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US: MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN
Jason Victor Serinus
John C. Koss, the father of stereo headphones and founder and former chairman of Milwaukee-based Koss Corporation, died on December 21, 2021. He was 91.
Koss created the company in 1953 to rent television sets to hospital patients. Five years later, he and his partner, Martin Lange Jr., created the SP/3 Stereophone, the world’s first stereo headphones. Koss later developed the Pro/4 Series, which became the official headphones of the Air Force One in-flight entertainment system. In 1968, Koss released the ESP/6, the world’s first “self-energizing” electrostatic headphones. Six years later came the HV/1A, the first dynamic headphone capable of reproducing all 10 audible octaves.
Along the way, Koss standardized the headphone jacks and plugs we use today. (Apple-and Android-device manufacturers, are you listening?) To honor his achievements in audio, Koss was inducted into the Audio Hall of Fame in 1979.
In the 1980s, Koss spurred development of Koss Porta Pro collapsible headphones. In 1989, he introduced his company’s “No-Questions-Asked” lifetime warranty program for Koss’s whole stereo headphone line. In 2000, he was inducted into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame.
Koss currently markets wired and wire-less headphones, earbuds, wireless Bluetooth speakers, computer and telecommunications headsets, and the Koss Classics label’s recordings of American symphony orchestras. To this day, the Koss Corporation identifies itself as “the Original American Stereophone Company.”
John Koss’s community outreach was exemplary. After receiving honorary degrees from the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee School of Engineering, he became a director of the engineering school. He helped create the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Koss Hearing and Balance Center, the Koss Cochlear Implant program, and the John C. Koss Endowed Chair in Otolaryngology to study diseases of the ear and throat. In the 1970s, he bought WFMR-FM in an effort to save Milwaukee’s sole remaining classical
