When Were Headphones Invented?
Wearable headphones date to 1910 and were built for the US Navy, not for music. Here is the full timeline and how long it took to become audio.
Headphones as a wearable pair date to 1910, when Nathaniel Baldwin built them at his kitchen table in Utah and sold them to the US Navy. The idea is older: Ernest Mercadier patented in-ear receivers in 1891. Neither was made for music. Both were built for listening to faint signals, and headphones stayed a professional tool for another half century.
The interesting part of the history is not the first date but how long it took anyone to think of them as something you would listen to music on.
The telephone era
Early telephone and telegraph operators needed to hear weak signals with both hands free, which is the problem headphones exist to solve.
Mercadier’s 1891 patent describes miniature receivers small enough to sit in the ear, which makes it a recognizable ancestor of the modern earbud rather than a curiosity.
Baldwin’s 1910 design was the one that mattered commercially. He had made a pair for use in a church hall, they worked considerably better than anything the Navy had, and the Navy ordered them. He reportedly built the early ones by hand because he had no factory.
These were high impedance, uncomfortable, and entirely about intelligibility. Nobody was assessing them on bass extension.
The first electrodynamic headphones
Beyerdynamic released the DT 48 in 1937, widely credited as the first dynamic headphones, using the moving coil principle that still drives almost every headphone today.
That is the meaningful technical break. A coil in a magnetic field attached to a diaphragm is the same mechanism in a modern USD 400 pair, and it displaced the earlier designs for good reason.
The DT 48 remained in production, in evolving forms, for an extraordinarily long run, which says something about how right the basic approach was.
Our explainer on how speakers make sound covers the mechanism, which is identical at headphone scale.
1958, when headphones became a music product
John Koss demonstrated the SP-3 in 1958, generally regarded as the first stereo headphones made for listening to music at home rather than for professional use.
The story usually told is that they were almost an accident: Koss was showing a portable phonograph and the headphones were a feature of it. The headphones outlasted the phonograph.
This is the moment the category changes. Before it, headphones were equipment. After it, they were something you bought to enjoy.
The timing is not coincidental. Stereo recording was arriving commercially in the same period, and headphones present stereo in a way loudspeakers in an ordinary room cannot.
1979, when they became personal
The Sony Walkman arrived in 1979 with lightweight supra aural headphones designed to be worn outdoors.
The engineering achievement was weight. Existing headphones were heavy studio equipment, and making a pair light enough to wear while walking was the enabling step for the whole personal audio category.
Everything since, including the earbuds most people now use, descends from that decision rather than from the 1910 or 1937 designs.
Noise cancellation and the wireless era
The often repeated origin is that Amar Bose sketched the idea of active cancellation on a transatlantic flight in 1978, frustrated by the cabin noise defeating the airline headphones.
Bose introduced an aviation headset in 1989 and the consumer QuietComfort line in 2000, which took the technology from cockpits into ordinary use.
The first Bluetooth headset arrived around 1999 from Ericsson, aimed at phone calls rather than music, and audio quality over Bluetooth remained poor for years afterward.
Apple’s AirPods in 2016 are the point true wireless earbuds became mainstream, and the category has dominated headphone sales since.
Our explainer on what active noise cancelling is covers how the technology works.
The timeline
| Year | Development |
|---|---|
| 1891 | Mercadier patents in-ear receivers |
| 1910 | Baldwin builds headphones for the US Navy |
| 1937 | Beyerdynamic DT 48, first dynamic headphones |
| 1958 | Koss SP-3, first stereo headphones for music |
| 1979 | Sony Walkman brings lightweight portable headphones |
| 1989 | Bose aviation noise cancelling headset |
| 1999 | First Bluetooth headsets, for calls |
| 2000 | Bose QuietComfort brings ANC to consumers |
| 2016 | AirPods make true wireless mainstream |
What has and has not changed
The driver has barely changed in principle since 1937. A coil, a magnet and a diaphragm, with better materials and tighter tolerances.
What has changed is everything around it: weight, wireless connection, battery, cancellation electronics and the fact that a headphone now contains more computing power than the studios that recorded the music being played through it.
The one genuinely new capability is active cancellation, which does something no passive design can. Everything else is refinement of a century old idea.
Frequently asked questions
When were headphones invented?
Wearable headphones date to 1910, when Nathaniel Baldwin built them in Utah and sold them to the US Navy. The underlying idea is older, with Ernest Mercadier patenting in-ear receivers in 1891. Neither was intended for music, since both were built to help operators hear faint telephone and telegraph signals with their hands free.
Who invented the first stereo headphones?
John Koss, who demonstrated the SP-3 in 1958. They are generally regarded as the first stereo headphones made for listening to music at home rather than for professional work, and they arrived alongside the commercial adoption of stereo recording, which headphones present better than loudspeakers in an ordinary room.
When was noise cancelling invented?
The commonly told origin has Amar Bose conceiving it on a transatlantic flight in 1978. Bose introduced an aviation headset in 1989 and the consumer QuietComfort line in 2000, which is when the technology moved from cockpits into everyday use. The underlying principle of destructive interference is far older than any of those dates.
How much have headphones actually changed?
The driver has barely changed in principle since the Beyerdynamic DT 48 of 1937, which used the moving coil arrangement still found in almost every headphone. What changed is weight, wireless connection, battery life and active cancellation, which is the one genuinely new capability rather than a refinement of the original idea.