Sennheiser

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG is a private German company that makes microphones, headphones, telephony accessories, and avionics headsets for consumer, professional, and business applications.

Company

Sennheiser is privately owned by the Sennheiser family. It has 1,650 employees, 60% of them working in Germany. Major subsidiaries of the company are Georg Neumann GmbH, which builds studio microphones, and Klein + Hummel, a producer of studio monitors. In 2006, revenues of Sennheiser totaled € 300 million.

Sennheiser is headquartered in the municipality of Wedemark, Germany (near Hanover). Its United States headquarters is located in Old Lyme, Connecticut. The company has factories in Burgdorf, Germany, Tullamore, Ireland (since 1990), and Albuquerque, New Mexico (since 1991). Sennheiser's R&D facilities are located in Germany and Palo Alto, California. Sennheiser has sales branches in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, India, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and the USA.

History

The company was founded in 1945, just a few weeks after World War II, by Fritz Sennheiser and seven fellow engineers of the University of Hanover in a laboratory called Labor W. The laboratory was named after the village of Wennebostel, where it had been moved due to the war. Its first product was a voltmeter. Labor W began building microphones in 1946.

By 1955, the company had 250 employees. Labor W was renamed Sennheiser electronic in 1958. Sennheiser was transformed into a limited partnership (KG) in 1973. The company began producing modern wireless microphones in 1982. Also in 1982, founder Fritz Sennheiser handed the management of the company over to his son, Jörg Sennheiser.

Awards and Recognition

In 1987, the company received an Oscar for a scientific and engineering achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the MKH 861 microphone. In 1996 the company received a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for its developments in wireless transmission and, in 1999, a Grammy Award for its Georg Neumann GmbH microphones.

Source: Sennheiser Worldwide [1].

External links

• Sennheiser Worldwide (German, English, French and Spanish)
• Sennheiser USA (English)