The Genesis of Headphones

People today are listening to music on their headphones and earbuds nearly everywhere; on trains, planes, and many more. But only about 100 years ago, headphones didn’t even exist yet. In fact in 1895, the Electrophone allowed subscribers to listen in on live performances over phone lines and cost, in today’s dollars, around $800 a year - that’s more than 6 times what Spotify costs today. The first real headphones, however, were made in 1910, by Nathaniel Bladwin, who sold the first 100 pairs to the U.S. Navy, in 1937 the Beyerdynamic DT-48 was the first dynamic headphones available for home use, and remained in production until 2012, and in 1979, Sony unveiled the Walkman, the first ever portable cassette player, and it led to a boom in lightweight, inexpensive headphones.

The extra new portability made music, and headphones, everywhere - creating autonomy and privacy, even in large public areas. The Bose QuietComfort became the first noise cancelling, commercially available headphones, in 2001, the iPod reinvented portable and digital music, and finally in 2017, Airpods, despite initial ridicule, became a cultural phenomenon and are widely used today all over the world.

Find out the challenges of future headphones and how they affect workers here.
Infographic source: https://www.ravereviews.org/headphones/