On March 2, 1969, the plane that became the symbol of futurism and advanced technology at the service of ordinary people took flight. It was the Concorde, the airplane Franco-English who was capable of flying above the speed of sound: he might reach Mach 2, almost 2100 km per hour. Manufacturing problems and certification delays meant that its first commercial flight was made in 1976, with routes between France and England, and with routes between Europe and the United States in 1977.
It was on these trips where he might demonstrate the advantage of greater speed: it took 3 and a half hours to go from London to New York. For those who might afford it, of course: they were more expensive tickets than in a common flight (8000 dollars), but it was compensated by the brevity of the flight, with the service on board and with a menu that included lobster and truffle salad, smoked salmon, and lots of champagne.
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But the Concorde had a few problems: consumed a lot of fuel (regarding 25,000 liters per hour) and to reach Mach 2 all four engines had to work at maximum, which made the noise inside the passenger cabin will become very annoying. So the company commissioned the creation of headphones to listen to the music service on board that they had acoustic insulation.
The chosen company was Sennheiser, and the headphones created, in 1988, were the HD 25, considered by many to be the first to offer passive noise cancellation thanks to its supraaural design (headphones sit over the ear). The Sennheiser HD 25s were used in the Concordes between 1989 and 2003. The Concorde stopped flying in October 2003; the costs of the plane and its maintenance, added to the fears left behind by a fatal accident in 2000, sealed its fate.
The active cancellationin which a computer generates sound waves complementary to those entering to cancel them out, it would arrive in 1989, courtesy of Bose. for military use, first, and then civilian.
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One limitation that Sennheiser engineers had to face was that the system had to be passive: the aircraft system might not provide enough power for other types of systems to all passengers. In addition, they had to be easy to use and to manufacture: hence the design that allows the ear cups to be rotated and the headphones to be used with only one ear, which would later be useful for other types of uses.
Some passengers took a particular liking to the headphones and took them with them when they got off the plane; one of them came into the hands of a DJ who found that its design was ideal for the discos of the 80s, where the bass sounds and the sound pressure in the booths where the consoles were made it difficult for the disc jockey to distinguish between the music that was playing and the one he wanted to prepare. Thus, these headphones became a classic of the discos.
GDA / The Nation / Argentina
