Headphones

Hi, everyone!

My modern information society term of choice is “headphones.” When I researched the term’s use journalistically, I was surprised to find it in the New York Times in 1919, which was much earlier than I had expected. It turns out that headphones were actually originally developed for the Navy, because the only way they were able to listen to informational audio signals being produced electrically was headphones. Amplifiers hadn’t been invented yet. I would have thought that the invention of the amplifier came first, and then shrunk down to fit in your ear, sometimes history surprises you. The article uses the phrase “put on a pair of headphones”, which strikes me as being very similar to the same phrasing we would use today to describe our modern version of headphones. In the New York Times’ article, the usage of the term was referring to using headphones to “listen in” on the contact between other ships and the shore stations. The Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times both had publications right around the same time as well, 1923 and 1922 respectively.

The earliest scholarly article I could find was in the JStor database, from 1925.  The article states that “concerts are notably fewer, the once fashionable musical evening is almost a thing of the past.”  It goes on to discuss how people are starting to prefer listening to music through their headphones or loudspeakers instead. The use of the term in this article is once again on the same level we would still use it in today’s context, although the author was incorrect about headphones totally taking over the live music industry.

Have a wonderful weekend! J