Again, playing devils advocate, he didn't claim AM5's were superior speakers. Their design coincided with the development of home theater, and his choice of size and design allowed a lot of men to convince their wives to let them mount 5 speakers on the wall in their living room. Ask me how I know.
IMO, Bose was the primary company to be able to capitalize on the idea that small point source speakers with specific frequency range coverage could give the
illusion of more sound, or bigger speakers, or multiple sources, and when coupled with a air mass subwoofer, could again give the
illusion of decent sound. What it did, IMO, was create the idea that you could accept much poorer sound for aesthetics in room design and interior space use. B&O had done great design and smaller speakers but it was much more costly and not to everyone's taste. IMO, Bose got people to accept the compromises they pushed out in the name of a hidden audio system - same as the Bose Wave radio systems. They were also able to push across the idea that tiny, relatively cheap drivers used with enough EQ, additional power, and acoustic and phase tricks could sound initially useful. But increase the volume, ask for real low frequency power, and get beyond the drivers limited excursion capability and the real limitations of the parts, electronics and the true limited frequency responses became quite evident, at least in my experience.
But at that point, it was all moot because it was the only speakers you could have in your house, your listening area was now dominated by appearance and not sound quality, and even placement became a matter of where to put them rather than optimization. Just because you can hear 4 surround sources doesn't mean they integrate well or provide full range and reasonably flat frequency response, plus give a true soundstage and ambient field. IMO, they were well marketed to the casual music listener rather than the audiophile, and as such, did achieve commercial success.
IMO, the BBC LS3/5a, the ADS L300 / L200 (with the similar Visonik David / Braun derivatives), and the M&K satellites of the era were the first well engineered and generally audiophile sounding small speakers with true capabilities of imaging and broad coverage (a nod should also be given to the Dynaco A-10). However, dedicated and widely available subwoofers to cover the missing mid and low bass were not really available as most adhered to a ported or sealed box enclosure and were quite large. This changed when M&K introduced their Volkswoofer and some of the first quality powered subwoofers. Bose's air mass subs, using variations on T/S developments was instrumental in making subs very small (but still limited in true capability - you can hear them, but you can't really push them) which have persisted to the computer subs of the late 90's-2000's. That Bose then patented the air mass sub design (and double and triple chamber type units, even getting JBL to abandon a much more useful professional sub - the TCB) to prevent others from using it even though, IMO, they were not the first to develop it.
There were probably 10-20 makes of sub/sat systems in the mid to late 70's to mid 80's, notably, Fried / SoniKit, Rogers, ADS, Triad, M&K, JBL's L212, etc. But again, most looked like typical box like speakers (I forgot the cylindrical Jim Rogers JR149's / sub system and the Dalesford D shaped system) and of course the larger Dahlquist DQ-10 / DQ-1W system.
The referenced article is more centered around commercial success coincident with introductions of new or refined versions of speaker tech. In that sense, the Dynaco A25 should have been on the list as well, having been extremely popular and well sold in the US despite being made in Denmark.
