Neumann History
Georg Neumann –
An Inventor and His Life’s Work
Company founder Georg Neumann was born on
13October 1898, in Chorin, some 80 km North- east of Berlin. He received his vocational train- ing at the firm of Mix & Genest in Berlin. Later he worked in a research laboratory at AEG’s Oberspree Cable Works where the focus was on building amplifiers. Eugen Reisz was director of this laboratory. A short while later, he found- ed his own firm and took on Georg Neumann as an employee.
In those days, the microphones commonly used for sound recordings were carbon microphones. These resembled a shoe polish tin, partially filled with carbon grains, with openings on one side to admit the sound. These openings were backed by fine gauze to prevent the carbon grains from falling out. By modern standards, the quality of these microphones was dreadful. The transducer principle used in these microphones was also jokingly referred to as a “con- trolled loose connection”.
Georg Neumann examined this microphone, scattered powdered carbon on a marble slab, inserted two electrodes, introduced a direct cur- rent, and spoke into this configuration. A corresponding response which, by Georg Neumann’s account, was very “thin”, ema-
nated from the attached loud- speaker.
Next Neumann stretched a rubber membrane over the con- traption, spoke into it again, and suddenly the low frequencies were there. A new microphone was born, the Reisz marble block microphone.
It was into this microphone that the first German radio sta- tion, a Berlin station broad-
casting on the 400 m band, sounded its “first yawp” from Vox House on Potsdamer Platz in 1923.
With a linear frequency response between 50 Hz and 1 kHz this microphone had an excess of 10 dB up to 4 kHz, which decreased to approximately 15 dB at 10 kHz. Not quite what we would call a studio microphone these days.
Neumann had never been one to settle for com- promises. In and of itself, the microphone was
indeed a sensation. Consumed by the idea of mass producing
amicrophone using the capaci- tive transducer principle, he soon parted company with Re- isz to found his own firm in Berlin, together with Erich Rick- mann, on 23 November 1928.
Since until then the only place in which it was possible to manufacture a condenser microphone was in the laboratory, his plans for industrial production seemed rather fantastic.
The Neumann Bottle
The CMV 3 was the first ever mass produced condenser microphone, far superior to the Re- isz microphone, and it gained recognition under the nickname of the ‘Neumann Bottle’. It wasn’t exactly small, measuring approx. 9 cm in diameter and approx. 40 cm in height. Its weight of nearly 3 kg made reporting a very strenuous job.
Telefunken, a subsidiary of AEG and Siemens, took on the marketing rights to Neumann’s mi- crophone.
Between 1928 and the end of World War II the Bottle’s design remained virtually unchanged, during which time it became firmly established as the standard for studio use and was used extensively in the 1936 Olympic Games in Ber- lin. At this time there existed already a selection of exchangeable capsule heads with different polar patterns.
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