Today, researcher of Boly Electronics will share the story of history of microphone with everyone:

History

Various individuals and organizations claim to be the inventors of the wireless microphone.

From about 1945 there were schematics and hobbyist kits offered in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics for making a wireless microphone that would transmit the voice to a nearby radio.^[1][2]

Figure skater and Royal Air Force flight engineer Reg Moores developed a radio microphone in 1947 that he first used in the Tom Arnold production Aladdin on Ice at Brightons sports stadium from September 1949 through the Christmas season. Moores affixed the wireless transmitter to the costume of the character Abanazar, and it worked perfectly. Moores did not patent his idea as he was illegally using the radio frequency 76 MHz. The producers of the ice show decided that they would not continue using the device; they would rather hire actors and singers to perform into hidden microphones to dub the voices of the other ice skaters who would thus be freed to concentrate on their skating. In 1972 Moores donated his 1947 prototype to the Science Museum in London.^[3][4][5]

Herbert Mac McClelland, founder of McClelland Sound in Wichita, Kansas, fabricated a wireless microphone to be worn by baseball umpires at major league games broadcast by NBC from Lawrence-Dumont Stadium in 1951.^[6] The transmitter was strapped to the umpires back. Macs brother was Harold M. McClelland, the chief communications architect of the U.S. Air Force.

Shure Brothers claims that its Vagabond system from 1953 was the first wireless microphone system for performers.^[7] Its field of coverage was a circle of approximately 700 square feet which corresponds to a line-of-sight distance of only 15 feet (4.6 m) from the receiver.^[7]

In 1957 the German audio equipment manufacturer Sennheiser, at that time called Lab W, working with the German broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), exhibited a wireless microphone system. From 1958 the system was marketed through Telefunken under the name of Mikroport. The pocket-sized Mikroport incorporated a dynamic moving-coil cartridge microphone with a cardioid pickup pattern. It transmitted at 37 MHz with a specified range of 300 feet (91 m).^[8]

The first recorded patent was filed by Raymond A. Litke, an American electrical engineer with Educational Media Resources and San Jose State College, who invented a wireless microphone in 1957 to meet the multimedia needs for television, radio, and classroom instruction. His U.S. patent number 3134074 was granted in May 1964. Two microphone types were made available for purchase in 1959: hand-held and lavalier.^[9] The main transmitter module was a cigar-sized device which weighed 7 ounces (200 g). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted Litke 12 frequencies at his approval hearing. Also called the Vega-Mike after Vega Electronics Corporation which first manufactured the Litke design in 1959, the device was first used by the broadcast media at the 1960 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. It allowed television reporters to roam the floor of the convention to interview participants where Presidential candidates Kennedy and Nixon spoke into the wireless microphone. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) completed testing in 1959, prior to the conventions. Television anchor John Daly was exuberant with his praises for Litkes invention during a TV news broadcast in July 1960. The wireless microphone was first tested at the Olympic trials held at Stanford University in 1959.

Introduced in 1958, by 1960 the Sony CR-4 wireless microphone was being recommended for theatre performances and nightclub acts. Animal trainers at Marineland of the Pacific in California were wearing the $250 device for performances in 1961. The 27.12 MHz solid-state FM transmitter was capable of fitting into a shirt pocket. Said to be effective out to 100 feet (30 m), it mounted a flexible dangling antenna and a detachable dynamic microphone. The tube-based receiver incorporated a carrying drawer for the transmitter and a small monitor loudspeaker with volume control.^[10][11]

Another German equipment manufacturer, Beyerdynamic, claim that first wireless microphone, was invented by Hung C. Lin. Called the transistophone, it went into production in 1962. It is claimed that the first time a wireless microphone was used to record sound during filming of a motion picture was on Rex Harrison in the 1964 film My Fair Lady, through the efforts of Academy Award-winning Hollywood sound engineer George Groves.^[12]

Wider dynamic range came with the introduction of the first compander wireless microphone offered by Nady Systems in 1976. Todd Rundgren and The Rolling Stones were the first popular musicians to use these systems live in concert. Nady joined CBS, Sennheiser and Vega in 1996 to receive a joint Emmy Award for pioneering [the] development of the broadcast wireless microphone.^[13]