There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily ad free.

Listen with Wonder Plus in the Wonder App.

Or you can get all of History Daily, plus other fantastic history podcasts at

Into History.

com. Take a moment right now and just look around you.

I have no idea what you're doing but a fair number of you are driving or working or exercising.

Maybe you're gardening, cleaning the garage, doing dishes. Maybe you're just relaxing on the couch, but regardless of where you are and what you are doing, just look around and find three objects.

I'll do it with you. I see a microphone, a framed picture of my daughter, and some

sunglasses. Any three objects will do. Now, think about the history behind them. The microphone, I mentioned, is a Neumann U87.

It was originally introduced in 1967 by German manufacturer Georg Neumann GMBH,

a company that made the world's first commercially available

condenser microphone.

And from this first microphone I can go forward in time, exploring the Allied bombing

raid that destroyed the Neumann factory and forced a move east to the town of Geffel,

which eventually fell under Soviet control, while George Neumann himself fled west,

creating the odd situation of two companies separated by the Berlin Wall, making

the same product.

Or I could go back and find out the tumultuous history of the invention of the microphone and the bruising

battle between inventors Thomas Edison, Emil Berliner and David Edward Hughes, an international

spat so vicious and costly that Lord Kelvin, the guy who pretty much invented

thermodynamics, wrote a long public letter to try to mediate the dispute.

And I haven't even turned to the photograph. A long and fascinating history of photography awaits or the and the of the aviation style in World War II all the way back some 2,000 years to Inuit tribes using

...