LIGHT WEIGHT HEADSETS Lightweight headsets were actually made for pilots. Pilots used to use heavy, bulky and uncomfortable headsets. Then in 1961 United Airlines invited anyone who wanted to design a new more comfortable headset to try. Courtney Grahan, who was a pilot for the company thought that there must be a better way. He teamed up with his friend Keith Larkin. Larkin had been working for a company in California, Plane-Aida, to design a comfortable headset. They came up with a design for a headset. It had a headband with a used acoustic tube connected to tiny transducers (a device that converts something like brightness or pressure into an electrical signal), the transducers they used were often used on hearing aids, for both a microphone and receiver. They called the design MS-50. The MS-50 was accepted by United Airlines. Keith Larkin and Courtney Graham took the opportunity to open their own company, Pacific Plantronics Inc. Graham and Klein realized that pilots weren’t the only people who needed a new design ASTRONAUTS, call centers and phone operators were calling for a new headset design. They started looking into putting the MS-50 into Astronauts helmets.
Why NASA Made A New Light Weight Head Set for Astronauts In 1961 After the Liberty Bell 7 Capsule splashed down NASA knew that they needed a better headset. The hatch flew out to early causing the space capsule to flood. Because there was no longer any radio transmission astronaut, so Gus Grissom was not able to contact the recovery team. He survived but later died in the Apollo 1 test. He managed to swim away from the capsule and then was picked up by a helicopter. Because it was really important to make a reliable device in case of another indecent like this one NASA contacted ITT labs in Fort Wayne. ITT created a self-contained radio receiver called the Kellorad unit which had the MS-50 in it.