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What's the history of the compression driver?Where did the concept originate?
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The old stuff is the good stuff.
to amplify sound passing through a constricted passage,hence the invention of the butt trumpet ect. just kidding! couldent resist :)
Hello,The Western Electric WE555 compression driver has been described in 1926 by E. C. WENTE and A. L. THURAS in an internal bulletin of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (ATT). The Bell lab where Wente and Thuras used to work belonged to ATT.
Then the text was published inside the Bell Technical Journal in January 1928 and inside the Bell Laboratories Record (BLR) in date of March 1928. The patent is filed in date of August 4th 1926 and was public on the 2nd April 1929 (it is a strange affair that 2 different patents declarations were signed on the same day for that apparatus one by Thuras and the other one by Wente...).
Parts of the WE555, as the aluminum diaphragm and tangential suspention were developed by H.C. Harrison who previously used to developed those ideas for gramophone heads. I guess the WE555 is the first electrical compression driver but we yet find compression chambers in gramophones between the diaphragm and the horn.
Other patents about compression drivers were filed in the 30s :
one for a low frequecny compression driver filed on 15th august 1930 by Thuras (publication on 26th July 1932) which one inspired the low frequency compression driver still made by the Japanese company Goto).Then there is the patent of the famous WE594 filed on 28th March 1933 by Wente (publication on 14th April 1936). This compression driver with multiple concentrical slits through the phase plug is considered as the father of all moderns compression drivers.
Best regards from Paris,
Thanks,
1926 they were put forward,and we are still using the principal today.
Quite an achievment.
I suppose there were a lot of technologies from that era which are still hanging around(making spectacular contributions in certain products).
Triode tubes,field coil speakers,electrostatic speakers.Others also I'm certain.
Excellent post, Jean-Michel!
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