If you bought computer audio hardware a few decades ago, you may remember coming across products from Altec Lansing. That you probably haven’t thought of that name in some time doesn’t surprise us, the company has not fared well in recent years and has changed hands multiple times. [The Last Shift] tells the company’s history in a video you can watch below.
James Lansing started Lansing Manufacturing, offering high-end speakers for the fledgling “talkie” movie industry. It had some success, but the depression put them on shaky footing. Meanwhile, a company named All Technical Service Company, or Altec, was a large organization that serviced Western Electric movie theater equipment. Flush with cash, they merged with Lansing Manufacturing to form Altec Lansing. With a large infrastructure and Lansing’s engineering, they became a significant supplier to the military during World War II.
After the war, the company produced a landmark theater speaker system that became the gold standard in theater audio. However, Lansing didn’t like the big company environment and left to found a company that bore his full name, James B. Lansing, which you may know as JBL.
Altec Lansing continued to grow. However, a series of mergers and sales starting in 1969 caused the Altec Lansing company to decline. By the 1990s, Altec Lansing was making cheap PC speakers. A far cry from the gold-standard massive speakers made by the company during its heyday.
We love the history of technology and the people that drove them. Bing Crosby, for example. Or the lesser-known heroes like Edwin Armstrong.
If my memory serves me right, Dell computers used to ship with Altec Lansing speakers. My mom still uses a compact iPod dock made by them. My elderly parents take it with them when travelling for vacations. They love to rent a house in nature and go to a different one each time. They bring it with them to have their own music there. They prefer that over a Bluetooth speaker. It’s pretty decent quality audio for it’s size and age.
And we revere the CEOs and MDs that run companies into the ground.
Some of us associate the names Altec Lansing and Labtec with the demodulated GSM noise
my legendary 1999 Cambridge Soundworks pc speaker + subwoofer died, and when i went searching for a replacement, i stumbled onto the roughly equivalent legendary Altec Lansing product from the same era (used for an even better price than new back then). Gave me a nice warm feeling and i almost bought it until i saw that the same seller also was getting rid of the same Cambride Soundworks unit i was replacing. The 1990s were a great decade to be a consumer. sigh