Chester Williams Rice (December 16, 1888 – March 8, 1951) was an American electrical engineer who was the joint inventor in 1925 of the

moving coil A magnetic cartridge, more commonly called a phonograph cartridge or phono cartridge or (colloquially) a pickup, is an electromechanical transducer that is used to play records on a turntable. The cartridge contains a removable or permanently ...

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

along with Edward W. Kellogg.

Career

Rice was born in

Lynn, Massachusetts Lynn is the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts and the largest city in Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line at Suffolk Downs, Lynn is part of Greater Boston's urban inner core. Settled by E ...

in 1888 and educated at

The Albany Academy The Albany Academy is an independent college preparatory day school for boys in Albany, New York, USA, enrolling students from Preschool (age 3) to Grade 12. It was established in 1813 by a charter signed by Mayor Philip Schuyler Van Renssela ...

and

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

, from which he received an S.B. and an M.E.E. in 1911. He was later employed by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

. In 1925, Rice, while working for General Electric, published a paper with Edward W. Kellogg outlining an early moving coil loudspeaker. The paper also discussed a way of boosting power to amplifiers; this was incorporated in General Electric's Radiola line of radios in 1926.

Personal

Rice married Helen Currier of Lynn in 1914. They had five children, Barbara, Wilbur Currier, Priscilla, Chester Thomson and Helen.

References

External links

* 1888 births 1951 deaths American acoustical engineers People from Lynn, Massachusetts Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni General Electric people 20th-century American inventors The Albany Academy alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society {{US-inventor-stub