and sales division, bought by International Projector and Motiograph, and was looking to dissolve the associated service division. ERPI was purchased as part of a consent decree in 1937 by a group of ERPI executives, including George Carrington Sr., Leon Whitney "Mike" Conrow, Bert Sanford Jr., and Alvis A. Ward, with funding from three Wall Street investors. They reincorporated as "Altec Service Company", the "Altec" standing for "all technical".[11] Company executives promised they would never make or sell audio equipment.[11]
The Altec Services Company purchased the bankrupt Lansing Manufacturing Company and melded the two names, forming the Altec Lansing Corporation on May 1, 1941. The first Altec Lansing power amplifier, Model 142B, was produced that same year. James Bullough Lansing worked for Altec Lansing, then in 1946 he left to found the James B. Lansing Company (JBL), another manufacturer of high-quality professional loudspeakers, which competed with Altec Lansing.[12] Altec Lansing produced a line of professional and high-fidelity audio equipment, starting with a line of horn-based loudspeaker systems. First developed for use in motion-picture theaters, these products were touted for their fidelity, efficiency and high sound-level capability. Products included "biflex" speakers (where frequency range was increased by a flexible "decoupling" of a small center area of the speaker's cone from a larger "woofer" area) and the 604-series of coaxial speakers (which employed a high-efficiency compression driver mounted to the rear of the 604's low-frequency magnet, and exited through a multicellular horn that passed through center of the woofer's cone).
Altec Lansing also made the Voice of the Theatre systems. The design resulted from a collaboration between John Hilliard and Jim Lansing. Douglas Shearer didn't hesitate to approve the Hilliard's proposal and authorized "any reasonable budget". Hilliard became the team leader of this new project. Hilliard immediately recruited Lansing Manufacturing, Robert Stephens, a design draftsman on MGM's staff, and Harry Kimball. The speaker was named the Shearer horn. Later on, a more refined model, the VOTT, was introduced. The smallest model, the A-7, used a large-sized sectoral metal horn for high frequencies, which featured dividers (sectors) to provide control sound dispersion, plus a medium-sized wooden low-frequency enclosure, which functioned as a hybrid bass-horn/bass-reflex enclosure.
The most often used Voice of the Theatre system was the A-4, many of which are still in use in motion picture theaters measuring 9 feet tall . as of 2018. The efficiency of all of these products originally provided high sound pressure levels from the limited amplifier power available at the time. The original Voice of the Theatre series included the A-1, A-2, A-4, and the A-5. The A-7 and A-8 were designed for smaller venues.
Bill Hanley used Altec high frequency drivers and horns along with JBL bass drivers in his custom-built loudspeaker system for the Woodstock Festival in 1969.[13]
Some professional Altec Lansing products remained in use well into the 1990s.
Altec Service Co. and Altec Lansing Professional audio products[edit]
James Ling purchased the Altec Lansing Corporation from the ailing George Carrington Sr., in 1958. By the time James Ling spun Altec Lansing off in 1974, his company, LTV-Ling-Altec, had heavy debts. In 1984, Gulton Industries, Inc., purchased the Altec Sound Products Division from the Altec Lansing Corporation, which was operating under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Included with the purchase were the tooling, parts and product inventories, distributor network, designs, patents, and assets of the Sound Products Division of Altec Lansing. The motion picture theater sound installation and repair business, Altec Service Co., was sold to J. Bruce Waddell, then head of Altec Service, and comptroller Robert V. Gandolfi. They established it as A.S.C. Technical Services in Richardson, Texas.
The Altec Lansing Corporation was formed by Gulton Industries as part of the purchase and headquartered in Oklahoma City, the site of the University Sound factory built by Jimmy Ling when he moved there from White Plains, New York. Prior to the purchase, Altec Lansing had been headquartered in Yorba Linda, California, but it was moved as part of an effort to reduce operating costs.
Altec Lansing Corporation produced professional audio products until 1995, when Telex Communications, who had purchased Altec Lansing's parent company, EVI Audio, Inc., in 1997, consolidated all of their electronics manufacturing facilities into one location in Minnesota.