Today, it is almost impossible to walk around the city or the university and not meet at least a few dozen people in headphones. We are talking about small miniature earbuds, and huge headphones, in which the listener looks like a pilot Boing 747. The popularity and prevalence of modern headphones could be attributed to the device Sony Walkman, which debuted in 1979 and almost immediately became a symbol of pop culture.
Being the first portable music player available, Walkman became a distinctive feature of yuppies, and it was even marked on the covers of their notebooks. But, of course, the history of the headphones dates back to much earlier years than the 1980s. Like many other commercial electronics, modern headphones (and stereo sound) were created in part in the military sphere.
However, there is no one person or company that "invented" the headphones. However, several key players have "moved" the device from military bases and telephone exchanges to the home and street environment.
In the 1890s, a British company called Electrophone created a system that allowed its customers to connect to live music performances in theaters and opera houses across London. Users of this service could listen to music through a pair of massive headphones, which were connected under the chin and held by a long rod. The shape and design of these first headphones turned them into a form of remote sound equivalent to a theatrical binoculars. This was a revolutionary discovery, and the product even offered some semblance of stereo sound. However, the very first headphones had nothing to do with music and were used by operators for radio and telephone communications in the late 19th century.
Before Electrophone, French engineer Ernest Mercadier patented a set of earphones in 1891. Mercadier received a US patent No. 454,138 for "improving the receiver phones... which were light enough to be worn on the operator's head". After extensive testing and optimization of the receiver phones, Mercadier was able to produce miniature ErnestMercadie receivers, which weighed less than 1¾ ounces and were "adapted to the ear". Its design is an incredibly skillful miniaturization work, and it is remarkably similar to modern earbuds, up to and including the use of a rubber cap "to reduce friction in front of the earhole ... (and) effectively cover the ear from external sounds.
In the years leading up to World War I, it was not customary for the US Navy to consider letters from small companies and individual inventors offering unique products and skills. In this regard, it is worth noting a letter written in purple ink on blue and pink paper, delivered in 1910 from a native of Utah Nathaniel Baldwin. His message arrived with a couple of prototypes of telephone sets offered for military testing. Although his proposal was not taken seriously at first, the headphones were eventually tested and evaluated as a radical improvement to the model used by naval operators. More and more phones were being requested for testing, and Baldwin was providing services at his own expense.
The Navy offered Baldwin a few small adjustments, which he immediately implemented in the new design, still heavy, but comfortable enough for daily use. The Navy ordered Baldwin's headphones and learned that Baldwin had designed them in his kitchen and was only able to produce 10 at a time. But because they were better than ever before, the Navy took on Baldwin's limited production capacity.
After making several dozen headphones, the headband was further improved, as the design was reduced to just two leather-coated, adjustable thin rods attached on each side to a receiver that allegedly contained a mile of copper wire. The new headset was immediately a success, and the Navy advised Baldwin to patent this new model of headphones.
Baldwin, however, refused because he considered it a minor innovation. To increase production, the Navy wanted to move Baldwin from his kitchen in Utah to a much larger building on the east coast. But Nathaniel Baldwin was a polygamist and could not leave Utah. Then another manufacturer, Wireless Specialty Apparatus Co., met the inventor and built a factory in Utah to produce headphones. The agreement with Wireless Specialty was made with one very important condition: the company was not allowed to raise the price of headphones sold to the U.S. Navy.