A pioneer in the field of electroacoustics is celebrating his 95th birthday today. Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser has had a decisive influence on the development of sound transmission technology with his company Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG. It was in June 1945 that Prof. Dr. Fritz Sennheiser founded his “Laboratorium Wennebostel” with a staff of just seven employees — but with a great deal of pioneering spirit — in an abandoned laboratory of Hanover’s Technical University. Virtually overnight, the developer became a businessman — and a very successful one at that. Today, more than 1,650 people work for Sennheiser throughout the world, and the company now has production sites in Germany, Ireland and the USA.

The history of electroacoustics in Europe is inseparably linked with the name Fritz Sennheiser. Born in Berlin, Fritz Sennheiser grew up to experience — and to influence — many epoch-making developments in electroacoustics and transmission technology. Even as a young boy, he had a keen interest in all things technical: “I built my own radio receiver in 1924 from a slide coil and a crystal,” the 95-year-old recalls. His passion for making new discoveries has accompanied Fritz Sennheiser throughout his life. He describes it as his ‘creative restlessness’: “We were always dissatisfied with the ‘state of the art’ and always wanted to create something new, something better. Our main priority was to have fun in developing something. And we certainly had a lot of fun when we discovered something really new. We had so many ideas — while others were busy copying our products, we already had our next inventions up our sleeve.”

The family company’s most important innovations included the shotgun microphone in the 1950s, open-back headphones in the 1960s, infrared transmission technology in the 1970s and the revolutionary developments in multi-channel wireless technology in the early 1980s. In 1982, Fritz Sennheiser handed the management of the company over to his son, Prof. Dr. Jörg Sennheiser, who has continued to secure the company’s success and is today Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

Even today, the company still places great emphasis on research and development, in keeping with Fritz Sennheiser’s motto of “allowing our developers to give free rein to their creative ideas, no matter how crazy they might seem” — as it is often these ideas that result in the best developments and the best products…

As one of the world’s leading manufacturers of microphones, headphones and wireless transmission systems, the Sennheiser Group with its headquarters in Wedemark near Hanover, Germany, had total sales of about €300 million in 2005. The export share is 82.5%. Sennheiser has a total workforce of more than 1,650 employees, of whom about 60% are employed in Germany. Sennheiser is active worldwide and, in addition to other partnerships, has its own sales subsidiaries in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, India, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and the USA.

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For further information about Sennheiser please visit us on the Internet at http://www.sennheiser.com/ or contact:

Sennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. KG  
Press and PR - Edelgard Marquardt  
Am Labor 1 - 30900 Wedemark - Germany 
Phone: +49 (5130) 600-329   
Fax: +49 (5130) 600-295   
E-mail: marquare@sennheiser.com  

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