Hello everyone!

Today we’ll be talking about headphones! Earphones or headphones are like magic come to
real life, we all use it thoughtlessly in a crowded metro or while listening to the radio or just
going on about our daily lives. What you probably didn’t know is initially they came with only
one ear piece!
Headphones have improved a lot over the time, they are often even mentioned as “cans”
because people used to communicate with Cans/cups tied using a string. To your
surprise,the first modern headphone was made in a kitchen! It was sold to the navy as
communication equipment. Also headphones were not always meant to be portable, In the
70s, headphones were used for home-listening of records. Hence, portability of the
headphone wasn’t an immediate concern for headphone manufacturers. Earlier headphones
were generally 1-2 kg heavy (talk about neck exercise) , but now a typical headphones
weight 200 g (thanks to technology). Sony Walkman leaded to surge in portable headphones
as a result the headphone industry boomed like anything. One more thing which wasn’t
always the intention of headphones is noise cancellation. The noise-cancelling headphones
were targeted for the aviation industry initially. Since to make the flights cheaper, the cockpit
wasn’t insulated properly and loud noises from the engine could cause them hearing
damage. In 2000 Bose tweaked their headphones to make noise-cancellation headphones.
Well since we have considered noise cancelling, Let’s talk about active and passive noise
cancelling.
Many of you might have heard of active and passive noise cancellation , but might not know
the difference between them. Active noise cancellation uses batteries which detects the
outer sound frequency and emits the same frequency sound such that the frequency gets
cancelled. Whereas passive noise cancellation just means isolation or sound absorption by
pads. Due to absorption passive noise cancellation is not that affective in comparative to
active noise cancellation.

Though headphones can be basically said as compact speakers there is one major
difference other that the size of drivers . Speakers use only one channel as a result you can't
judge the direction of sound. Whereas headphones do not have this problem , headphones
has two channels ; on for each earpad which gives a more surround sound . This is the
underlying principal of the binaural Audio, using infinitesimal delay’s between the audio’s in
two channels it creates a concept of distance. Music sets like virtual haircut can only be
experienced in their full glory when they are listened through headphones.
If you’ve regularly used a headphone you might’ve noticed that the biggest problem that
exist till date isn’t them being heavy or the noise cancellation being very poor, It’s the evr
tangled earphones. It seems like it takes no more than a minute for completely straight headphones
to coil up and become unresolvable. However, Scientists have researched on closed strings in closed
boxes to come up with solutions to our problem! Increased stiffness, shorter length, and non-rounded
wires can reduce the chances of your headphones getting entangled by 70%. Due to untanglement
problem which existed since a long time ( fun fact : one scientist was successful in making non -
tangible wires , but thought it was not great so never implemented it ) what scientist did was
elimimate wires all along , which resulted into wireless headphones . Wireless headphones uses
Bluetooth technology to share electric signals with the driver instead of wires. Voila ! A wireless
solution to a wired problem.
However when using headphones you should always be aware of your surroundings, Headphones
have been the cause for a dramatic increase in road accidents, so make sure you don’t walk on the
road with your headphones on.
Enjoy the music! But carefully.