Happy birthday Sennheiser

Sennheiser is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Founder Fritz Sennheiser had initially considered landscape gardening as a career but, given Germany’s economy in the 1930s, he switched his ambitions to electrical engineering, studying wave theory, electroacoustics and encoded language transmission — subjects of increasing importance as the German war effort grew. Post-war he chose to stay in Germany and use his own capital to start a radio mechanics workshop and research lab, initially with seven employees. Founded in 1945 just a few weeks after the end of the war, he called it Laboratorium Wennebostel, or ‘Labor W’ for short, securing a deal with Siemens to supply voltmeters and then a microphone for radio stations. Later realising the value of being a brand rather than merely supplying others, Fritz chose his own name as the company’s new shopfront, and in 1958 Labor W was officially renamed Sennheiser Electronic.

Part of the 75th celebrations include a special price on the HD25 on-ear monitoring headphones, now $239 instead of the normal $349, plus the chance you may get the Limited Edition version pictured right. (It’s a lottery, since only 25,000 LEs will be distributed worldwide.) First released in 1998, the HD25 was based on the “world’s first hi-fi headphone” from 1968, the HD 414.

More info: