Nowadays headphones are so widespread and popular around the world that it’s hard to imagine our life without them. But this is a relatively new invention: the prototype of modern headphones came out in 1958. John Koss, the inventor of headphones, actually created them for only one purpose: to be used by military aircraft pilots who instantly liked the novelty for its comfort and functionality.
But John Koss didn’t stop at that. Later he catered to the needs of the regular audience and invented stereo headphones. They were called SP-3. It was truly a revolutionary invention because these exact headphones made John Koss known as a pioneer of technologies for music industry and personal listening.
After that, Japanese engineers took the centre stage in this area. There were both followers and competitors of Koss. Having taken his invention as a basis, they modified it and fixed all the mistakes. As a result, their final product was considerably improved. The headphones were much smaller than Koss’ ones. From this moment on, the main goal of headphones manufacturers has been minimizing the size but maintaining or improving sound quality.
The year 1980 marked the first time when the world saw headphones as similar to modern ones as possible. In the same time the first player came out (with headphones included) which made music lovers all around the globe even more excited.
Nineties were the time of technical prosperity for headphones. In this decade markets were filled with compact audio players and headphones for them, made by many different brands (BEATS, BOSE, JBL, Sony, Apple, and so on). Another trend was wireless technology which brings the music from your smartphone or Tablet right to your ears.
Now users could buy Bluetooth-headphones and not care about annoying wires and cables between your headphone and iPhone or Samsung or any other mobile device.
Today there’s such a diversity of headphones that you don’t even know where to look first. Whether you want big headphones, which cover your ears completely, or small ones, which look like a couple of beans, you’ll definitely find something according to your taste.
But this great variety of headphones is hardly a bad thing because almost everyone in the world today owns a pair. They bring the beauty of music to us and music is and always will be universally loved.
