The man who really introduced headphones to the world has died

If you walk around wearing headphones or earbuds, then you need to offer a moment of silence to John C. Koss, who died just before Christmas at the age of 91.

Headphones first appeared in the 1890s thanks to this new thing called a “telephone.” Switchboard operators, who needed to have their hands free to plug and unplug patch cords, started using them just as the 19th century was about to end. When wireless telegraphy became a thing a few years later, radio operators began using headphones as well. The inventor of those devices is lost to history, although Ernest Mercadier, a French engineer, filed a patent on what could have been the world’s first earbuds in 1891.

When Nathaniel Baldwin had trouble hearing the Sunday sermons at his church, he modified the telephone operators’ headset into something more advance. When the US Navy ordered 100 pairs, he formed a company called Wireless Speciality Apparatus Co. The US Army was soon buying from him, too, and Baldwin’s headphones were everywhere during WWII.

At around the same time the navy was buying Baldwin’s first headphones, radio nuts–people who built crystal radio sets and stayed up all night broadcasting and receiving signals–used what can be best described as modified telephone receiver components. They were necessary because the amplifier, something to boost weak electrical signals, hadn’t been invented yet. Headphones eventually became essential pieces of equipment for commercial radio, television, and recording studios.

Oddly, no one really pursued headphone development as a way for the public to listen to music. It took until 1958 when John C. Koss stumbled on a business idea.

Koss, a trumpeter in a big band, was making most of his money renting televisions to hospital patients with his company, J.C. Koss Hospital Television Rental Company, an enterprise he started in 1953, just as television was started up. Realizing that bored hospital patients needed something to pass the time, he was able to make a good buck.

Branching out into selling portable record players–a unit that would become known as the Model 390–Koss and engineer Martin Lange Jr. decided to incorporate a “privacy switch” which engaged a “private listening station” function so people could listen to their records without disturbing anyone else. They did so by plugging in a pair of headphones they designed. Those ‘phones were essentially an afterthought, a way of showing off the privacy feature and as a method of demonstrating the high-fidelity abilities of the turntable. And they had to build their own because all the existing headphones in use weren’t compatible with their record player.

The prototype consisted of two three-inch speakers inside cardboard cups and some chamois pads they scavenged from a flight helmet. Everyone was held together by a bent coathanger. To make the unit look a little more respectable, they covered the wire with a rubber shower hose.

The result was pretty cool. And later in 1958, the first Koss headphones–model SP/3–made their debut in Milwaukee at one of the first-ever high-fidelity audio shows. They were supposed to show off the turntable. Instead, they became the focus of all the attention. People didn’t want the phonograph; they wanted the headphones even though you had to buy the turntable unit to get a pair. But after the show, Koss and Lange decided to sell them separately.

They weren’t cheap–US$24.95, the equivalent to around $250 today–but the sound they reproduced won converts. The timing was perfect because 1958 was also the year stereophonic sound was introduced to the public with the first stereo records.

Reaction was so positive that Koss started making units in his basement apartment. And things kinda blew up from there.

The next model was the well-received SP/3X in 1960…

…and the Pro/4 Stereophones in 1962.

The big breakthrough was the EPS/6 in 1969. They were big and very heavy, but they sounded better than anything out there because of their “self-energizing electrostatic technology.”

I fell for high-fidelity audio when I was a teenager. One of my most precious pieces of gear was a set of Koss Pro4/AAs. You couldn’t wear them for too long–they were way too heavy (3 pounds?) and caused my ears to sweat–but I used them for hours listening to what had become known as “headphone bands” like Pink Floyd.

I used those headphones for years, including when I got my first radio jobs. I used Koss cans for the first few years of my career. Damn, those things held up to abuse.

More models came throughout the 70s and Koss dominated the worldwide headphone market for years. The super high-end (for 1974) KV1A was one of the best you could buy. The 1975 Easy Listener, which had a demin-covered headband. Meanwhile, Koss signed a deal with Tandy Corporation and for a long stretch, all headphones sold under the Radio Shack name were actually built by Koss. The Pro/4AAA, which was a little more comfortable than its predecessor.

Competition from Japan and Germany soon emerged and an attempt at diversification into other gear (including a 1982 attempt to emulate the Sony Walkman with a device called the A-3 Music Box) failed miserably and the company went bankrupt in 1984. It took a year to sort things out and for the company to get back on its feet.

The first cordless Koss units appeared in 1989 using infrared tech. The first noise-reduction headphones went on sale in 1993. There have been dozens of other Koss headphones and earbud models.

John Koss handed things over to his son, Michael, in 1991. He retired as chairman in 2015.

Koss died on December 21, 2021, at the age of 91. The billions of people who use headphones on a daily basis owe him a debt of gratitude.