During the Centennial of Shure Incorporated, Tech Tips are planned that document lesser-known aspects of our history. In this issue, readers will learn about the earliest days of electrical recording and the role of the condenser microphone.
The migration from acoustic recording studios to electrical recording studios began in 1925. Responding to the growing number of electrical studios, Shure Brothers Company marketed its first condenser microphone for recording, the Model 44, in 1932. Here is our January 1932 ad in Projection Engineering magazine.
My friend and mentor, vintage mic historian Marco van der Hoeven, resides in The Netherlands. He owns a restored 1925 Western Electric condenser microphone – the first condenser used for recording music. Not content to simply own the Western Electric mic, Marco decided to use it for a recording session using the technical methods employed in the late 1920s. He documented this effort in an eleven-minute video. Here is the link to the video:
One Hundred Years of Great Sound: The Condenser Microphone & Electrical Recording
Dear readers, please take time to view Marco’s excellent, yet brief, documentary. I am confident you will learn much and be astonished by the superb audio quality provided by the 1925 Western Electric condenser microphone.
Related information: Shure 1935 Catalog with Wave-Equalized Condenser Mics
Marco’s Book about Vintage Microphones
Shure Apps Tech Tip #581: 100 Years of Electrical Recording
Arcana – mysterious or specialized knowledge
Here is Shure’s 1935 marketing pitch for wave-equalized condenser mics.
Below is a March 1935 letter from Shure to radio station WBBC touting wave-equalized condenser mics. The signature, J. B. Albert, belongs to Jack Albert Berman – the same Jack Berman who founded a Southern California sales rep firm in the 1950s. While working at Shure in the 1930s, Jack used Albert as his last name to conceal his Jewish ancestry due to anti-Semitism fueled by the Great Depression.
The NRA eagle logo in the letter’s lower left corner represents the National Recovery Administration. “We Do Our Part” was the slogan of the NRA, a New Deal agency created to help the United States recover from the Great Depression by establishing fair business practices and increasing consumer demand. Shure voluntarily adopted NRA codes for wages, hours, and production standards and therefore could use the “Blue Eagle” symbol on business communications.
