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EV Timeline: 1927 - 1942
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Lou Burroughs (third from left) and Al Kahn (fifth from left) with the crew of Century Tire & Rubber, circa 1927. |
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1927: Al Kahn and Lou Burroughs found Radio Engineers in the basement of the Century Tire & Rubber Company, South Bend, IN. Company focus is radio retail, service and repair. Within a year, they are the largest radio service shop in the city.
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1929: Suffering greatly from the massive economic depression that began with the stock market crash in October, 1929, attention turned to the business of providing audio systems.
"Rock" and his "Voice", pictured in the South Bend Tribune |
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1930: The company develops a portable public address system for legendary Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne, allowing him to communicate with four practice fields from a tower. He dubs this system his "Electric Voice" which was adapted as the company's new name: Electro-Voice. Also around this time, Burroughs leaves the company.
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1930: Overcoming the biggest obstacle in the portable PA system business - acquiring quality microphones - Electro-Voice sets up a microphone manufacturing operation, turning out units at the rate of one per week.
1934: Kahn develops the first microphone humbucking coil. This innovation helped nullify stray electromagnetic (AC) interference. Kahn unearthed a watt meter design from the 1890s and adapted the concept to cancel hum in mics created by stray 60Hz fields. The coil was first included in the EV V-1 velocity mic.
The V-1 employed
the first humbucking coil. |
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1935: Kahn develops a method of stretching dynamic mic diaphragms before assembly, resulting in a manufacturing economy that caused a dramatic drop in price.
1936: EV now employs 20 people, and Burroughs returns as chief engineer.
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It may not have been pretty, but you couldn’t argue with the T-45’s effectivness. |
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1942: At the outset of World War II, radio communications in combat situations had an estimated success rate of 20 percent. Microphones picked up more battle noise than human voice. EV designed a mic using a 180-degree phase shift to cancel background noise and engineered it to be attached to the helmet and rest on the lips. Dubbed the T-45, this mic raised the success rate to at least 90 percent.
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