History of Lavalier Microphone

Know more about lavalier microphone, this is the history of lavalier microphone or lapel microphone.

The term lavalier originally referred to a pendant worn around the neck. Its use as the name of a type of microphone dates from the early 1960s.

An American electronics engineer with Educational Media Resources and San Jose State College, Raymond A. Litke, invented the wireless microphone in 1957 to meet the multimedia needs for television, radio, and classroom delivery. His U.S. Patent No. 3,134,074, filed May 6, 1961, (originally filed January 8, 1960) is for the first portable, workable, practical, and dependable wireless microphone. The patent's diagram illustrates a cigar-sized device which was six inches long and weighed seven ounces, including a power supply and transmitter. Impressed by the more than one-half-mile distance of transmission, the FCC granted Litke 12 frequencies at his approval hearing. Litke coined the term "lavalier microphone," a word which appears in his patent.

Also called the Vega-Mike, after Vega Electronics Corporation which first manufactured it in 1959, Litke's midget device (both hand-held and lavalier) was used by the broadcast media during the 1960 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. It allowed television reporters to roam the floor of the convention to interview participants where Presidential candidates Kennedy and Nixon were the first celebrities to use the wireless microphone. The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) completed testing in 1959, prior to the conventions. Television anchor John Daly was exuberant with his praises for Litke's invention on the television news in July 1960. The wireless microphone was also tested at the Olympic trials held at Stanford University in 1959.

In newspaper articles from both the San Jose News of September 10, 1960, and The Alma Signal-Enterprise (KS) dated November 10, 1960 and February 26, 1981, Litke attributes the inspiration of his invention to the winged communication of the bee. Although electronics experts and scientists told him the wireless microphone was an impossibility, Litke managed to invent the microphone in 1957. This wireless microphone was only one of Litke’s inventions. In the 1960s, Litke was employed at University of California Medical Center in San Francisco where he invented several medical instruments, including the fiber-optic colonoscope.

History of Lavalier Microphone Source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalier_microphone