On Thursday, November 26, 1998 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Randall Bradley wrote:
> The "corona wind " loudspeaker was written up and designed
> by Gerald Shirley - see the AES Loudspeaker Vol 1. for the
> original ariticle - who I had the pleasure to meet.
> He told me that it didn't make much noise.
> I made a mini version for test, which wasn't too bad at
> night at a distance of 12"!!
> The Totecs or whatever were a version of this design,
> so far as I am aware...
> I wanted to try this sort of idea with the He/Ne/Ar gas
> inside a thin, thin polyester bag - sort of an indirect
> drive ESL?
> Anyone want to put up the research money??
> _-_-randy
> BEAR Labs
Hey Randy,

I hope you get a notification on this 25+ years past original posting update for adding my two cents to the soon to be defunct conversation.

For everyone else reading this post I'm Larry Shirley, son of the eponymous Gerald who first met Randy when he interviewed my father about the original topic of the corona wind loudspeaker. I don't have much to add (technically at least) about its operation, but I'll contribute the postscript to the story that he kept the original demonstration speaker for many years on a shelf in his apartment until he suffered a health issue requiring a hospital visit. As an act intended to be helpful, a family relative decided it would be good to do some housekeeping in his absence and the speaker was sadly relegated to the trash heap. On his return he was very surprised to find it missing and was very depressed about having a memento from one of his favorite development projects disposed of out of sheer ignorance.

An early member of the Audio Engineering Society with an electro-mechanical engineering background, Gerald (or Jerry as he preferred to be called) had many diverse interests including a non-throttling trigger valve which could dispense corrosive liquids by having no metal parts (such as springs) in contact with them and Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVTs). He invested in the Laird Gogins CVT and ultimately became the owner of the patent (US5392664A - now expired), for which I still possess the original machine-tooled working model used for demonstrating the viability of the early design..

Professionally, Jerry started two companies: Aldshir and Televex, which began commercially as a phonograph stylus retipping service. He went on to design, patent, manufacture, and sell several different iterations of OEM and aftermarket universal phonograph spindle adaptors that allowed a wide range of record changer brands to hold a stack of 45 RPM records without requiring individual plastic inserts to accommodate their larger center holes.

As this Google Group is slated to be closed shortly, I maybe reached by email: larry@zebrakart.com for any further inquiries regarding my father.

[ Moderator's note: while it is true that Google will be dropping their access to Usenet groups, rec.audio.high-end has been around longer than Google and may well outlast that company. -- dsr for rahemod ]