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PWK and Chief Bonehead Highlight This Month's Costco Magazine


thebes

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Pretty cool article.  There is also a picture on the "Table of Contents" page that shows PWK another engineer, some tube gear and a RTR.

 

Here's a link to the article:

 

https://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/202112/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1746731&app=false&cmsId=3972821#articleId1746731

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From the article:

 

Born in 1904, in Elkhart, Indiana, Paul W. Klipsch went on to become an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, lieutenant colonel, geophysicist and pilot. But it was his love of music that inspired his greatest legacy: creator of the Klipsch Company and the Klipschorn, a revolution in home audio.

In the beginning

To understand the company that bears his name, an appreciation of the founder is necessary. A self-avowed symphonic music lover, Klipsch wondered why the rich sound of a live orchestra was lost in the home speakers of his day. What made his Klipschorn speaker ingenious was that he folded the horn and used the corners naturally occurring in everyone’s homes to make it the most compact and efficient speaker without losing any of the acoustics. And all of his speakers were handcrafted.

By all accounts, Paul W. Klipsch was an iconoclast and a character.

Roy Delgado is a principal engineer at Klipsch and began working there in 1986 after graduation from college. Klipsch was among those who interviewed the young engineer.

"My first meeting with him was at the interview," says Delgado. "I thought, ‘Man, this guy is crazy. He’s really into audio. He’s not bashful. He follows the beat of his own drummer.’ And I really liked that. I liked his eccentricity. I liked his dry humor. I liked his compassion. I liked his respect for others."

Klipsch knew all his employees by name. He knew their families.

"At over 6 feet tall, he was a tower, but he was also very welcoming to people," observes Delgado. "He eventually became like my third grandfather."

Yet, for all his accomplishments, there was a humility to the man.

handcrafting a speaker cabinet
 

"Paul Klipsch was just as human as anybody and was always questioning, ‘I hope this works,’ " says Delgado. "He said 90% of what he tried failed; it’s that 10% that he hung on to."

When Delgado or his co-workers got frustrated with something not working, Klipsch would say, "No, this is what it’s about. This is why they call it [research and development]. This is why they call it tinkering."

Delgado concludes, "Over the years, I began to accept the failures—not as a dead end, but as another U-turn."

For Klipsch the company, those U-turns resulted in better products, dominating the audio industry.

A company grows

The small company, born in a shed in Hope, Arkansas, in 1946, has blossomed into a major corporation, with 200 employees, a full-size factory (still in Hope) and corporate headquarters in Indianapolis. Its catalog has grown to include headphones, home theaters, sound bars, subwoofers, music systems and wireless speakers for home and corporate use. It’s endured ownership changes over the years, but the culture remains passionate and creative.

When pressure intensifies, Delgado reminds others what Klipsch instilled in him: "Stress is not conducive to creativity. Forcing an outcome is not conducive to creativity. And there is not a set time of the day when you can be creative."

Tommy Jacobs, senior vice president of sales and marketing for the Premium Audio Company, current owners of Klipsch and the son of company CEO Paul Jacobs, adds that a day doesn’t go by when he’s not telling Paul Klipsch’s story.

"There’s a lot of pride with the company in that," he says. "Holding true to the value of what his ultimate mission was: How can I re-create this performance in the home?"

Klipsch worked up until three months before he died, in 2002, at the age of 98. He is quoted as saying, "Audio was a hobby and then a profession, but I still consider myself as an amateur in that an amateur is one who practices his art for love." That statement also applies to the people who keep the Klipsch Group at the top of the audio game today.

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This month's Costco mag  has a comment from a member called D. Phrogphile. Here it is:

 

"I read the article about Klipsch eagerly. His legacy is well known to those who graduated from New Mexico State University, particularly the engineers. He was a generous donor to the school where he earned his bachelor's degree and NMSU's electrical engineering school bears his name."

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7 hours ago, thebes said:

This month's Costco mag  has a comment from a member called D. Phrogphile. Here it is:

 

"I read the article about Klipsch eagerly. His legacy is well known to those who graduated from New Mexico State University, particularly the engineers. He was a generous donor to the school where he earned his bachelor's degree and NMSU's electrical engineering school bears his name."

Go Aggies!!!

 

I previously posted somewhere on this forum that I was at NMSU when the Khorns were first installed in the redone EE lecture hall in the summer of 1992. Shortly thereafter I learned I enjoyed structural engineering more (fewer integrals) but fondly recall how my digital logic professor loved cranking up the Khorns my last semester as an EE. He particularly enjoyed cranking them the last 5 minutes of an exam. 

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