Radical Retro Cans

I have a question for you. Which came first — music or headphones? I bet you are going to say, “The answer is music, of course, because humans were singing songs, playing flutes made from bone, and pounding drums using anything they could pound tens of thousands of years ago.”

My response to this is, “You’re so sharp that you are in danger of cutting yourself!” You know that, in the context of these columns, I’m talking about music played by electromechanical or electronic means.

Like most things, the answer to this question is more involved than you might suppose. For example, the prolific American inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison created the first phonograph that was capable of recording and playing back sound in 1877.

As an aside, 20 years earlier in 1857 (which was exactly 100 years before I decided to grace the planet with my presence), the French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented a device called the phonautograph that could record sound, although it couldn't play it back. Now, your knee-jerk reaction might be, “Well, that’s the French for you,” but I fear you would be being unkind. Scott’s phonautograph recorded sound as “squiggles on paper,” resulting in the first way humans could “see” and visualize sound.

As another aside, in 2008, scientists managed to convert one of Scott’s phonautograph recordings captured in 1860 back into sound. According to Wikipedia:

The recording, part of the French folk song “Au clair de la lune,” was initially played at a speed that produced what seemed to be a 10-second recording of the voice of a woman or child singing at an ordinary musical tempo. The researchers leading the project later found that a misunderstanding about an included reference frequency had resulted in a doubling of the correct playback speed, and that it was actually a 20-second recording of a man, probably Scott himself, singing the song very slowly.”

But we digress…

Early phonographs utilized large acoustic horns to amplify sound mechanically, with no electricity required; therefore, headphones wouldn’t have been much use in this context. It wasn’t until around the mid-1920s that a convergence of technologies, including vacuum tube amplifiers and electromagnetic loudspeakers, resulted in a significant surge in both phonograph and record sales (see also my Vunderful Vacuum Tubes column).

Now I have another question for you. Where did the “phone” part of “headphones” come from? I bet you haven’t pondered this poser before — most people just take it for granted — but I’m happy to explain all (the real trick is to stop me talking).

The first telephone patent was granted to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, after which telephone technology quickly advanced. For example, according to StateTech, “The first-ever manual switchboard, constructed from ‘carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire’ debuted in New Haven, Conn., in 1878. It serviced 21 subscribers, who paid $1.50 per month to be part of the exchange.”

It wasn’t long before telephone switchboards were springing up all over the place. Telephone operators needed to keep their hands free to make connections while simultaneously listening to their customers. The solution, devised circa the 1880s, was a device that held the receiver portion of the telephone against one ear. This gave rise to the singular term “headphone.”

Later, in the early 1900s, wireless telegraph operators began using a pair of telephone receivers — one over each ear — to listen to the telegraph signals. Thus, it wasn't long before the plural form “headphones” made its way into widespread usage.

Meanwhile, the “cans” portion of the title to this column dates to the 1940s, possibly earlier, and has its roots in radio and audio engineering culture. Early headphones were large, featuring metal or Bakelite earcups connected by a headband, and they bore a resemblance to tin cans in both shape and feel. The term "cans" was used by radio operators and recording studio engineers during the mid-20th century. It gained popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in military communications and broadcast studios, where bulky, over-ear headphones were commonplace.

As an aside, I recall the introduction of the Sony Walkman in the early 1980s. These lightweight, compact, and sleek portable cassette players revolutionized the way people experienced music. Unlike the traditional shared experience through radios, car stereos, or home hi-fi systems, the Walkman allowed you to walk, jog, ride a train, or sit in a park with your own personal soundtrack.

The reason I mention this here is that the Walkman popularized lightweight headphones with foam-covered earpieces, which replaced the big, clunky headphones used at home. This created a new “aesthetic” and made headphone listening more common and accepted in public. I remember seeing a Walkman with two headphone jacks, which made it possible to share your soundtrack with a close friend (I couldn’t afford one, but I really, really wanted one).

Modern headphones are triumphs of technology, but retro headphones ooze style, and you can’t put a price on style. Actually, that's not strictly true. In this case, as it happens, you can put a price on style — all you have to do is search for “antique headphones” or “vintage headphones” on eBay.

That’s precisely what I did a couple of years ago. I picked up a pair of 1920s headphones, unscrewed the earpiece covers, removed the original magnetic transducers, and replaced them with dynamic drivers I scavenged from a cheap and cheerful (~$10) pair of headphones I purchased at Walmart.

The back of a closed earpiece housing is visible in the middle of the above image. The open front of the other earpiece housing, which is made of metal, appears slightly lower and to the left. Inside the open housing is the modern dynamic driver sitting on insulating white foam.

Above the open housing is the screw-on Bakelite cover, which has holes to allow sound to pass through while offering protection to the components inside. To the left of the open housing is a black foam pad that sits between the dynamic driver and the Bakelite cover, keeping dust, debris, and detritus out. The reassembled headphones are shown in the image below.

I know this will sound surprising (no pun intended), but these headphones are surprisingly comfortable and their audio quality is remarkably good. Best of all, they embody “vintage cool” and exude character.

Let’s put it this way: If you were to stroll around an embedded engineering conference with your best pair of modern headphones draped around your neck, how many people do you think would comment on how cool they looked? Exactly — none. By comparison, I can attest from personal experience that the headphones shown above attract a lot of attention and spark numerous conversations.

Do you have any thoughts you’d care to share on any of this? As always, I welcome your captivating comments, querulous questions, and sagacious suggestions, all of which you can share on Hackster's "Throwback Thursdays" Discord channel. I look forward to seeing you there.

PS Don't forget that you can peruse and ponder all of my Throwback Thursdays columns by Clicking Here.