Popular Mechanics - USA (2020-09 & 2020-10)

A

MAR BOSE WAS FRUSTRATED. It was

1978, and he’d planned to kill some of the

time on his 3,745-mile f light from Zurich

to Boston by listening to music through

some new, foam-covered (read: flimsy)

headphones that Swissair supplied to the

passengers. His enjoyment was foiled by

the drone of the engines, which overpowered the

lightweight headset.

Fortunately, Bose was a professor of electrical

engineering at MIT, and the head of his own elec-

tronics company, the Bose Corporation. By the

time he had arrived in Boston, he had scrawled the

first steps toward a solution to his sonic problem:

noise-canceling headphones.

The idea had precedent—scientists like Law-

rence J. Fogel in the ’50s and Paul Lueg in the ’30s

had applied for patents on their own versions of

the concept, for use in everything from concert

halls to helicopters. But Bose came to the idea inde-

pendently. And nobody had put the pieces together

in a way that would work for consumer headphones.

“In order to cancel a noise,” says Dan Gauger, a

member of the original engineering squad Bose put

together to realize his vision, “you have to take all

frequencies. For each one of those, you have to make

a noise at the same frequency, of the same ampli-

tude, but the opposite phase. So you have to combine

a +1 with a –1.” To accomplish this, and make the

technology workable enough for mass use, Bose’s

team incorporated a couple of crucial innovations

of the ’70s, like a small electret microphone. It was

composed of high-resistance material providing a

permanent charge without needing a ton of volt-

age and current. Positioned near the entrance to

the ear canal, the electret mic picks up sound so the

circuitry can compare the noise outside the head-

phones to what you want to hear—your music—and

produce that opposite phase sound. Then, you hear

only the tunes.

Anyone who’s watched a school principal struggle

with an oversaturated microphone and an ancient

P.A. system knows feedback can be a nuisance when

it’s accidentally generated. But when it’s tailored to

zap unwanted noise, it can be your best friend.

Eight years and around $3 million later, Gauger

and his colleague Roman Sapiejewski heard news of

former USAF pilot Dick Rutan and co-pilot Jeana

Yeager’s upcoming attempt to circumnavigate the

globe in the Rutan Voyager, without stopping to

refuel. But the plane had no sound-deadening. “We

Headphones

That Turn

Down the

Volume on

Excess Noise

Ja

me

s^ K

eys

er/

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e^ L

IFE

Im

age

s^ C

oll

ect

ion

via

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tty

Im

age

s

Bose’s

Aviation

Headset

Series 1.

This Changed

Everything

// BY JIM ALLEN //

13

70 September/October 2020