AR-3A speakers, Why were they so good regarding the deep Bass

[Retrovert]

Last week I had dug out the quote below and posted it in one of the Bozak threads, since I knew the fans would appreciate it. I was again reminded of it for this discussion as it somewhat addresses the issue of Villchur's perception of the larger infinite-baffle speakers vs. the smaller acoustic suspension, and the novelty of acoustic suspension vis a vis Olson and Preston and other speakers of the day.

So here it is:

"A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison"
by David Lander
Stereophile (2005, Jan 6)
https://www.stereophile.com/interviews/105villchur/index.html

David Lander: The AR-1W was a woofer-only unit. Arthur Janszen used to demonstrate his electrostatic tweeter in combination with it.
Edgar Villchur: Henry [Kloss] knew him, and we went to his house, and Arthur compared the AR with a giant, four-woofer Bozak. His decision was just as quick as Henry's. It was an obvious decision. How many people were going to buy this giant thing when they could buy is tweeter with an AR?​

The comparison Villchur sets forth is, of course,between the Bozak Concert Grand—a refrigerator-sized speaker configured with, at that time, four 12-inch paper-wool woofers, two paper-cone 6 inch midranges, and four paper-cone tweeters—and the AR-1W, a bookshelf solely containing a woofer. (NB: subsequent Bozak midranges and tweeters were aluminum cone, and spectacular, but in the mid 1950s all Bozak drivers were paper cone. The woofer remaind paper-wool.) It is unclear that any Bozak purchaser able to afford a Concert Grand would purchase the less expensive (about one third the price) AR unit and then add about the same cost for the JansZen electrostatic to act as the tweeter and midrange. This is not a pejorative comment about the AR-1W or JansZen 65 or 1-30 quality, just at the time the furniture-sized speakers in mid-century classic decor had a certain cachet .

I think it would be fair to say that in 1954 Bozak offered the most accurate speakers and would have been competition to hit, particularly for accurate low-end reproduction. Smaller floor Bozaks did exist at that time, but these were still roughly four times the size of the AR bookshelf. Bozak subsequently introduced its own bookshelf units, although the volume was less than ideal for its woofer and the very low end is not able to match the larger cabinets.

But there's another piece of the story that isn't often mentioned. Villchur had an agent, details unknown, approach Bozak—again, we only have Villchur's statements, and I do not know that Rudy Bozak ever confirmed this story—to license the idea to Bozak:

"A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison"
by David Lander
Stereophile (2005, Jan 6)
https://www.stereophile.com/interviews/105villchur/index.html

Lander: What did you do once you realized what you'd wrought?
Villchur: My measurements showed that my little prototype had better bass and less distortion than anything on the market, yet it was one quarter the size. I thought, This has got to be the future of loudspeakers. But the last thing in the world I wanted to do was get into business. For me to be a corporate president is anathema. So, I thought, I'd sell it to a loudspeaker manufacturer. I made up my mind to ask $10,000 and, if they offered me $5000, to take it. I called somebody I knew at Altec and told him what I had, and he said, "You know, Ed, we have a pretty good staff of engineers here. If there were something around such as you describe, I think they would have found it."

Lander: You've also said that a friend of yours approached Rudy Bozak, and he turned it down.
Villchur: My friend asked why, and Bozak said, "Because what you describe is impossible."
​

To put this in perspective, the median income (I looked it up in the Dept. of Labor statistics) was about $4,000, and $10,000 would have bought a nice house. As a somewhat junior PhD professor Villchur probably earned about $8,000 to $10,000 per year. It therefore makes sense he wanted to sell the patent, particularly as he had a wife and children. In addition, in those bygone days it was difficult for a professor to have an outside business. Janszen, in fact, was told by Harvard that he either had to give up his business or resign. Fortunately for the world, he gave up his research job. Ironic how now universities prefer professors to have outside companies, and not doing so would be a negative mark for tenure.

The claim about Bozak is facially dubious, unless we start interpreting the meaning of "impossible". That requires a lot of speculation.

Rudy Bozak deeply understood speakers. Whether you like infinite baffle or not, these were exceptionally well design. I'm sure Bozak instantly understood how acoustic suspension worked. So to deny such a thing was possible, particularly when a prototype existed? Mmmmmm, I'd need some corroboration on that. Maybe Bozak made a comment about how it was impossible to have the same accuracy in a small box, or noted the increased power requirements which were not easy to obtain in the 1950s, or that the driver would have some distortion. Ok, all of that makes perfect sense and is believable. If Bozak even said his customers wanted teeth-rattling bass and acoustic suspension could not deliver this, ok, again, very plausible. Maybe the "friend" did not properly explain the concept. Unknown. All unknown.

Or maybe these stories are all embellished, much like the lack of an appeal for the patent case. The revolutionary underdog triumphs over entrenched interests which want to continue the status quo!

Like all the best historical disputes and debates, this was a long time ago and the participants are all dead. So we'll never know for sure.

 

[Pete B]

I agree on all your points especially Villchur's real reasoning not to pursue the patent.
Fascinating, isn't it?
Perhaps his thinking was, that is impossible because I didn't think of it, or I would have
thought of it, LOL pure speculation on my part!
Not invented here, NIH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here

Happens all the time, they say that the Fast Fourier Transform was made public 10 years before
it became widely used, rather people used the old DFT. I'd bet that once one company started
using it in a product, destroying the competition then they all HAD to use it.

Thiele put out his theory 10 years or more before Small's work and it was not largely used prior
to Small. I think that EV's work with the Interface and the excellent AES paper helped.

I'm told that companies are approached by "crazy" inventors all the time and so they reject most things.

 

[Retrovert]

Perhaps his thinking was, that is impossible because I didn't think of it, or I would have thought of it, LOL pure speculation on my part! Not invented here, NIH.

Mmmm, I don't think it was NIH or ego. Good engineering reasons exist for Bozak's dismissal, if it indeed occurred, and we don't know that. The story is hearsay and related by someone with a vested interest in establishing underdog status.

Rudy Bozak, from his first days in speakers, was always about accurate sound reproduction. The competition in those days was other infinite baffles, bass reflex, and to a lesser extent, horns, and the acoustical labyrinth (transmission line).

If one wanted a high-end consumer speaker the choice was (a) an infinite baffle in a large—one might even say "enormous" without exaggeration, and I point to Bozak's Concert Grand and smaller models, and the Electro-Voice Patricianas a two examples—cabinets or (b) the bass reflex from JBL, or (c) the acoustical labyrinth from Stromberg-Carlson. All came in delicious cabinetry.

I just grabbed my "Speaker Enclosures" by Badmaieff and Davis from 1970; both had lived through the golden age of speaker design. They wrote, the Bozak Concert Grand is described as "one of the finest designs of its type" that "meets the design requirements with an absolute minimum of compromise".

I wasn't there when the purported conversation occurred with Rudy Bozak, but would speculate that Bozak, if that conversation actually occurred as related, concluded from the proferred description by the intermediary that accurate sonic reproduction could not occur in so small a box, given that the backwave would interfere with the cone.

In that he was correct: the AR-1, and its successors, trades sonic accuracy for a size the fraction of the Bozak refrigerator. Bozak later made concessions and compromises to compete with the bookshelfs. He reduced the cabinet size and sacrificed the low end. As a cost-savings measure in the lower-priced models he removed the midrange bell, which causes cross-modulation of the woofer and midrange. (We can now fix that with a three dollar flowerpot and restore the clarity.)

Anyway, the takeaway is (a) we can't necessarily trust Villchur's statement and (b) Bozak's statement, if made, is entirely reasonable and in keeping with the views of the day. Infinite baffle continue to have benefits, assuming one has the space.

 

[Pete B]

You are entitled to your opinion but from my many years of experience in engineering I've
learned that very few people are logical like Spock, rather the emotional brain takes over.
I see it all the time. No one will ever know for sure, but that it my bet.

Ponder this, the AR-3A tweeter was known to be fragile, many people with LSTs speak of
blowing all 8 tweeters during "fun" listening sessions, sending them back to AR and getting
a new set for free.

Why didn't they make the tweeter more robust? Everyone copies in engineering, there were
many examples of very robust tweeters, they could have copied the EPI tweeter and used
their own dome on it - but they didn't. Why not? They could not get the manufacturing down
to a science - have you seen the piles of tweeters that didn't pass final test?

The 11" woofer was never improved much, if you drive it hard enough the voice coil smashes
into the backplate. They could have added a "raised" back plate, instead they replaced the
blown woofers mostly for free. In fact the VC is still in the gap when the coil hits the back plate
which is not the case with the Large Advent woofer. The LA woofer is a much better design, IMO.
Engineer's often view their designs as their "babies" and resist changing them since that would
admit some flaw in their original design. The stories I could tell ....

 

[Retrovert]

You are entitled to your opinion but from my many years of experience in engineering I've learned that very few people are logical like Spock, rather the emotional brain takes over. I see it all the time. No one will ever know for sure, but that it my bet.

Oh, we've all seen that obstinacy, far, far too many times.

But here's some other perspective.

At that time of the alleged contact, Villchur only had a prototype which, as far as we know, was never demonstrated to Bozak. Villchur has, to the best of my knowledge, never claimed that a unit was demonstrated to Bozak. He, instead, stated that his "agent", name unknown, attempted to sell the patent to Bozak and/or other manufacturers, and these efforts failed because, in essence, speaker manufacturers refused to admit he was smarter than they were. That may be true, of course, or it may be marketing and self-promotion, or it may have been poor sales pitches by Villchur's agent (whomever that was), or it may be a combination of these factors, or it may be a total fabrication. We really have no way to know.

Having written that, it would not have been clear at the time how that unit would have fit into Bozak's product line or what the desire for such a product would be by Bozak's customer base. We must remember that at that time the acoustic suspension speaker was not being sold and the market's reaction was therefore totally unknown. Acoustic suspension was a new, untried, and unproven thing. So it would be understandable that Bozak's reaction would be skepticism and rejection on technical grounds.

Consider what the early reaction was in 1955 (from the earlier source):

"A Glorious Time: AR's Edgar Villchur and Roy Allison"
by David Lander
Stereophile (2005, Jan 6)
https://www.stereophile.com/interviews/105villchur/index.html

Lander: When did you begin delivering the AR-1?
Villchur: March '55. We started to ship 15 or 20 a month. Maybe fewer in the very beginning. In 1955, we shipped 455 speakers. I remember that number because it happens to be an IF frequency from my old shop days. About half were AR-1s and half were 1Ws.​

AR was starting from scratch with an unknown thing, and the lack of reputation and market awareness (it was, after all, pre-internet) impacted sales. But even an established company selling a new thing would have that problem.

So, perhaps less NIH than "we don't yet understand this new thing." Wittgenstein wrote about this issue. How does one understand a new thing when one lacks the vocabulary to express that thing.

I think Rudy Bozak made a reasonable decision for the Bozak company given what limited knowledge he appears to have possessed of acoustic suspension. The AR-1 simply would not have fit into the Bozak lineup. Bozak already had a woofer, the B-199 made from paper and lambs wool, the necessary tooling for it, an 8" aluminum-cone midrange, and it wasn't clear that the customer who wanted accuracy would want the AR-1. We know that Villchur initially demurred on the Kloss proposal to start a company in favor of selling the patent rights. Again, different time when professors did not just start companies.

We also have the fact that Janszen targeted the JansZen electrostatic at the AR-1 purchaser, not the Bozak purchaser. The question for that is why. The answer, I believe, is that the Bozak customer already had the 8" midrange and was satisfied with the performance. So no market there.

For Bozak to adopt the AR-1 into its lineup it would have (a) necessitated abandoning its existing product line, or (b) adding a new product line with different drivers and the associated tooling. A small company like Bozak could never have withstood this expense or product-line confusion. Bozak eventually died because it did not have the economies of scale from mass production.

I think we must consider Rudy Bozak's rejection, if it indeed happened as Villchur relates, in that light. I'm still not convinced an official pitch happened with a prototype and discussion on technical merits. Here's an alternate scenario of what occurred at that 1954 trade show meeting.

Agent: Dude, you're, like, that Rudy Bozak. dude. (folds arms, and nods)
Rudy Bozak: Yo, guilty as charged, dude. (high fives) So, you, like, wanna to buy some refrigerator-sized speakers with four woofers, two midranges, and six tweeters? Totally got plenty, bro. Only weigh, like, a million pounds apiece. Don't drop one on your foot, bro'.
Agent: No wayz! I, like, got a bumper sticker for you, dude. Says "UR Giant-Ass Sucky Speakerz, UR Doin' It Wrongz!" Got something way better, dude.
Rudy Bozak: How so? Oh, and, like, way no, dude!
Agent: Dude, like totally way. We're, like, so totally boxing up a ten inch woofer with a floppy surround in a sealed cabinet, and like, using the awesome cabinet air pressure to restore it instead of the rigid surround. Sounds awesome, just like your mom when I visit her.
Rudy Bozak: Dude, that is most heinous. That will, like, totally cause major distortion as the backwave will be, like, reflected inside the cabinet and modulate the cone, leading to distortion. Your suspension will, like, have major quality control issues. Your low-end power requirements will be, like, totally megawatts and your sucky amplifier output stage will most heinously turn into a red-plated slag like if Godzilla breathed on it, and it will sound like you when you, like, try an Ollie and faceplant when you, like, land. My speakers do not, like, have this problem, dude. So your design is, like, not awesome, and so, like, not recommended. And my mom so totally does not know you.
Agent: Die, die, die, you, you loser dinosaur! We're, like, so totally gonna eat your lunch old man, and then, like, break your ricebowl!
Rudy Bozak: Go teach your momma to design speakers. No, I'll do that tonight when I see her. Totally see you in the marketplace, fool.​

Or something like that.

Ponder this, the AR-3A tweeter was known to be fragile, many people with LSTs speak of blowing all 8 tweeters during "fun" listening sessions, sending them back to AR and getting a new set for free.

I do know about the fried tweeter problem. This may have largely resulted from clipping by underpowered amps of the day. But, regardless of the cause, the lifespan was shorter than a slice of pizza with a teenager.

Why didn't they make the tweeter more robust? Everyone copies in engineering, there were many examples of very robust tweeters, they could have copied the EPI tweeter and used their own dome on it - but they didn't. Why not? They could not get the manufacturing down to a science - have you seen the piles of tweeters that didn't pass final test?

I have indeed seen the photos of the drums of AR rejects. But quality control was abysmal in those days for all products! This was normal! (Shocking, isn't it? We're spoiled by six sigma quality and ISO 9000 rules.) Quality control was a national tragedy. Cars were terrible, and the big three had a lot filled with poorly made cars which required repairs to be sold.

Have you read about W. Edwards Deming being rejected by the USA, particularly Detroit? It was the Japanese, trying to rebuild an economy, who listened and took his lessons about statistical quality control and the "Deming Wheel" to heart. It would not surprise me that AR was ignorant of how to improve quality. It was a dark time for manufacturing.

But maybe there's another answer. The manufacturing process is largely a compromise between the main factors of (a) transfer price, (b) performance and perceived value, and (c) lifespan and reliability. As long as the rejects and replacements do not interfere with profits, whatever that means to the financial people at the company, no reason exists to improve a design.

Fight Club sums up how that works:

I was a recall coordinator.
My job was to apply the formula.

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 MPH.
The rear differential locks up.
The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside.

Now, should we initiate a recall?

Take the number of vehicles in the field, A. Multiply it by the probable rate of failure, B. Multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A x B x C equals X. lf X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.​

In this case, as long as the cost (replacement and supply chain issues plus damage to reputation) is low enough no reason to do any better. Many times a low replacement cost can mitigate any damage to reputation as the company "stands behinds its products" rather than improve quality to avoid the necessity for exchange and the burden on the consumer.

The 11" woofer was never improved much, if you drive it hard enough the voice coil smashes into the backplate. They could have added a "raised" back plate, instead they replaced the blown woofers mostly for free.

Yes, you are absoultely correct, but: "A x B x C equals X. lf X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

Remember, your change requires new tooling and new manufacturing techniques. Sometimes intertia is a problem. Also, the infighting described by Villchur makes it sound like Koss would have been too stubborn to change and by the time he left inertia had taken over.

Engineer's often view their designs as their "babies" and resist changing them since that would admit some flaw in their original design.

Oh, yes. Those engineers would rather ride that failure all the way down.

But returning to the above discussion about Bozak, in the early 1960s Bozak designed its 6 inch aluminum cone midrange. The first drivers (A series) suffered from ringing and a latex damping ring was created. The surround was then redesigned to fix that issue and the ring removed. It wasn't that the cost of the ring was prohibitive, or that the installation was expensive, it was that an engineering problem could be solved by altering the surround. Which was done and the B series was born. So we know that Bozak was willing to admit mistakes and fix them. It subsequently retooled the Y tweeter into the curvalinear Z, which was superior. So innovation was occurring at Bozak throughout its lifetime.

 

[BLAH BLAH]

 

[Pete B]

I wrote this on the Parts Express thread, just to clarify that no matter how you look at it
Villchur did not invent the Acoustic Suspension concept, rather Olson did: Villchur
did apply the concept to large HiFi speakers and popularized the breakthrough, it is mind
boggling that Olson/RCA did not as it revolutionized the HiFi world. Villchur "invented" the
bookshelf speaker and changed HiFi forever.

Correction: I called this "Ed Villchur's Acoustic Suspension Invention" and I've known for many years that
Villchur's patent didn't hold up in court with the reason that I read on the internet being that Olson had
previously patented the closed box speaker. I thought logically, why would Villchur bother if there were
no differences, that Olson's was sealed but that the air was not the dominant compliance. I just read that
his 1949 patent title was "Air Suspension Loudspeaker" #2,490,466, clearly the air spring is part of Olson's
patent.
This is from the patent:
-----------------------------------------------
An object of the invention is to increase the power handling capacity of a small speaker, making *itY comparable to one substantially larger in size in its output of undistorted acoustic energy and fidelitynf reproduction of desired low as well as high frequency sound waves.

Another and more specific object of the invention is to provide an improved diaphragm suspension structure in a'loudspeaker characterized by a reductionvin the effect ofthe suspension impedance, thusloweringthe'natural resonant frequency of the spea'ker'of ak given size, without increasing the'massreactanceof the moving parts.

A further object ofthe invention is to provide an improved compliant suspension in a limited space for a piston-type*loudspeakerdiaphragmof small mass reactance whereby the diaphragm is free to vibrate at large amplitude over a substantially extended portion of the lower audio frequency range without amplitude distortion.

A still further object of the invention is to improve the low frequency response of loudspeakers mounted in small housings as in small radio receivers.
-----------------------------------------------
It seems that this patent clearly covers everything that Villchur claimed in his work done
about 10 years later. It is odd that Olson's patent is written to cover small radios, this makes
no sense since all the theory applies to larger speakers. Why didn't they design and market
bookshelf speakers?

Villchur applied it to bookshelf systems and essentially changed the world but I have to say,
IMO, that he did not invent the concept. He certainly popularized "small" high performance
loudspeakers.

When I made the previous post at Tech Talk and here, years ago, I'm certain that I found Olson's patent:
1949 patent title was "Air Suspension Loudspeaker" #2,490,466
Now when I search for it, it doesn't show up at Google Patent search or the USPTO, very strange.

It is listed here, correctly, under the list of patents as "Air Suspension Loudspeaker" #2,490,466 but the
link there also no longer goes to the correct patent. Very strange!
https://usenclosure.com/Olsen/DR. OLSEN.html

1949 patent is also correctly listed here on page 11 in the .pdf:

https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/olson-harry.pdf

WHERE DID IT GO!
@Retrovert

 

[Pete B]

Here's another reference to Olson's patent from 1962 where Electrovoice challenges Villchur's patent and provides
the Olson patent as prior art. As I read this Villchur lost this case essentially invalidating his patent:

A R Inc. v. Electro-Voice, Incorporated, 311 F.2d 508 | Casetext Search + Citator

Read A R Inc. v. Electro-Voice, Incorporated, 311 F.2d 508, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database

casetext.com

 

[Pio1980]

Here's another reference to Olson's patent from 1962 where Electrovoice challenges Villchur's patent and provides
the Olson patent as prior art. As I read this Villchur lost this case essentially invalidating his patent:

A R Inc. v. Electro-Voice, Incorporated, 311 F.2d 508 | Casetext Search + Citator

Read A R Inc. v. Electro-Voice, Incorporated, 311 F.2d 508, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database

casetext.com

Olson/ RCA apparently sat on it and did bupkis with it, Villchur/Kloss did the heavy lifting to bring it out as a revolutionary markstable development.
Was Edgar aware of Olson's proposal on this, or was his an independent development?

 

[Pete B]

Doesn't matter, who "did the heavy lifting".
Villchur and the patent office have a requirement to try to find prior art. There are speaker
experts who follow patents, one should have been contacted. Patents are granted and if a party finds
prior art and presents it to the court they can be invalidated as this one was.
If an inventor chooses to not enforce their patent through the courts the patent is considered void.

 

[Nat]

The court's decision is legally binding, but but we aren't required to agree with it. I think they got it wrong on this, as I also think the British courts similarly did in the Linn/Ariston case.

 

[Pio1980]

The court's decision is legally binding, but but we aren't required to agree with it. I think they got it wrong on this, as I also think the British courts similarly did in the Linn/Ariston case.

There was the notorious final decision on deForest V Armstrong re regenerative amplification radio reception.
Also, tho Armstrong received a patent for Superheterodyne downconversion radio reception which RCA acquired, two French engineers, Laut and Levy, had "prior art" in a previous patent.
Another, Farnsworth V RCA for all-electronic television.
Another, Armstrong V RCA for wide band FM.

 

[Nat]

And how deep the litigant's pockets are afffects the final result - often it isn't the merits of the case that result in the final decision, it is who decides it just isn't worth pursuing further. It is possible that Vilchur could have pursued the case and won, but decided not to - AR was doing well enough even without royalties, and his real interest was not loudspeakers or in being a corporate titan - it was working on hearing aids that took up the latter part of his career.

 

[Pete B]

Did you read the case? It makes perfect sense, the court did a good job. It is actually worded in a very kind way
toward Villchur but it points out that the only unique part of Villchur's patent was not patentable just good/excellent
design work.

Why can't people just face it, no one did a good enough prior art search.
I worked for a major corporation with a staff VP lawyer who told me don't do a prior art search so we
can try to "slip it through". And don't put any talk of this in email, call on the phone to discuss.
Also, don't search on IBM's patent search website because you know that they are tracking everything
in order to get ideas from competition.

 

[Pete B]

Excellent work here from this link: https://casetext.com/case/ar-inc-v-electro-voice-incorporated
It shows that they understood both what Olson covered in his patent and the only unique thing in Villchur's patent
which was the "optimum volume" which is just an optimization for a particular application and not patentable or
remarkable in any way.
People, try looking at the facts rather than shooting from the hip.

"That clause, hereinbefore quoted, states in substance that the resonant frequency of the transducer (speaker unit) is raised to "said operating value" by a cubic volume value of the enclosure determined in accordance with a standard equation for resonance. In the claim the term "said operating value" has as its antecedent "an operating value corresponding to said natural frequency of said translating device [speaker system]" and "said natural frequency" in turn refers to the "lower end of the range of the frequencies to be produced uniformly" by the speaker system. The clause therefore merely makes a functional statement which is descriptive of the effect and operation of the equation in determining the resonant frequency of the speaker system — the manner of determining the cubic volume requisite to the resultant resonant frequency desired in the speaker system. In the light of the prior art the regulation and coordination of the cabinet volume with the resonant characteristics of the speaker unit according to a standard equation known to the art in order to achieve desired "optimum" performance characteristics in the speaker system do not constitute patentable invention."

So optimizing the functional relationship of the sealed cabinet with a speaker unit diaphragm having a highly compliant support — where the functional relationship of such cabinet-speaker unit combination, although asserted to be the key to the invention, was disclosed by the prior art, does not in our opinion constitute such an addition to the sum of useful knowledge as serves to characterize patentable invention. Great Atlantic Pacific Tea Co. v. Supermarket Equipment Corp., 340 U.S. 147, 152, 71 S.Ct. 127, 95 L.Ed. 162. The quality of invention is lacking. The prior art having taught generally the functional relationship described it does not rise to the dignity of invention to teach optimization of the functions by making quantitative adjustments to achieve the most desirable or effective result, there being involved in such process no discovery but only the exercise of prudence and skill. De Lamar v. De Lamar Mining Co., Ltd., 9 Cir., 117 F. 240, 248-249. Moreover, Villchur, in his deposition admits that the term "optimum resonant frequency" which appears in the specifications expresses a definite value only in the sense of referring to the measure of distortion acceptable in connection with the use or purpose for which the speaker system is designed and intended or "what power capabilities you want to achieve". Such criteria does not meet the definiteness required of a valid claim. General Electric Co. v. Wabash Appliance Corp., 304 U.S. 364, 58 S.Ct. 899, 82 L.Ed. 1402.

The acclaim with which plaintiff's speaker system was met and the commercial success it enjoys attest and pay tribute to the excellence of the product. They also affirm that desirable and efficient results were achieved through the discriminating choice and artful skill of patentee Villchur in his adaptation and employment of existing elements and known principles in the acoustic electronic field. But neither acclaim nor commercial success can supply the quality of "invention" requisite to patentability. H.W. Gossard Co. v. J.C. Penney Company, 7 Cir., 304 F.2d 515, 517-518; Hobbs v. Wisconsin Power Light Company, 7 Cir., 250 F.2d 100.

Likewise, the statutory presumption of validity attaching to the issuance of a patent is of no aid to the plaintiff. Olson Patent No. 2,490,466 was not before the Patent Office, and there is no presumption that a patent is valid as embodying an invention over pertinent prior art not cited or considered by the Patent Office. Hobbs v. Wisconsin Power Light Company, supra. In Elgen Manufacturing Corporation v. Grant Wilson Incorporated, 7 Cir., 285 F.2d 476, relied upon by plaintiff, none of the prior art patents not before the Patent Office met the invention singly nor was there any suggestion how anyone skilled in the art could have combined any two or more of the references to obtain the result disclosed by the patent in suit. That situation does not obtain here. The Olson patent in and of itself disclosed both the combination and the functional relationship of Villchur. There can be no presumption that the examiner reviewed and discarded it. It is more likely that he missed it.

The District Court's order is cast in a form which includes a memorandum opinion and sets forth the reasons for the court's holding that the Villchur patent lacks novelty and invention over the Olson patent.

 

[Nat]

Pete: You have a deeper knowledge of both acoustics and the relevant patents than I do. But it seems to me that there is a difference between a patent and a new idea, and while it may be that the Olsen patent covers the physics of the acoustic suspension design, apparently no one prior to Vilchur figured out how to optimize the variables to produce deep bass in a small box - using a lower than audible resonant frequency driver with a very floppy suspension and then using the limited compliance of the air in small box to control the driver and raise the system frequency to the audible range.
I can't help but think that if anyone else had already put the pieces together in this way,we would know of it because it would have been commecialized. And I can't help but think that it is a genuinely original contribution to the art, even if Olsen's patent described the variables clearly enough to make the combination unpatentable.

 

[Pete B]

A key part of Olson's patent is a "very floppy" suspension though he might have called it high compliance.
I've said why did RCA and Olson apply this to Radios and a friend pointed out that that was probably
what they were selling. So if they made a radio with an 80 Hz cutoff woofer with a high compliance
suspension, simply shifting Fc to 40 Hz doesn't make it a new idea. All the fundamentals are in the Olson
patent. I've stated, in many places, that Villchur popularized air/acoustic suspensions systems for HiFi
use in large bookshelf designs, yes he certainly gets credit for that but this is not invention. He could get
what I think is called a design patent preventing others from copying his production design but that is
not what he applied for.

 

[Nat]

I don't want to beat a dead horse, and I hope I'm not being contentious since I don't actually know any of the details of Olsen and RCA's use of his patent. But my understanding of Vilchur's acoustic suspension design was the combination of a driver with fundamental resonance below the audio range put into a very small airtight box to raise the system resonance up to the very low end of hearing (which is different from the small infinite baffle designs that seem to be what is now called acoustic suspension). Did Olsen ever design anything like that, or were they small infinite baffles?

 

[Pio1980]

Also, did AR have to pay RCA penalty and royalties on the Olson patent?

 

[spicer]

I don't want to beat a dead horse, and I hope I'm not being contentious since I don't actually know any of the details of Olsen and RCA's use of his patent. But my understanding of Vilchur's acoustic suspension design was the combination of a driver with fundamental resonance below the audio range put into a very small airtight box to raise the system resonance up to the very low end of hearing (which is different from the small infinite baffle designs that seem to be what is now called acoustic suspension). Did Olsen ever design anything like that, or were they small infinite baffles?

I'm wondering who brought the charges. Not reading documents so might seem a stupid question but also a basic one.