Microphones are normally devices that convert mechanical energy waves or sound into electrical energy waves. They are now considered as part of everyday life, being used in telephones, transmitters, televisions, radios and other public address systems.

Encyclopedia writes that the first microphone was invented by a physicist, Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, but in 1886, Thomas Alva Edison invented its first carbon microphone which was used for radio transmissions and extensively in telephone transmitters.

However, the carbon microphone had a limited frequency range and hence was not doing the work of music production effectively. Hence that caused the Wente of Bell laboratories to invent another condenser microphone in 1916 which required an amplifier to allow them to pick up faint signals.

Moving forward, Digilabs announced that the major breakthrough in the history of microphone technology took place in 1931 with the invention of the moving coil microphone. It had lower noise or distortion level than that of the carbon microphone and hence, the moving coil or dynamic microphone has gone in extensive use today in all areas of communication and entertainment.

In 1931, the ribbon microphone was introduced and became one of the most widely used microphones for the vocal recording and broadcasting industries. Plenty of people started considering it as the most natural sounding microphone ever made but it was very heavy (3.6 Kg) and could easily be damaged by shock or blowing into it.