The microphone came into our lives in 1876 thanks to Emile Berliner. After Graham Bell invented the telephone, Emile Berliner examined the telephone, including its interior, and concluded that the quality of the voice transmitted by the telephone was not sufficient.
As a result of his research, he learned information about currents and phases and started to invent the microphone. Emile aimed to record his voice with a microphone at first and then export it. Bell telephone company owned by Graham Bell liked Emile's invention very much and bought Emile's microphone, which was the first microphone sample, with 50 thousand dollars.
This product was later studied by David Edward Hughes in 1878 and research was conducted on how it could be improved. Finally, Hughes invented the carbon microphone. A carbon microphone made by Hughes was used until the 1920s. In the 1920s, work was started again to develop this microphone.
In 1964, two successful Bell Laboratories employees, Gerhard Sessler, and James West, invented the electret microphone. The microphone has undergone many changes and developments since 1964. Currently, it is one of the most used technological tools by almost everyone in the world. The microphone of the phone, computer; the microphone of the headset are just a few of the uses of the microphone.
Details
A microphone is a device that converts acoustic power into electrical power.
The microphone was first used in telephones and later in radio transmitters.
Sir Charles Wheatstone was the first to use the word "microphone" in 1827, but still, it was Emile Berliner who invented the first microphone in 1876.
Emile Berliner was born on May 20, 1851, in Hannover, Germany, in a family of Jewish descent. It began to be cultivated in the trade as a family tradition. After his apprenticeship, he started to work as an accountant at a young age. Emile Berliner, at the age of 19, immigrated to the USA in 1870 with a few friends of his father, leaving his family behind to avoid military service in the Prussian-France war. Emile, who first worked in his father's friend's shop in Washington, later settled in New York. While working on temporary jobs like cleaning bottles there, he attended night school at the Cooper Union Institute in New York and studied physics. Emile Berliner became interested in the new communication technologies of that time, the telephone and the phonograph, after working in a rental horse stable during his first years of immigrating to the USA, and he invented a more advanced version of the telephone receiver. He invented one of the first types of microphones. The patent was purchased by the Bell Telephone Company.