 |
|
Microphone
 |
A microphone, sometimes referred to as a mike or mic, is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal.
Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, tape recorders, hearing aids, motion picture production, live and recorded audio engineering, in radio and television broadcasting and in computers for recording voice, VoIP, and for non-acoustic purposes such as ultrasonic checking.
Several early inventors built primitive microphones (then called transmitters) prior to Alexander Bell, but the first commercially practical microphone was the carbon microphone conceived in October 1876 by Thomas Edison. Many early developments in microphone design took place at Bell Laboratories, including the first condenser microphone, described by Wente in 1917.
A microphone is a device made to capture waves in air, water (hydrophone) or hard material and translate them into an electrical signal. The most common design uses a thin membrane which vibrates in response to sound pressure, this movement being subsequently translated into an electrical signal. Most microphones in use today for audio use electromagnetic generation (dynamic microphones), capacitance change (condenser microphones) or piezoelectric generation to produce the signal from mechanical vibration.
Back