Hi. These are old-school, high-impedance, "moving iron" headphones. Audio is run through the electromagnet in the middle of the headphone, and this creates a magnetic field that modulates the field from the permanent magnet behind the coil. This increases and decreases the pull on the thin steel diaphragm, causing it to flex from its own springiness, and thus produce sound. They do sound terrible, but they're very sensitive when driven by high-impedance sources, like crystal radios or low-powered tube radios. The pair you have are of better than average quality. The cheap ones were made from black bakelite (plastic), and were bulkier, heavier, and they were easily broken if dropped. The ones you have were likely made in the early to mid 1950's.
had no idea there were types of drivers that I was unaware of the existence of still, this whole thing is so strange, wtf is up with the proportion of those ear cups?
I'm pretty sure this was just... an early enough design that people didn't know what they ere doing yet. Science had only been invented the previous year.
in all seriousness though, I'm wondering if this unit was meant to be compact for easy storage or something. not portable per se, as nothing was portable back then.
Hi. These are old-school, high-impedance, "moving iron" headphones. Audio is run through the electromagnet in the middle of the headphone, and this creates a magnetic field that modulates the field from the permanent magnet behind the coil. This increases and decreases the pull on the thin steel diaphragm, causing it to flex from its own springiness, and thus produce sound. They do sound terrible, but they're very sensitive when driven by high-impedance sources, like crystal radios or low-powered tube radios. The pair you have are of better than average quality. The cheap ones were made from black bakelite (plastic), and were bulkier, heavier, and they were easily broken if dropped. The ones you have were likely made in the early to mid 1950's.
Nice! Thank you!
I was wondering about the age, the seller didn't specify. that timeframe makes sense.
Amazing piece
of history thx
Wonder how it squigs.
I cannot be certain
had no idea there were types of drivers that I was unaware of the existence of still, this whole thing is so strange, wtf is up with the proportion of those ear cups?
I'm pretty sure this was just... an early enough design that people didn't know what they ere doing yet. Science had only been invented the previous year.
in all seriousness though, I'm wondering if this unit was meant to be compact for easy storage or something. not portable per se, as nothing was portable back then.