JENSEN COMPANY HISTORY
Peter Laurits Jensen dedicated his life to innovation, and today’s Jensen® musical instrument speakers continue the essence of that innovation.
Peter L. Jensen was born in 1886 in Falster, Denmark. At the 1900 Paris Exhibition, he made a public demonstration of the telegraphone. He moved to the United States in 1909, and worked in the laboratory of radio pioneer Valdemar Poulsen. Two years later in a small laboratory in Napa, California with Mr. Edwin Pridham, he experimented with Poulsen’s arc radio transmitter, adding thicker wires connected to a diaphragm, and putting a coil of copper wire between magnets, thus making a working model of what they called the “electro-dynamic principle” for voice reproduction.
Jensen applied this principle at a Christmas celebration, surprising the townspeople who heard the spoken voice amplified throughout their township. In 1915, working alongside Edwin Pridham, Peter Jensen developed the “Magnavox”, the first loudspeaker. In December 1915, he made the first public demonstrations, on the 10th in Golden Gate Park, and another on the 25th playing music in front of San Francisco City Hall. Magnavox speakers were predominantly used for public address systems, famously used in 1919 to amplify President Woodrow Wilson’s speech in San Diego.
Jensen applied this principle at a Christmas celebration, surprising the townspeople who heard the spoken voice amplified throughout their township. In 1915, working alongside Edwin Pridham, Peter Jensen developed the “Magnavox”, the first loudspeaker. In December 1915, he made the first public demonstrations, on the 10th in Golden Gate Park, and another on the 25th playing music in front of San Francisco City Hall. Magnavox speakers were predominantly used for public address systems, famously used in 1919 to amplify President Woodrow Wilson’s speech in San Diego.