Advent Corporation was a consumer audio and video hardware company founded in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

Henry Kloss Henry Kloss (February 21, 1929 – January 31, 2002) was a prominent American audio engineer and entrepreneur who helped advance high fidelity loudspeaker and radio receiver technology beginning in the 1950s. Kloss (pronounced with a long o, l ...

in 1967. It closed in 1981. The name came from the legal description ''the advent corporation'' used in the incorporation documents as a

placeholder name Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in the context in wh ...

before the actual name is selected. Around 1968, Kloss had quit KLH to develop a low-cost

projection television Large-screen television technology (colloquially big-screen TV) developed rapidly in the late 1990s and 2000s. Prior to the development of thin-screen technologies, rear-projection television was standard for larger displays, and jumbotron, a n ...

, but had trouble financing the leading-edge research and development that was still required. To earn some money, he decided to build a high-performance low-cost dual driver speaker system with

woofer A woofer or bass speaker is a technical term for a loudspeaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds, typically from 50 Hz up to 1000 Hz. The name is from the onomatopoeic English word for a dog's bark, " woof" (in contrast to th ...

called simply ''The Advent Loudspeaker'' (later given the

retronym A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...

the ''Larger Advent'', after introduction of ''The Smaller Advent Loudspeaker''). It rivaled the sound of the then top-line AR Model 3a (which used three drivers and a 12-inch (30 cm) woofer), but only cost about half as much. Advent produced a number of different versions of the 2-way Advent, including the Advent Loudspeaker, the Smaller Advent Loudspeaker, the "New" Advent Loudspeaker, Advent/2, Advent/3, 4000 series, and 5000 series, to name a few. They were usually offered in both

wood veneer In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood and sometimes bark, usually thinner than 3 mm (1/8 inch), that typically are glued onto core panels (typically, wood, particle board or medium-density fiberboard) to produce flat pane ...

and vinyl-covered "utility" cabinet versions, which other than appearance were acoustically identical. Kloss then resumed work on increasing the fidelity of

cassette tape The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ott ...

s, a format that had originally been developed to be used only for voice dictation. Kloss introduced the Advent 201 in 1971, incorporating Dolby B noise reduction (for both recording and playback), along with chromium dioxide tape in the first popular high fidelity

cassette deck A cassette deck is a type of tape machine for playing and recording audio cassettes that does not have a built-in power amplifier or speakers, and serves primarily as a transport. It can be a part of an automotive entertainment system, a part of ...

. In 1972, the Advent VideoBeam 1000 was finally released, the first large-screen projection television for home use. In 1977, Kloss founded Kloss Video Corporation (KVC) as a spin-off company. He invented the Novatron tube there, which increased the efficiency of projection TVs. Advent continued to concentrate on low-cost high-performance consumer audio products. Eventually, long after Kloss' departure, Advent ran into hard times. Citing high labor costs, it closed its Cambridge factory in 1979, laying off most of its 650 workers, and moved production to

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

. It did not thrive, and never emerged from a bankruptcy declared in March 1981. KVC passed on reacquiring the (by then) New Hampshire-based brand, which was later merged into

Jensen Electronics {{Infobox company , name = Jensen Electronics , logo = Jensen Dsgnd To Move 4C 3D.jpg , logo_size = 250px , type = subsidiary , foundation = 1915 , founder = Peter L. Jensen , location ...

, which in turn was acquired by

Audiovox Voxx International is an American consumer electronics company founded as Audiovox Corporation in 1960, and renamed Voxx in 2012. It is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The company specializes in four areas: OEM and after-market automotive ...

in 2004. KVC itself ran into increasing competition from Japanese manufacturers entering the now-proven market for large-format consumer TVs, eventually sold its assets, and shut down.

References

{{reflist 1967 establishments in Massachusetts 1981 disestablishments in New Hampshire American companies established in 1967 Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1981 Defunct manufacturing companies based in Massachusetts Electronics companies established in 1967 History of Cambridge, Massachusetts Loudspeaker manufacturers