[1][6] With a career that spanned 60 years,[1] Massa registered over 140 patents,[4] published scores of technical and scientific articles, and developed hundreds of new products for an array of applications in the field of electroacoustics.

"[2] In a 1972 article in Under Sea Technology, he is described as "one of those rare individuals with the unique ability to quickly get to the basic elements of a problem and convert good ideas into reliable hardware.

[1][3] After graduation, Massa accepted a job at the Victor Talking Machine Company[1][2][3][6] (later RCA-Victor) in Camden, New Jersey, where he worked in their Acoustic Research Department.

[3] Shortly thereafter was the Wall Street crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression, but Massa's research team received a reprieve from the sunken economy thanks to the growing motion picture industry's dire need for better sound equipment.

[3][5] Massa helped move the industry from its entirely mechanical sound recording and reproduction infancy to its golden age of high-quality electrical loud speakers and microphones—thereby rapidly advancing the field of electroacoustic engineering.

[4][5] He invented new production techniques to develop the first on-ship speaker to successfully withstand gun-blast pressures,[3] as well as a low-cost, blast-proof, lightweight sound-powered telephone for the Navy's fleet—permitting the direct transmission of speech without the use of batteries.

[1][6] In 1942, the Brush Development Company offered Massa the position of Director of Acoustical Research, and he relocated his family to Cleveland, Ohio, for the job.

[4] The towed array was a success, and the Navy contracted Massa's Brush engineering group to work full-time on the continued development of transducers—devices that convert energy from one form to another—for underwater military applications.

[2] By the 1970s, the company split its work evenly between underwater applications (oceanography, military scanning sonars and anti-submarine warfare developments) and electro-acoustic systems, including ultrasonic transducers for in-air applications, intrusion alarms, motion detectors, remote-control proximity indicators,[2] and even the first automatic scoring system for bowling.