JBL Loudspeaker

The founder: JBL began with J.B.L. – James Bullough Lansing. Lansing was an obsessive and possibly manic-depressive genius who invented practically everything within his imagination – even his own name.

He was born James Martini on January 14, 1902 in Macoupin County, Illinois, the son of Henry Martini and Grace Erbs Martini. Macoupin County, an administrative district north of St. Louis, was a region characterized by agriculture and mining. Henry Martini worked as a mining engineer.

And his son (the ninth of fourteen Martini children) was also to follow in his footsteps. Young James was fascinated by technology and machines from an early age. It is reported that at the tender age of 12, he built a small transmitter whose signal was strong enough to interfere with a local radio station.

James attended school in Springfield, Illinois and began taking classes at a small college, but without earning a formal degree in engineering. As a young adult, he adopted a middle name – Bullough (after a family he knew as a teenager). Also at this time, but for reasons unknown today, he changed his surname to Lansing.

In the early 1920s, he worked as a car mechanic. After the death of his mother at the end of 1924, Lansing moved to Salt Lake City. The city offered good job opportunities for an ambitious young man whose preference and strength were electrical machines. Lansing quickly found a job as an engineer at a radio station.

But Lansing wanted more. Not long after his arrival in Salt Lake City, Lansing founded the Lansing Manufacturing Company to produce radio loudspeakers. Shortly afterwards, he met a businessman named Ken Decker, who was to take care of the financing and marketing of his business. Lansing was now able to concentrate fully on the technology.

However, Salt Lake City was not the center of the electronic manufacturing industry in the southwestern United States. Most of the companies were based in Los Angeles. At the beginning of 1927, Lansing therefore relocated his company to this city.

The timing was perfect. October 6 saw the premiere of the Warner Brothers film The Jazz Singer – the first feature film with talking actors. The film was such a sensation that suddenly every studio in Hollywood was asking for sound systems for their recording studios and movie theaters.

Unfortunately, this new technology was still inadequate for film soundtracks. Douglas Shearer, for example, the chief sound engineer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, thought they sounded too weak and coarse. MGM, Hollywood’s largest and most renowned studio, mainly produced lavishly equipped musicals and other films with sophisticated sound reproduction.

In search of better technology, Shearer sought advice from experts, who referred him to Jim Lansing. From 1933 to 1935, Shearer and Lansing developed a system of horn-shaped loudspeakers designed to improve the sound in movie theaters. The Shearer-Lansing system worked so well that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave it an award for outstanding technical quality in 1936.

Lansing Manufacturing was flying high – until Ken Decker literally crashed. Decker was a reserve officer in the United States Army Air Forces and was killed during one of his flights in 1939.

Without Decker’s business acumen, Lansing Manufacturing went increasingly downhill. To save his company, Jim Lansing finally had to sell it in 1941.

Altec Service Corporation, a company specializing in the maintenance and repair of sound systems for movie theaters, needed a source for replacement parts. In December 1941, Altec Lansing Manufacturing bought the company for an alleged 50,000 US dollars (approx. 730,000 US dollars in 2009 dollars).

Jim Lansing was now Vice-President of Engineering at the renamed Altec Lansing Corporation and was able to concentrate fully on the development of new technologies. Together with his design team, he developed, among other things, the A-4 loudspeaker system, which soon became the standard for movie theaters.

But Lansing was used to running the company according to his own ideas. This led to repeated disputes with the management of Altec Lansing. The term of his contract was 5 years. When it expired, he left the company.

On October 1, 1946, he founded Lansing Sound, Incorporated. Altec Lansing complained that the open use of the Lansing name infringed Altec Lansing’s rights to this trademark. As a result, LSI quickly and skillfully incorporated the name of its founder into a new brand name: James B. Lansing Sound, Incorporated.

Lansing soon began developing loudspeakers for movie theaters. His first components were literally (right down to the model names) faithful copies of the speakers he had developed for Altec Lansing.

Lansing was a brilliant engineer with an eye for innovative design and materials, but a lousy businessman. His company was making losses, and by the end of 1949 it was in debt to the tune of 20,000 US dollars (approximately 180,000 US dollars in 2009 dollars).

Lansing, who had always suffered from depressive moods, was so affected by this decline that he, who had once founded JBL, took his own life on September 24, 1949.

Lansing had taken out a life insurance policy for 10,000 US dollars. His wife received one third, while the remaining two thirds went to his company. With the help of the company share (approx. 60,000 US dollars converted to 2009), the head of the finance department, William Thomas, was able to relieve the company of its debt burden. In the early 1950s, Thomas acquired the share owned by Lansing’s widow and became the sole owner.

Thomas knew that he now had an invaluable asset: Jim Lansing’s name. Despite Lansing’s financial difficulties, he still had an excellent reputation for developing high-quality audio electronics systems. Thomas launched the Jim Lansing Signature range of loudspeakers, which were characterized by first-class design and manufacturing quality.

But a single line of speakers wasn’t enough to keep the company afloat – especially not after Altec Lansing banned Thomas from using the valuable “Lansing” brand name. After lengthy negotiations, Thomas finally agreed to stop using the name. From then on, James B. Lansing Sound, Incorporated and its products operated under the name JBL.

It was important to Thomas that his company always had its finger on the pulse. As theaters began to convert to stereo sound, Thomas contracted with JBL to design new components for Ampex and Westrex, both manufacturers of cinema audio systems.

The early 1950s also saw the birth of the high-quality home audio system. The term “hi-fi” (high fidelity) found its way into the general vocabulary and photos of the latest record players could now be seen in numerous magazines. In order to establish itself in this new market, Thomas signed up industrial designer William Hartsfield. Hartsfield developed a loudspeaker that was immediately named the “Hartsfield” without much ado. This speaker became a bestseller, and JBL suddenly became a major manufacturer of home audio systems.

In 1957, engineer Richard Ranger and designer Arnold Wolf developed the successful Paragon sound system. Housed in an elegant hardwood cabinet, the Paragon was a first-class choice both as an excellent record player and as stylish living room furniture. The Paragon was so popular that JBL kept it in its range for more than 25 years.

Even during the phase in which JBL successfully developed new loudspeakers and other components for the home, the area that today bears the name “professional audio technology” was not ignored. In the 1950s, electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender described the JBL D130 model as the ideal speaker for his instruments. From then on, guitarists all over the world played their instruments through D130 loudspeakers.

A few years later, in the early 1960s, JBL worked with Capitol Records (home of the Beatles and Beach Boys) to develop monitor speakers for recording studios. The result of this collaboration, the 4320 system, was so successful that JBL’s Professional Division, the division for professional audio technology, continues to develop components for recording studios worldwide to this day.

Encouraged by these successes, William Thomas formally established JBL Professional, an independent division for this segment, in the late 1960s. The Consumer Division, the department for end consumers, was continued as JBL.

Sidney Harman was (together with Bernard Kardon) the founder of the audio company Harman Kardon. Like JBL, this company was also characterized by its innovation. Among other things, Harman Kardon developed the stereo receiver.

But Harman wanted his company to operate on a larger scale. Harman Kardon had made him so wealthy that he was able to buy up the Jervis Corporation, a smaller company based in New York. Jervis made an offer for JBL.

After twenty years of impressive success and products in the audio field, William Thomas was ready to sell JBL. The transaction was approved in 1969. JBL was now part of Jervis, which would later be renamed Harman International Industries, Incorporated. Arnold Wolf, the designer of the Paragon (and the JBL logo), was appointed President of JBL.

Under Harman’s wing, JBL became more or less the brand we know today: an audio manufacturer using its knowledge and skills in sound systems for movie theaters, concert halls and recording studios to create products for the home consumer. In 1969, the company incorporated the technology of its 4310 and 4311 monitor speakers (extremely popular in recording studios) into the L100 loudspeaker designed for home audio systems. With more than 100,000 units sold during the 1970s, the L100 became an enormous bestseller.

In addition to selling its existing technologies, JBL did not neglect to invest in innovation in the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1970s, for example, JBL engineers developed Symmetrical Field Geometry™, a speaker arrangement that reduces sound distortion. A few years later, JBL engineers developed Bi-Radial® horn technology, which improves sound performance across a range of frequencies.

Meanwhile, Harman International’s worldwide distribution network helped the JBL brand reach customers who otherwise would never have purchased a JBL product. The company has established itself very well in Japan in particular. Since the 1980s, for example, high-end loudspeakers such as the renowned K2 and the powerful, room-dominating Everest DD6600 have been causing a sensation both in Japanese trade journals and in the retail trade.

For decades, Sidney Harman was at the helm of Harman International Industries. In May 2007, shortly before his 88th birthday, he appointed Dinesh Paliwal as CEO of Harman International.

Paliwal, an engineer with degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Miami University of Ohio, was head of ABB Ltd, a leader in power and automation technology, before joining Harman International. About a year into his tenure, he succeeded Harman as chairman of the company.

JBL’s engineers and other employees watched these changes with keen interest, but none of them distracted them from their usual mission: making great audio products. The cooperation with Roxy, a sportswear company, laid the foundation for a new fashion trend, the development of a series of colorful headphones with style. Speakers and players have been designed for new entertainment technologies such as high-definition television, Blu-ray Disc™ and Apple’s latest iPod and iPhone models. And every new development and every new opportunity was followed closely from the very beginning.

What exactly is such a possibility? Well, we can’t say exactly what that means (after all, we don’t want to give away a secret of our success). But one thing is certain: the way JBL employees are carrying on the traditions of craftsmanship and technological innovation that have always been our hallmark would surely have made Jim Lansing proud.