Love the photos. Love seeing Emile Berliner get some well-deserved attention. Hate, hate, hate the abbreviation "mic" for microphone. A bicycle is a bike, not a bic. A microphone is a mike, not a mic. posted by Longtime Listener at 9:52 AM on April 27, 2012
That's some cool old stuff. It's fun how much of it could be made at home from ordinary materials from the general store, and a lot of winding and gluing.
Here's how we made our own microphones back in the day:
Take a cigar box, and affix two razor blades vertically an inch or
so apart, and lay a pencil lead across them. When the box vibrates,
it changes the resistance between the contacts, and works just like
a carbon microphone.
The book, "Fun With Electrons," that had the instructions went on tell you how to build capacitors from glass and tin foil, how to step up the audio signal and modulate high voltage radio waves using a Model-T Ignition coil, and make a magic trick where the words spoke into the cigar box could be heard by someone touching a metal plate in another room, with no acoustic speaker needed.
I've never been able to locate that library book again. Perhaps something to do with the last chapter, that explained how to build an X-ray fluoroscope from household ingredients, such that an enterprising youth could view the bones in his hand moving in realtime. posted by StickyCarpet at 10:01 AM on April 27, 2012 [4 favorites]
I've just started to get into voiceover work, and this post fits right in with my renewed microphone gear-headedness. posted by Greg_Ace at 10:59 AM on April 27, 2012
Also of note is the companion article in Wired about ribbon microphones: Part 1, Part 2. Pretty neat stuff, even though there aren't any Telefunken U-47's posted by TedW at 11:55 AM on April 27, 2012 [1 favorite]
Interesting, but I was always a mic geek. In one of those old "boy's" constructor books (similar to what StickyCarpet mentioned) I found plans for taking apart two discharged standard 'C' cells, whose positive element is a carbon rod running down the middle, arranging them, crossed, on top of an inverted shoebox, and connecting the rods to a small amp. The author claimed you could hear a fly's footsteps with this set-up... he was right.
The standard mic used in most old-school telephones til at least into the late 1990s was a carbon button mic. Carbon mics were never hi-fi, but they could be rugged and dependable.
There is alot more to mic history... besides ribbon mics, there's many now-iconic dynamic mics from Altec, Shure and Electro-Voice, and of course the German and Austrian condenser mics as TedW alludes to.
I took a tour of Bob Paquette's microphone museum last fall and it was a pretty amazing place. Of course he has one of Hitler's microphones along with probably one of every major microphone in existence. It is well worth the trip - it may be around for long. posted by JJ86 at 7:07 PM on April 27, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Longtime Listener at 9:52 AM on April 27, 2012