Microphone
acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal
A microphone, colloquially called a mic (), or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in telecommunication, sound recording, broadcasting, and consumer electronics, including telephones, hearing aids, and mobile devices.
Several types of microphone are used today, which employ different methods to convert the air pressure variations of a sound wave to an electrical signal. The most common are the dynamic microphone, which uses a coil of wire suspended in a magnetic field; the condenser microphone, which uses the vibrating diaphragm as a capacitor plate; and the contact microphone, which uses a crystal of piezoelectric material. Microphones typically need to be connected to a preamplifier before the signal can be recorded or reproduced.
History
To speak to larger groups of people, a need arose to increase the volume of the human voice. The earliest devices used to achieve this were acoustic megaphones. Some of the first examples, from fifth-century-BC Greece, were theater masks with horn-shaped mouth openings that acoustically amplified the voice of actors in amphitheaters. Between 1664 and 1685, the English physicist Robert Hooke was the first to experiment with a medium other than air with the invention of an early telephone made of stretched wire with a cup attached at each end. Today, this is known as a tin-can telephone.
The public source identifies “Microphone” as acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Microphone, acoustic-to-electric and transducer.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q46384. The first chronological checks are 1664 and 1685.
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This entry incorporates text from “Microphone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.