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AKG history
“Pioneering spirit” best characterizes the ambitious work of AKG founders Dr.
Rudolf Görike and Ing. Ernst Pless. After the war, people went to the movies
seeking distraction from the stress of post-war life, so Rudolf Görike built movie
projectors and loudspeakers, while Ernst Pless used his rucksack and bicycle
to deliver the goods to constantly growing numbers of customers. Their very
first customer was unable to pay in cash so he settled the bill in food, fresh
from the black market.
When AKG was established in 1947, the company headquarters were located
in a basement in the suburbs of Vienna. Before long, many AKG microphones
were in use, mainly at radio stations, in the-
aters, on small stages, and at jazz clubs.
In the early 1950s, the two founders of AKG
made their business breakthrough with
completely new technologies. The micro-
phones of that era had a strangely shrill and
hollow sound, and AKG technology added warmth and fullness to microphone’s
sound.
In 1953, the first AKG dynamic microphone in the world became an interna-
tional success, and the first large-diaphragm condenser microphone with re-
motely selectable polar patterns set new standards for professional micro-
phones. Almost every major radio or recording studio including BBC London,
one of the first buyers, used these microphones.
The following years saw numerous new developments. Many innovations of
that period are still in use today. The K 10 headphones used by the European
Parliament are but one example.
AKG research engineers have always loved exotic challenges. One of those
was a real-life test of hydrophones for the Austrian deep-sea scientist Hans
Hass and AKG designers were happy to
spend days swimming and diving at the “Di-
ana Bad” indoor pool in downtown Vienna
that was very popular in those days. The
AKG team also fulfilled the very special
wishes of Herbert von Karajan. They had to
hide all the microphones at the first post-
war Salzburg Festival because the maestro had decreed that the audio equip-
ment must be totally invisible to the audience.
The company expanded and patents were applied for in rapid succession.
AKG supplied microphones to major tape recorder manufacturers including
Philips, Grundig, Uher, Loewe and others. Portable reverberation units created
a new market in the 1960s and 1970s. Telephone transducers soon became
a rapidly growing product line. This period also saw the advent of digital tech-
nology and AKG made its successful “digital debut” at the 1980 Olympic Games
in Moscow.
As early as 1974, AKG built the first wireless headphones. At that time, con-
sumers were skeptical and many felt the new technology was too complicated.
In the late 1980s, AKG launched the K 1000 headphones that were a dramatic
improvement over all earlier attempts at creating a natural, binaural headphone
sound. The audio community was full of praise. The new results of psychoa-
coustic research were presented in exhibitions at the Deutsches Museum in
Munich, the Kunst Museum of Bonn, and even used by the “Audimir” space
flight project. The crew on board the “MIR” performed several tests to exam-
ine the meaning of sound source localization for the humans in space.
The new AKG wireless microphone systems launched in 1996 used a new,
revolutionary technology that was widely acclaimed in the marketplace. Big
name pop artists such as Rod Steward, Peter Gabriel, and Simply Red used
the systems on their tours and AKG became the preferred brand for many other
famous musicians.
At the turn of the millennium, AKG engineers came up with the latest genera-
tion of the HEARO Family, a new line of wireless headphone systems using the
latest surround technology.
And the story goes on…
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