Professor Dr. Fritz Sennheiser (pictured), founder of Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG and a pioneer in the field of electroacoustics, celebrated his 95th birthday on May 9. In June 1945, Sennheiser founded his “Laboratorium Wennebostel” with a staff of just seven employees in an abandoned laboratory of Hanover’s Technical University. Today, more than 1,650 people work for Sennheiser, and the company now has production sites in Germany, Ireland and the U.S.
Born in Berlin, Germany, Sennheiser had a keen interest in all things technical. “I built my own radio receiver in 1924 from a slide coil and a crystal,” he recalls. His passion for making new discoveries accompanied him throughout his life. “We were always dissatisfied with the ‘state-of-the-art’ and always wanted to create something new, something better,” Sennheiser says. “Our main priority was to have fun in developing something. And we certainly had a lot of fun when we discovered something really new. We had so many ideas. While others were busy copying our products, we already had our next inventions up our sleeve.”
The family-owned company’s innovations included the shotgun microphone in the 1950s, open-back headphones in the 1960s, infrared transmission technology in the 1970s and multichannel wireless technology in the early 1980s. In 1982, Fritz Sennheiser handed the management of the company over to his son, Professor Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, who is today chairman of the supervisory board.
The company still places great emphasis on research and development, in keeping with Fritz Sennheiser’s motto of “allowing our developers to give free rein to their creative ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem.”
For more information, visit www.sennheiserusa.com.
