As early as 1877, Erenst Verner of Siemens in Germany obtained the patent of moving coil horn according to Fleming's left hand law. In 1898, British Sir Oliver Lodge further in accordance with the principle of the telephone microphone invented the cone horn, and we are familiar with the modern horn is very similar, Sir Lodge called the "roaring telephone". The invention was not to be used, however, because the tripole vacuum tube was not invented by Lee De Forest until 1906, and a working enlarger was several years away, so the cone trumpet did not become common until the 1930s. Another reason was the arrival in 1921 of new electronic records, which had a better dynamic range (up to 30dB) than traditional mechanical records, forcing people to try to improve the characteristics of the speakers to match. In 1923, Bell LABS decided to develop a sound music regeneration system, including the new turntable and trumpet, recording and MC singing head, the way of living voice engraving, was invented in this wave of action. The task of developing the speaker fell to two engineers, CW Rice and EW Kellogg. They used equipment never seen before in their day, including a 200-watt vacuum tube expander, many of bell LABS 'own recordings, Over the years bell LABS developed loudspeakers such as the Lodge's prototype cone loudspeaker, the compressed air loudspeaker using a diaphragm flap to control compressed air, the corona discharge loudspeaker (today called the ion driver), and the electrostatic loudspeaker.

It didn't take long for Rice and Kellogg to pick two designs -- cone and electrostatic -- out of many, and that decision led to a split in the direction of the horn: traditional and innovative. The moving coil speaker is evolved from the base of the tongue reed speaker. There is a cylindrical coil in the middle of the circular magnet. The front end of the coil is directly fixed on the paper basin or diaphragm, but the magnetic field is changed through the audio current in the coil. When the moving coil horn came out, because the strength of the permanent magnet was difficult to match, so it used electromagnetic design, in which another coil was wound to generate a magnetic field. This design had been popular for 20 years. But the electromagnetic horn has its problems, such as the dc pulse through the electromagnetic coil is easy to produce AC interference; The strength of the current in the electromagnetic coil varies with the audio signal, creating a new instability factor.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Edison Phonograph company failed, and others didn't do much better. Speakers that needed to be driven by an enlarged machine didn't spread well. The old Victorla phonograph remained popular until world War II. Economy takes off after 2 times, all sorts of new-style acoustics fittings become grab goods, horn of cone basin type gets serious test again. This period of time due to the strong magnet alloy development success, all become permanent magnet moving-coil loudspeakers by electromagnetic type, the disadvantage of the past swept away (commonly used in addition to natural cobalt magnet, Alnico and Ferrite magnets, in addition to the magnetic flux density, various features of the natural magnet is superior, the senior speakers using neodymium magnets). In order to cooperate with the advent of LP, as well as the progress of hi-Fi system, cone horn then sought reform in paper basin material. Common as thick material to make woofer, small and hard diaphragm when treble; Or assemble horns of different sizes into coaxial monomers; There are also trumpets in front of the treble into a compressed horn treble; There is even a design that hides a high-pitched horn behind a low-pitched paper basin. In 1965, Harbeth in the UK invented the vacuum formed (Bextrene) plastic diaphragm, which was a great advance in materials. This soft but high damping product can still be seen on KEF and some British speakers. Harbeth later developed polypropylene plastic diaphragm, a new material that has a higher internal damping coefficient and is lighter, and is still used on many speakers. Engineers became thinking in two directions when designing speakers: woofers looking for a breakthrough in speakers; The tweeter is a monomer improvement. So at this time some of the new design, almost all tremolo monomer. A more successful design is the electrostatic horn. Rice and Kellogg, of Bell LABS, made a horn as big as a door panel, with a diaphragm made of pig intestine wrapped in gold foil (plastic is not yet available). The hypnotic power of the magnificent golden behemoth, and the smell of rancid pig intestines and ozone in the laboratory air, might have brought to mind Frankenstein and Bell's "tone recorder" made from dead people's ears. But when it began to sound, the beauty of its voice and its vivid timbre frightened everyone, and they knew that a new era had come. However, Rice and Kellogg encountered an insurmountable problem in designing electrostatic speakers: the need for a large diaphragm to reproduce a full bass sound. When the technology failed to break through, Bell LABS had to turn to the cone horn. In 1947 Arthur Janszen, a young naval officer, was assigned to develop a new sonar detection device, which required very accurate speakers. Janszen discovered that the cone horn was not linear, so he tried to make an electrostatic horn. He coated a plastic sheet with conductive paint as a diaphragm, which proved to be remarkable in both phase and amplitude performance. Janszen went on to study and found that insulating Stator can prevent the arc effect of damaging effects. In 1952, Janszen completed the commercial production of electrostatic treble monomer, with AR's bass monomer, is the best combination of audio fans dream of at that time. In 1955, Peter Walker published a series of articles on the design of electrostatic speakers in Radio World in Britain. He believed that electrostatic speakers were born with broad, flat responses and very low distortion, much lower than the amplifiers at that time. In 1956, Peter Walker's vision was realized on the Quad ESL Speaker (the Quad is an abbreviation of his earlier Quality Unit Amplifier, the Amplifier of the Domestic Amplifier). Its accuracy was hailed as the new standard for listening, but there were still some problems to overcome: Volume is insufficient, impedance load makes some expander daunting, diffusivity is insufficient, carrying power is limited. In the early 1960s, Janszen joined KLH company to launch klH-9. Due to the large size of KLH-9, the PROBLEM of Quad ESL was solved. Until the establishment of Infinity Company in 1968, KLH-9 electrostatic speakers were the most hi-end products. In addition, Janszen has helped to develop electrostatic speakers such as Koss, Acoustech, and Dennesen. Roger West, Janszen's lead designer, also founded Sound Lab.

When Janszen Enterprises was sold, RTR bought the production equipment and introduced Servostatic panels, Infinity's first pair of speakers using RTR products. Janszen's company has changed hands several times, but it has never disappeared, and today Dave Wilson, one of the king speakers, uses some of Janszen's electrostatic boards in his WAMM megasystem. Acoustat, Audio Static, Beverage, Dayton Wright, Sound Lab, Stax, Martin Logan, etc. Acoustat X is equipped with a vacuum tube expander that outputs a high voltage signal without the need for a booster. Beverage 2SW comes with a high voltage expander, controller, and a pair of ultra low tones. Because the two-meter-high diaphragm of Beverage 2SW is installed in an elliptical speaker, acoustic guide plate is used to make the sound evenly spread out from the front opening, which can form a very three-dimensional audio image. It is recommended to be placed on both sides of the wall, and then play face to face. Dayton Wright's design is also unique. The diaphragm is enclosed in a plastic bag sealed with sulfur hexafluoride inert gas to increase the speaker's efficiency and output sound pressure. The most expensive electrostatic speaker is Mark Levinson's HQD. Two Quad speakers for each channel, plus a modified belt tweeter and a 24-inch bass to extend the frequency at both ends, plus three Mark Levinson ML-2 rear stage and electronic dividers, cost $15,000, which was a real price at the time. Martin Logan in order to solve the problem of large diaphragm bass, in recent years, a series of mixed cone bass design has achieved great success, coupled with the introduction of delay line, acoustic lens, wavy diaphragm and other new technologies, let the electrostatic horn more and more friendly, I believe it will continue to exist.