In Praise of Headphones

The recent news about the (thank goodness!) peaceful transfer of power on NBC's Tonight Show from Jay Leno to Jimmy Fallon and from beautiful downtown Burbank to 30 Rock in Manhattan reminded us of the appeal of one of favorite cool electronic gadgets, headphones -- wireless or otherwise. In some ways we love them more than even regular portable wireless speakers.

Why? Well, once upon a time if you wanted to listen to your high fidelity vinyl record player after, say, 10:00 at night and were within earshot of pretty much any other human being, you were basically out of luck. Although headphone technology -- which allows you to listen to something very loudly that is all but inaudible to others -- dates back to the dawn of recorded sound, it wasn't until the late 1950s and early 1960s that electronics manufacturers began to introduce headphones to the mass market. Without headphones or earphones, watching the early Tonight Show with Jack Paar or Steve Allen meant keeping the sound relatively low so that we wouldn't be bothering our neighbors at the ungodly hour of 11:30 p.m.

Today, we use headphones to watch Jay or to listen to our favorite musicians at top volume even as kids and spouses sleep soundly in the other room, or to view an action packed Hollywood blockbuster at the volume the filmmakers intended -- i.e., very loud. Again, we can be watching that blockbuster at 3:00 a.m. without being the least bit rude to anyone. Of course, we might be better off sleeping at that hour, but isn't it nice to have the freedom to do so? And isn't freedom the name of the game for an electronics gadget company like Axess?