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100 Years of JENSEN Innovation

On December 24, 1915, during San Francisco’s annual Christmas Eve celebration, a massive crowd of 75,000 eager onlookers converged upon City Hall to hear the “sound miracle.” All eyes were fixated on prominent attorney Thomas W. Hickey and two unknown young engineers who stood anxiously perched atop of the outside balcony.
Hickey proceeded to pick up a microphone as a silence fell over the enormous horde and, suddenly, for the first time in history, a thunderous voice resonated throughout the northern California city.
“Fellow citizens of the City of San Francisco: Tonight’s celebration is unique in that we are witnessing the first public demonstration of a wonderful invention,” Hickey declared. “My voice is being carried to the limits of this great audience through the agency of the Magnavox, a remarkable invention of these two young men, Peter L. Jensen, and Edwin S. Pridham. … I venture to prophesy that, although their invention will make these young men world famous, nevertheless they will never be more proud than they are this night when it is their privilege to present to their fellow Californians this creation of their own inventive genius.” The throng was, of course, awestruck.
It was reported that the speech, as well as Christmas carols from choirs and songs from a world-famous opera singer, could be heard from miles away into Napa Valley with “absolute distinctness.” All this revelry and exhilaration was due to a single loudspeaker give the name the Magnavox (meaning “great sound” in Latin) invented and constructed by Peter Laurits Jensen.
Peter L. Jensen’s ingenuity carries on to this day, as the production of Jensen speakers, as well as radios and TVs, are still being created under his name to the same strict standards and artistic quality that made Jensen a pioneer of modern technology.

Nowadays, surrounded by Jensen’s revolutionary device, it’s nearly impossible to imagine a world without electronically amplified sound. And as Peter L. Jensen once wrote, “How did the world ever get along without it before?”

Timeline
1886 – Peter Laurits Jensen born in Falster, Denmark
1906 – Jensen made a breakthrough by linking a microphone and a transmitter circuit as a sending apparatus and connecting a crystal detector to a grounded telegraph ticker as a receiver. Jensen also experimented with broadcasting recorded music to ships at sea.
1909 – Jensen moves to San Francisco, California.
1915 – Jensen and partner Edwin Pridham invent loudOn December 24, 1915, during San Francisco’s annual Christmas Eve celebration, a massive crspeaker, dubbed the ‘Magnavox’ Latin for ‘great voice’
1917 – Jensen and Pridham form Magnavox Co.
1919 – President Woodrow Wilson uses loudspeaker in San Diego speech. The Magnavox gains national notoriety.
1920-21 – Speakers used in political conventions and by campaigns of James Cox and Warren Harding, including March 4, 1921 Harding inauguration.
1926 – Jensen invents first commercial moving coil radiator loudspeaker.
1927 – Jensen forms Jensen Radio Manufacturing Co. in Chicago.
1929 – Jensen Co. manufactures 60% of all speakers being made for independent radio producers.
1930 – Jensen introduces the permanent magnet dynamic loudspeaker, the first commercial compression-driven horn tweeter and the first molded hi-fi speaker diaphragm were unveiled.
1930-40 – Jensen pioneers high fidelity, develops and produces first multiple speaker system.
Mid-1940s – Leo Fender develops one of first guitar amplifier and chooses Jensen speakers for their excellent tone. Throughout the 1940’s, 1950’s and most of the 1960’s, Fender, Ampeg, Gibson and all the other major amplifier companies used Jensen musical instrument speakers until Jensen stopped making them in the late 1960s.
1943 – Jensen leaves Jensen Manufacturing, forms Jensen Industries manufacturers of phonograph components.
1943-46 – Served as chief consultant to the United States War Production Board, radio and radar division, from 1943 to 1946.
1956 – Jensen is knighted by Danish king.
1960 – Last development under Jensen was the flat piston woofer, introduced.
1961 – Peter Laurits Jensen passes away on Oct. 25 at his home in Western Springs, Illinois at age of 75.
2008 – After more than 80 years, JENSEN brand electronics, including radios and speakers, continue to be produced to the highest quality standards that Peter L. Jensen demanded when he first ventured out on his own in 1927. Today’s JENSEN products proudly follow in the footsteps of its founder and continue to lead the way in innovation. Over the years JENSEN has also expanded its electronics product line and now offers LCD Televisions and proprietary lines that include JENSEN, JENSEN Marine, JENSEN Heavy Duty and Voyager Observation Systems.

JENSEN: A Company of Firsts

Started in 1927 by Peter Jensen, inventor of the original loudspeaker
1928, premiered the Jensen Auditorium Speaker designed to reproduce both music and voice - capable of handling extreme power inputs
Upper-most recognized brand in the marketplace as determined by Equifax
No. 1 amplifier brand
World’s First commercially available moving-coil direct radiator loudspeaker
World’s First permanent magnet dynamic loudspeaker
World’s First commercially available compression-driven horn tweeter
World’s First molded hi-fi speaker diaphragm
World’s First speaker system designed to match the first car radio
World’s First Bass Reflex enclosed speaker
World’s First Commercially available Horn-type Super Tweeter
World’s First Flat Piston Woofer
World’s First company to bring home high fidelity engineering into the design of car radios, and thereby renaming them car stereo “receivers”