AKG Acoustics WMS 40 Akg - A Legendary Brand, Akg History, Die DYN Series, K 120 DYN, The logo

AKG HISTORY

AKG - A LEGENDARY BRAND

A PIONEER IN ACOUSTICS FOR OVER 50 YEARS

How it all started …

A word to skeptics from the outset: the history of AKG is simply too good to have been just made up!

1945: In a setting reminiscent of “The Third Man”, two men who had occasionally done business with one another before World War II met up again. They discovered that people sought distraction from the ruins around them at the movies, but that most of Vienna’s movie theaters had either been bombed or plundered. Thus there was a pressing need for good thea- ter equipment. And so it was that Rudolf Görike and Ernst Pless conceived a new idea: “Let us go into business together.” This was the begin- ning of a success story that has already lasted over 50 years.

Rudolf Görike started manufacturing movie pro-

jectors and loudspeakers, whilst Ernst Pless delivered their growing customer base by bicy- cle and rucksack. As the volume of orders grew, they even resorted to using a good old-fashioned wheelbarrow! Their first customers did not have any hard currency to pay them with, but they did have pork, butter and cigarettes – fresh from the black market and in great demand.

1947: The two pioneers decided to set up a company. Once all the preparations had been made, the company set up office in a basement in a suburb of Vienna and hired a staff of five employees.

Initially the range included products such as exposure meters, car horns, intercom systems, carbon capsules and auxiliary handsets for tele- phones, pillow loudspeakers, and many other appliances that seem curious to us today. The

product range was continually adapted to meet demand.

Meanwhile Rudolf Görike, a gifted drawer and painter, created a logo for the company. It was he who designed the products, bubbling over with new ideas and applying for several patents in quick succession. Before World War II, he had been involved with microphones as development manager with the firm of “Henry Radio”. His hobby remained his profession, and he was finally able to put his ideas for new tech- nologies into practice.

The first AKG microphones went into service the same year, mainly with radio stations, at theaters, cabarets and jazz clubs. The AKG Dyn Series, for example, was one such development: painstakingly assembled by hand, it would be simply unaffordable today.

Die DYN Series

AKG developed its first dynamic microphones in 1946. With an annual production of 500 to 600 units, every single component was manufactured by hand and a wide variety of designs pro- duced in the “DYN” series – DYN 60, DYN 60 G, DYN 60 K (see illustration), DYN 60 Studio, etc. The original microphones in this series have since become collectors’ items.

K 120 DYN

The first AKG headphones bearing the designation K 120 DYN were launched in 1949. They were equipped with a Trolitul dia- phragm of molded granulate, since foils were not yet available. At the time AKG had only one winding machine and one gluing machine.

The founders: Dr. Rudolf Görike and Ing. Ernst Pless

“The past is of no interest to me. I always look ahead – to the future…” commented AKG co-founder Rudolf Görike some years ago. At the time he was already over 80 years old!

The logo

The first AKG logo with three overlapping rings (symboli- zing the typical omnidirectional polar pattern of the time) was designed by company founder Rudolf Görike. With the introduction of the AKG D 12 – the first microphone with a cardioid polar pattern – in 1953, the three rings were replaced with three cardioids. Apart from slight modifica- tions, this logo has remained in use to this day, and is the guarantee of AKG’s legendary quality the world over.

2 www.akg.com