The CMI/IUPUI Speaker Project: Speaker Adoption

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The CMI/IUPUI Speaker Project: Speaker Adoption

It was a cold January morning when we pulled into the small storage facility that housed some of Classical Music Indy’s interesting collection of musical items. Operations Manager Tierney McGuire led us up to the smaller units that housed the focus of this semester’s project: two beautifully hand-made, wood-encased RCA prototype speakers, experiments in sound projection utilizing the entire wooden case as a medium for the sound to exit. These speakers, conceived in part probably by famous RCA designers Harry F. Olson and Jerome B. Halter, are one of a kind, with actual wood spliced together to make the perfectly round casing around the 15-inch coaxial speaker inside.

Despite years of being shuffled around the city after their donation to Classical Music Indy, our department was contacted to possibly restore the speakers so that they could be used in performance. The RCA Speaker Restoration Project (name tentative, of course) was initiated with a small group of 4 students led by Professor Dr. Doug Bielmeier in order to explore the purpose of the speakers and how they can be used in a “hip” concert setting.


 Interestingly, each speaker has its own internal design based on spheres. The larger, "third of a sphere" design is less sleek than its smaller "flattened sphere" cousin. Both, however, are very, very heavy. Each speaker had to be rolled individually on  its own dolly one at a time in the narrow storage hallways. We had to rent a U-Haul truck in order to get them both back safely to IUPUI. Currently, they’re both safe in the make-shift workshop set up at the IT building, and I’m excited to share everything we learn about them in the upcoming weeks as we begin the restoration process.  
-Kat H.


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