David Edward Hughes, was a British-American inventor, practical experimenter, and professor of music known for his work on the printing telegraph and the microphone. He is generally considered to have been born in London but his family moved around that time so he may have been born in Corwen, Wales. His family moved to the U.S. while he was a child and he became a professor of music in Kentucky. In 1855 he patented a printing telegraph. He moved back to London in 1857 and further pursued experimentation and invention, coming up with an improved carbon microphone in 1878. In 1879 he identified what seemed to be a new phenomenon during his experiments: sparking in one device could be heard in a separate portable microphone apparatus he had set up. It was most probably radio transmissions but this was nine years before electromagnetic radiation was a proven concept and Hughes was convinced by others that his discovery was simply electromagnetic induction.
David Edward Hughes
The Hughes telegraph was the first telegraph printing text on a paper tape; this one was manufactured by Siemens and Halske, Germany (Warsaw Muzeum Techniki).
Hughes wireless apparatus, a clockwork driven spark transmitter and battery (right) and a modified version of his carbon block microphone (left) which he used in his 1879 experiments
Hughes later in life
A microphone, colloquially called a mic, or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public events, motion picture production, live and recorded audio engineering, sound recording, two-way radios, megaphones, and radio and television broadcasting. They are also used in computers and other electronic devices, such as mobile phones, for recording sounds, speech recognition, VoIP, and other purposes, such as ultrasonic sensors or knock sensors.
Shure Brothers microphone, model 55S, multi-impedance "Small Unidyne" dynamic from 1951
David Edward Hughes invented a carbon microphone in the 1870s.
Humphrey Bogart, Jack Brown, and Lauren Bacall with RCA Varacoustic MI-6203 ribbon microphones broadcast to troops overseas during World War II.
Inside the Oktava 319 condenser microphone