PRELUDE I ’ m not sure it ’ s possible to be a true audio maniac without a serious need to geek out over microphones , record players , and such . Thus , let ’ s takes a glance at a little of the evolution of the audio industry .
This is where my mania began . I started playing guitar in bands in 1964 — a fantastic era for music ! I was nine years old and was proficient enough to play rhythm guitar in my 16-year-old brother ’ s band . The timing was perfect for a couple of young rock-star wannabes because our parents , for the first time ever , were making more money than it took to cover the essentials . My brother ’ s first guitar was a Gibson ES-335 and my first guitar was a Gibson Melody Maker . In the early years , we both ran our guitars through an Ampeg B-15 N — seemed like a good idea at the time . All of that leads up to the beginning of my maniacal quest for all things music and audio .
IT WAS A BITTER AND HEATED RACE ! There ’ s a bottom line for microphones : they need to convert changes in air pressure caused by sound waves , into changes in the flow of electrons , eventually routed to a transducer — a speaker in this case — that converts the varying electron flow back into variations in air pressure . All that seems simple enough to those of us who have made our way into the third millennium , right ? However , in the 1800s such a task was formidable . The quest for a device to convert speech to electron variations for use in a telephone system was the primary impetus for all of the research .
The birth of the microphone is a little circuslike , not to mention confusing . A quick Google search will immediately name a few people credited with inventing the microphone : Johann Philipp Reis ( Germany ), Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray ( US ), or Emile Berliner ( US ). Given human nature , we can only imagine the final race to secure rights and patents to important new technologies — somewhat like the last hundred yards of a long hard competition , complete with elbowing , back
We had two microphones : a Shure Unidyne Model 55 ( the Elvis mic ), and a Shure Green Bullet that we ran through a 75-watt Bogen tube mixer / amplifier . The amplifier was connected to two rectangular Electro- Voice horn speakers on heavy solid-metal Atlas stands . I was hooked ! From those early years , I just wanted to experience more and more of that tantalizing audio extravagance .
stabbing , tripping , pushing , shoving , and name calling . But , maybe it was all love and lollipops … uhh … nah , probably not .
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS
In an early attempt to invent the telephone in 1861 , Johann Philipp Reis was really the first to invent a process that converted sound waves to variations in electrical current . The diaphragm of the Reis microphone consisted of a stretched piece of parchment paper mounted across an opening in an otherwise closed wooden box . A brass strip was glued to the center of the parchment . Then , a contact , which included a drop of mercury was place in the center of the strip , and then another brass strip with a platinum contact at its center , was mounted just above the first brass strip . The top brass strip , with the platinum contact , was held against the bottom strip merely by gravity .
Because of the principle of sympathetic vibration , the parchment diaphragm was pushed and pulled in direct correlation to the sound wave ’ s compressions and rarefactions ( crests and troughs ). This movement resulted in a varying resistance between the two contacts , which was the source of the signal sent to the receiver ( speaker ).
The Reis telephone was inefficient and based on some incorrect theories , which resulted in the denial of his request for the patent on the telephone . Therefore , the Reis telephone is regularly overlooked in the discussions of the telephone and microphone origins , as we know them today . With that said , the work that Reis did to invent his version of the telephone was very influential of the design that eventually transformed into the telephone , which revolutionized 20th-century civilization .
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL The first patented microphone came along in 1876 . Alexander Graham Bell invented a device that used a moving armature as the source to conducted varying DC electrical current along a wire that connected the transmitter and the receiver . Both ends of this system worked in the same way and could transmit and receive