# Headphones

> Two electric receivers held to the ears for listening alone

- Date: 1879
- Era: Electric age
- Domain: [Textiles & Everyday Life](https://lastcodex.org/en/domains/everyday/)
- Rebuild stage: V (Electric age)
- Difficulty: 3/5
- URL: https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/headphones/

Headphones are a pair of small electric receivers held against the ears by a band over the head, so that one person can listen alone with both hands free. In the oldest type, a permanent magnet pulls on a thin iron disc and the incoming current strengthens or weakens that pull, so the disc vibrates and sends sound into the ear. The earliest known head-worn pair is in a patent filed in July 1879 by Andrew C. Hubbard of Danbury, Connecticut.

![Headphones · Two electric receivers held to the ears for listening alone](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/plate.C9j40Czc_ZVfXTk.webp)

## Legend

1. Headband
2. Earcap
3. Iron diaphragm
4. Coil on a pole piece
5. Permanent magnet
6. Cord

## What it is

Headphones are two small sound receivers joined by a band that goes over the head and presses them against the ears. A cord brings them an electric signal from a telephone line, a radio or a music player. They let one person hear without disturbing anyone else, keep out part of the noise around them, and leave both hands free.

They began as an accessory of the telephone. The first telephone receivers were held to the ear by hand. For people who had to listen for hours or write while they listened, inventors fixed the receivers to a band or a spring worn on the head.

## How it works

The oldest headphones use the same receiver as the early telephone. Inside each round case, a permanent magnet bent like a horseshoe has its two poles pointing at a thin iron disc, the diaphragm, which is held by its rim just in front of them without touching. Each pole carries a coil of insulated copper wire. The magnet alone pulls on the diaphragm with a steady force.

![Two matching moving-iron earphones cut open side by side: horseshoe magnet, two coils on the pole pieces and an iron diaphragm, bowed slightly toward the poles on the left and bowed slightly away from them on the right](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v1.DF1pkRQW_Z1efhTy.webp)
_When the current adds to the magnet, the diaphragm bows toward the poles; when it opposes the magnet, the diaphragm springs back._

The signal is a current that changes direction and strength in step with the sound it carries. Flowing one way through the coils, it adds to the magnet and the diaphragm is pulled harder; flowing the other way, it opposes the magnet and the pull weakens. The centre of the diaphragm moves back and forth with the current, pushes the air in the small space under the earcap, and the ear hears the sound. The two receivers of a headset share the same cord and play the same signal.

Many later headphones use a moving coil instead. A small coil of wire is glued to a light diaphragm and hangs in the narrow gap of a fixed magnet. The current in the coil makes it move in and out of the gap, and the diaphragm moves with it. This is the principle of the loudspeaker, made small. In stereo headphones, each ear receives its own signal, recorded or picked up from a different side.

## How to do it

![A demonstration earphone: a round tin lid standing in a slotted block, a steel bolt wrapped in a coil of enamelled wire resting on a wooden block with its tip close to the lid without touching it, a magnet on the head of the bolt and two wires leading to a plug](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v3.px9f3mTJ_Z1EuB8D.webp)
_The tip of the bolt almost touches the tin lid, which acts as the iron diaphragm._

A rough receiver of the old kind shows how the magnet and the coil share the work. Wind many turns of thin enamelled copper wire around a steel bolt, leaving both ends free, and scrape the enamel off both ends. Stick a small permanent magnet to the head of the bolt. Hold a clean, flat tin lid by its rim on a stand, and set the bolt so that its tip is as close as possible to the centre of the lid without touching it.

Connect the two ends of the wire to a plug that fits the headphone socket of a battery-powered music player, turn the volume down, and start the music. Raise the volume slowly while holding your ear near the lid, never pressed against it: a faint sound comes from the lid. Never connect the coil to a mains socket or to a mains adapter. Keep strong magnets away from small children and from pacemakers, and keep the volume low before putting any receiver near the ear.

## History and evolution

The telephone patented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 was soon used for more than conversation. In July 1879, Andrew C. Hubbard of Danbury, Connecticut, applied for a patent on a telephone with two receivers fixed to the ends of an elastic hoop that went around the head, with small tubes covered in rubber that went into the ears. He meant it for partially deaf people who wanted to hear music, sermons and lectures, and for doctors who needed their hands free. The patent was granted on 21 October 1879. In December of the same year, Sydney Cary of Baltimore applied for a spring support that held two telephones against both ears, so that the listener could take notes and shut out the noise of the room.

![A seated switchboard operator with a round receiver held over her ear by a band across the top of her head and a cord running down, her hands at a switchboard of plugs and sockets](https://lastcodex.org/_astro/v2.F-v6NzGI_Z9hNvc.webp)
_On the early switchboards, the operator's receiver was strapped to the head so that both hands stayed free for the plugs._

The first regular users were telephone switchboard operators. Emile Berliner patented a receiver strapped to the ear in 1882. A patent filed by Charles Scribner in 1883 complains that the elastic bands and springs then used to hold operators' receivers on their heads gave them headaches, and in 1884 a patent assigned to American Bell called a light head receiver an absolute necessity in large exchanges. In 1891 Ernest Mercadier, of Paris, patented a "bi-telephone" in the United States, two small ebonite receivers whose tips went into the ears, held by a springy yoke.

Radio created a new demand. Around 1910 Nathaniel Baldwin, of Utah, sent headphones to the United States Navy for its radio operators, and the Navy physicist Louis Austin found them about twice as sensitive as any he had tested. The German firm beyerdynamic dates its first headphones, the DT 48 with a moving coil, to 1937. In 1958 John Koss and the engineer Martin Lange Jr., in Milwaukee, presented the SP/3 as an accessory of a stereo record player, a pair of stereo headphones for listening to records.

## Key facts

- Earliest patent found: US 220,839, A. C. Hubbard, filed July 1879, granted 21 October 1879
- First regular users: Telephone switchboard operators, from the early 1880s
- In-ear receivers: Ernest Mercadier's bi-telephone, US patent of 16 June 1891
- Koss SP/3 stereo headphones: Milwaukee, 1958

## Requires

- [Telephone](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/telephone/): A voice carried down a wire (1876)
- [Steel](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/steel/): Iron with just enough carbon (c. 1,000 BCE)
- [Drawing iron wire by hand](https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/wire-drawing/): A steel drawplate and tongs turn soft iron rods into wire (c. 1100)

## Sources

- [US 220,839, Improvement in Telephones (A. C. Hubbard, filed July 1879, granted 21 October 1879)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US220839A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 224,073, Telephone-Support (S. O. Cary, filed 23 December 1879)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US224073A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 230,779, Telephone-Support (A. C. Hubbard, filed 1 May 1880)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US230779A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 262,921, Operator's Receiving-Telephone (E. Berliner, filed 15 April 1882)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US262921A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 275,420, Head-Gear for Switchmen's Telephones (C. E. Scribner, filed 13 February 1883)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US275420A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 304,667, Operator's Receiving-Telephone (W. L. Richards, filed 31 May 1884)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US304667A/en), United States Patent Office
- [US 454,138, Bi-Telephone (E. J. P. Mercadier, filed 27 February 1891, granted 16 June 1891)](https://patents.google.com/patent/US454138A/en), United States Patent Office
- [Headphones History Hysteria (Mark Schubin)](https://www.sportsvideo.org/2011/02/11/headphones-history-hysteria/), Sports Video Group
- [History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, chapter XI (L. S. Howeth, 1963)](https://earlyradiohistory.us/1963hw11.htm), United States Navy, Bureau of Ships (via earlyradiohistory.us)
- [Utah inventions: The birth of the modern headphone](https://www.ksl.com/article/news/utah/utah-inventions-the-birth-of-the-modern-headphone/38518915), KSL.com
- [Magneto wall phone from 1907 (receiver)](https://public.bht-berlin.de/hamann/workshop/wallphone/index.html), Berliner Hochschule für Technik, H. Hamann
- [Spotlight on our headphones: 87 years of headphones expertise](https://blog-en.beyerdynamic.com/spotlight-on-our-headphones-87-years-of-headphones-expertise/), beyerdynamic
- [Koss SP/3 Stereo Headphones](https://hifihalloffame.com/equipment/koss-sp3-stereo-headphones/), Hi-Fi Hall of Fame
- [John C. Koss, stereo headphone innovator, is dead at 91 (Richard Sandomir, The New York Times)](https://www.sanjuandailystar.com/post/john-c-koss-stereo-headphone-innovator-is-dead-at-91), San Juan Daily Star

Fact-checked on 2026-10-19.

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The Last Codex · https://lastcodex.org/en/inventions/headphones/ · © The Last Codex. Texts, plates and figures: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.