The first headphones weighed more than 10 pounds and had nothing to do with music

Take a look at the specs of current noise-canceling over-ear headphones, like the AirPods Max 2, and you might be impressed. Featuring complex chips, these devices provide real-time equalizer and can digitally block external noise. One of the biggest points of criticism is their weight — yet the 13.6-ounce AirPods Max 2 only seems heavy until you consider that the first earbuds weighed around 10 pounds.

Invented by Ezra Gilliland in 1881, these monstrosities had little to do with music. What we call the “Gilliland harness” was mostly used by switchboard operators. Harness is actually the right word to describe the device consisting of an earpiece connected to a phone and a microphone. The machine was so heavy that it was designed to rest on the operator’s shoulder.

Subsequent iterations didn’t really sound like modern audiophile headphones either. A decade after the first headphones (or harnesses) were released, a company designed a pair that sat on an actual stem. This is not the most unbalanced detail, however. Electrophone offered a subscription service which allowed you to use these headphones to listen to live shows in London via a switchboard.

Although the first headphones weighed around 10 pounds, it took nearly a decade for someone to come up with a lighter option. While Londoners were listening to everything that was going on, Ernest Mercadier was patenting the first headphones. These had nothing to do with music either, but they looked eerily similar to the in-ear headphones we have today, as the French inventor designed them with rubber caps in mind.

The first “real” headphones were invented in 1910. Sitting at a kitchen table, Nathaniel Baldwin woke up one day and decided to revolutionize audio technology. The Utah-based inventor connected two padded ear cups with bands and created the first pair of headphones that could sit on the head. Due to the ease of use and the fact that Baldwin’s invention did not require an external power supply, the US Navy ordered 100 units.

It wasn’t until 1937 that Eugen Beyer of Beyerdynamic (which is to this day one of the leading audiophile headphone brands) finally created the first dynamic headphone. Beyer’s design used a moving coil transducer, which allowed for quality music reproduction. Although these took off in the professional setting, 1958 is the unofficial birth year of commercially available headphones designed for music.

John Koss had the brilliant idea of ​​bundling a record player and a pair of plastic headphones with foam earpads into one package. They were nothing more than small speakers that didn’t offer much in the way of audio quality, but opened the floodgates, so to speak. People started using headphones to listen to music.

The 1960s brought new developments, the most notable being wireless AM/FM headphones and early open-back models, developed by none other than Sennheiser. Granted, the music listening experience remained pretty much the same, since you’d still be using headphones at home, connected to a stereo. That all changed in 1979 when Sony introduced the iconic Walkman, which made music portable. Since Sony has surpassed 400 million units, the headphones have also seen a massive increase in popularity.

Subsequently, companies refined their designs and introduced new technologies. For example, Bose developed the first noise-canceling headphones in 1989, and Bluetooth finally caught on around 2004. That brings us to today, where headphones can do everything from adapting EQ to blocking external noise. Audio quality has never been better and the models are extremely comfortable, so much so that it’s very easy to take the improvements for granted. The next time you feel like your AirPods Max are too bulky and heavy, remember how heavy the first earbuds were and you’ll feel much better about your modern arrangement.