when was the microphone invented
Microphone development as we know it today was distilled from telephone technology, whose roots go back to the mid 1800s. The word âmicrophoneâ was ï¬rst coined by Wheatstone around 1827 and was used to describe a purely acoustic device, like a stethoscope, which he had developed to amplify weak sounds. The word is Greek in origin, with âmicroâ meaning small and âphonâ meaning sound. It was not applied to telephone devices in general, which were instead called âtransmitters,â a practice continued by Western Electric almost until it ceased professional microphone production in the 1940s.