In September 1954, Edgar M Villchur, audio pioneer, writer, artist, inventor, researcher and audio-electronics teacher, unveiled the AR1 at the New York Audio Fair. The acoustic suspension design turned the audio world upside down with its superior bass characterics and minimal bass distortion, in addition to reducing speaker size by an astonishing 75% and going for a respectable $185. Initially Villchur had no intention of setting up his own factory to build audio equipment, because he believed that major investment would be required to produce his design, so he simply wanted to sell his patent, but then both Altec and Bozak laughed it off as impossible.
After mentioning his invention in class (an evening course called “Reproduction of Sound”), one of his students, a certain Henry Kloss, harassed Villchur to the point where they drove to the latter’s home in Woodstock for a demo with a butchered Western Electric. After convincing Villchur that they could easily build plenty of speakers in Kloss' loft in Cambridge, Massachusetts, student and teacher founded Acoustic Research Inc. on 10 August 1954. Villchur owned 51% of the company and filled the roles of president, patent-holder, and director of product development and promotion, while Kloss headed production design and operations. For that first year AR showed a net loss of $4,059, not having sold a single speaker, but in 1955 things improved slightly with sales of $56,773 and a net income of $1,587.
Initially the audio world was unsure what to make of Villchur’s invention, as it took some time for everyone to realise that rather than just being 2nd rate stand-ins, these small units were actually rendering obsolete the existing fridge-like behemoths of the day. In 1956 they moved from Kloss' one-story loft to the now famous address of 24 Thorndike Street, a four storey building. The workforce grew from 6 to 50, and sales jumped to $383,258 for a net income of $26,418. But by then differences on policy issues had caused too much friction between the two founder members, and in February 1957 Henry Kloss walks out with Malcolm Low and Anton Hofman to form KLH. 
Even though Villchur bought out all Kloss' shares, the latter retained the right to employ the acoustic suspension concept in his own works, so that helped establish KLH as another respected member of the Boston sound clique. Abe Hoffman took over as company vice-president and treasurer, with Harry Rubinstein the new plant manager, and even though the split left some scars, it did little to stop Villchur from finishing Kloss's work on the AR2 and launching it in March 1957. Smaller and cheaper than the AR1, the first 1500 units sold at a loss, but eventually total sales for that year hit an astonishing $973,262 and a net income of $37,160.
After introducing a prototype at the Chicago Hi-Fi Show, Villchur finally on October 3 at the 1958 New York High Fidelity Music Show unveils his next revolutionary speaker, the legendary AR3, sporting not only the now familiar acoustic suspension woofer, but also the world’s first commercial dome mid-range driver, and the world’s first high frequency dome tweeter. Dubbed the star of the show, it's heritage was quickly confirmed when the authoritative "Consumer Reports" rated both AR1 and AR2 best in class in November 1958. Within a month of its launch, AR had more than 500 confirmed orders for the new speaker.
Villchur took the AR3 on tour throughout the United States in the early 1960's, staging a total of 75 “concerts”. In addition to the speakers, he also took an Ampex tape deck, two 60 Watt Dynakit amplifiers, and a range of live performers, amongst others the Boston Fine Arts String Quartet. Each performance was fairly simple; the sound of the live musicians was alternated with the pre-recorded echo less music of the same work and band. Labelled the ultimate subjective test of audio quality, these switch overs could for the most part not be detected by the audience, which would of course include both members of the press and audiophile masters of the day. Villchur reasoned that “I thought these concerts defined what we meant by high fidelity”.
For the next ten years the AR3 would undisputed reign as the most accurate loudspeaker available at any price, becoming the ultimate reference in any audio environment of note. Its contribution to audio development was rated so high that on 13 September 1993 the Smithsonian Institute placed a speaker on permanent display in The National Museum of American History. The AR3 in addition played a leading role in that other very lively speaker debate of the 60’s, namely the battle of the West- and East Coast Sounds (the latter is also referred to as the New England- or Boston Sound). This debate is still very much alive, and participants classify both old and new US-produced speakers according to these criteria. These terms were born from the notion that speakers produced in the West (JBL, Altec Lansing, Klipschorn) put you right up on stage, whereas the group produced in the East (AR, KLH, Large Advent) put you somewhere in the middle of the audience. In the East they listened to classical and jazz; speakers with a flat response, mellow, laid-back, and refined. In the West (California) you had the birth of pop/rock and the speakers was forward, dynamic, a punchy bass, loud, and coloured. AR of course insisted that their reproduction of sound was accurate, so it did not matter whether the music originated with a philharmonic orchestra or a progressive rock band. That said, we have to accept that modern speaker characteristics have undoubtedly followed the West Coast philosophy, up to the point where audio is now caught up in a Neolithic boom-box era.By 1966 Acoustic Research Inc had grown to be the largest loudspeaker manufacturer in the USA, holding more than 32% of that market, which was the largest market share ever enjoyed in audio. And that was also the signal for Edgar Villchur to get off the bus – he had long surpassed his original wish to publicly establish an audio truth. He sold all his shares to the huge aerospace conglomerate Teledyne in June 1967, leaving behind a legacy never again matched in the world of audio. The inventor moved on to establish the non-profit “Foundation for Hearing Aid Research”, and from his work there came the multichannel compression design in 1973 which is the current industry standard for modern hearing aids.
The first 5 years under Teledyne, 1967 to 1972, brought more good fortune. In 1967 AR launched both the world's first high-current amplifier, the AU, and the successor to the AR3, the even more successful and higher rated AR3a. The AR Receiver followed in 1969, and in 1970 came the Tuner with class-leading sensitivity and performance. To broaden it's footprint in Europe, AR opens a factory in Amersfoort, Netherlands in 1969, and another in Bedforshire, England two years later. 
The biggest success story of that period however was their outrageously successful turntable, the XA. Initially known as the TA, Villchur started work on this as early as the late 1950’s, and finished the design just after the launch of the AR3. Initial calculations resulted in an introductory price of $58, but that was way too low, so they had to push it up to $78, complete but for the cartridge. Villchur was hoping that in its lifetime it would sell about 50,000 units; come the 70's AR was selling more than 50,000 per year! In 2008 it was calculated that to commercially re-introduce the XA today will give you a unit price in excess of $1500, so it is easy to understand why properly refurbished units are rated as good as anything out there. AR had thousands of TA orders immediately after announcing the launch in 1961, and the replacement model XA in 1963 was to become the reference turntable of the time, one of the biggest money spinners in the AR stable. It was to remain the world's all-time bestseller until the Linn Sondek LP12 came along; itself unsurprisingly a well-engineered clone of the XA (the Linn was introduced in 1972 and is still in production).In that same period both sales and profits doubled, but market share started dropping because of a very quickly expanding audio market. More manufacturers were now bringing out excellent equipment, all competing for the same cake, so Teledyne decided that it was time to focus on the lower-end sector. They brought in a new management team, and with that most of the old Villchur crowd left the house. AR continued to be a force and a well respected name deep into the 1980’s, the biggest producer of loudspeakers in the world, but the slide had begun, and in 1993 Teledyne, who couldn't find a solution to counter shrinking market share, sold the company to International Jensen. The new owners that same year closed the doors of the famous Massachusetts factory and moved everything to Benicia in California, so that brought to an end what has become known as the Classical and Post Classical periods.
International Jensen themselves ran into financial difficulties not much later. After being put up for sale in 1995, Recoton in August 1996 acquired the Jensen consumer division, which by then included the famous American brands of Advent, AR, Jensen, NHT and Phase Linear. Early April 2003 Recoton Audio Corp was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and into full bankruptcy proceedings on April 8, 2003. In the aftermath of the slaughter, Audiovox paid $40m for the rights to use the names of Advent, Jensen and AR on loudspeakers and electronic products, while Thomson SA bought the rights to use them on accessories. Thomson that same year formed a joint venture named TTE with the giant Chinese company TCL, which would be responsible for producing the TTE brands, making TCL the world's leading TV manufacturer. Thomson initially retained licenses and brand control, but subsequently also transferred product marketing to TTE in 2005. This non-USA journey of the Advent, Jensen and AR names however came to an end in December 2006 when Audiovox acquired the accessory rights from Thomson (excluding those that covered TV's and communications products), so both audio products and audio accessories finally ended up in the same AR stable again. The “new” AR has throughout all this turmoil established itself as a serious competitor in the current US electronics market, even regaining some exposure on the global front, covering a wide spectrum with its products produced in the Far East.
Will it ever reach the same levels of respect and cult status that the old firm has earned for itself and its products? "Never" probably is too final a judgement, so let's simply proclaim that the King is dead, long live the King...
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In Woodstock lab, 1997
At home, Woodstock, 1997
Stereophile interview, 2005
AR3 in Smithsonian Institute
Restored AR3a28 July 2009