Ted Jordan

The earliest photograph of Edward James Jordan, (Ted, to everybody) was taken Circa 1933 and shows him sitting on his Father's knee wearing headphones and adjusting a 'crystal set', (one of the earliest types of receiver). With his mother coming from a musical family and his father a skilled amateur radio builder Ted could have been 'genetically engineered' for his vocation.

During early childhood his most treasured possessions were a wind-up gramophone and his record collection. Later, his love of music led to a brief encounter with the piano but he was quite unable to master Beethoven's Emperor Concerto - even after three lessons - so he learned to solder and built himself a record player instead.

Living in London, Ted had access to the major concert halls. His experience of live music planted the seed of dissatisfaction with recorded music which has remained a driving force in his work to this day.

Brushing aside his college studies in building technology and architecture, Ted started his career as an assistant in the radio laboratories of the GEC and his first hi-fi experience was hearing Gilbert and Sullivan's Overture to 'The Mikado'. played through the new GEC 8" metal coned loudspeakers developed by Hugh Britten. For the first time he was experiencing an astonishingly close approach to live concert sound. Although somewhat 'coloured' the quality convinced Ted of the full sonic potential of the cone drivers had not been fully developed.

In 1952, with this in mind, Ted joined Goodmans Industries of Wembley, where the very progressive management gave Ted the opportunity to develope his own ideas (with the proviso that if they worked Ted's salary would be doubled - if not he would be sacked). Ted now had the freedom of the most advanced electro-acoustic laboratories in Europe where he commenced his seminal studies of cone behaviour at high frequencies. He observed that the flexing of the cone played a vital and necessary role in the treble performance and that a very smooth and extended response could be achieved by controlling this flexure through specific design of the cone profile.

This work resulted the 'Goodmans Axiette', which was the first of the single cone, truly full range drivers. It's smooth and extended frequency response outperformed all other contemporary drivers. Without doubt, it's sonic performance was further enhanced by the. the absence of crossover components. BUT, although much less coloured, it still lacked the 'life' of the GEC drivers and it was then that Ted acknowledged the qualities of the light metals as a cone material. (but the explanation for this came later).

Ted subsequently redesigned the entire range of Goodman's drive units, extensively researched new methods of loudspeaker loading and had numerous articles published in Britain and abroad. He also developed a full range electrostatic loudspeaker which made it's debut at the same time (and much to the consternation of) QUAD. Ted's last project for Goodmans was a miniature loudspeaker system using a two inch full range unit which was the basis for the small multi-media systems of today.

In 1962 Ted's, extensive knowledge and experience was brought together in his definitive text book, 'LOUDSPEAKERS', published by Focal Press. It has never been equalled for it's full mathematical analysis of loudspeaker theory and first principle derivation of all loudspeaker parameters, (now often referred to as the 'TM' parameters).