Renowned for his numerous inventions including the acoustic-suspension speaker and the large-screen projection television, Henry Kloss also founded four successful consumer electronics companies. While was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during the early 1950s, Kloss and some friends designed the first acoustic-suspension speaker, considered an audio breakthrough that popularized high fidelity sound. The invention's success encouraged Kloss to drop out of school to start his own manufacturing company, Acoustic Research. Kloss and two partners later formed the second business, KLH, where Kloss created the KLH Model Eleven, the world's first compact and portable stereo.
When Kloss sold KLH, the inventor turned his attention to the video market. It was Kloss, while being the president of the KLH Research and Development Corporation, in Cambridge, Mass., who pushed Ray Dolby to bring the B-Type consumer system to market in 1968. (C-Type was introduced in 1980.) Kloss had an engineer construct a quick version of A-Type to show Dolby, that ''if I could do it, somebody could bootleg something like it.'' The result is, Dolby developed its own version--first in a reel-to-reel deck produced by KLH, then in a cassette deck made by the Advent Corporation, founded by Kloss in 1967 with the goal of producing projection televisions.
Advent also manufactured and sold loudspeakers. Kloss, an Audio Hall of Fame member, introduced his first projection television in 1973. In 1977 he became the founder and president of Kloss Video Corp., where he invented the Novatron(R) projection tube that employs built-in mirror optics as a means of improving the efficiency and performance of projection television.
Kloss' fourth business, Cambridge SoundWorks, a subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd., manufactures more than 40 different models of home stereo, home theater and computer speakers.
In 2000, Kloss emerged from retirement to team-up with long-time associate and former Cambridge SoundWorks co-founder Tom DeVesto. DeVesto's company, Tivoli Audio, manufactures Kloss' latest designs, including the critically-acclaimed Model One AM/FM mono table radio and the 2-piece Model Two stereo radio.
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