Is This The Most Important Microphone Ever Made?

Next time the President of the United States steps up to a podium, look at the two small gray microphones on top. They're the same model a bar band puts on its snare drum, and anyone can buy one for about $100. It's the Shure SM57, it came out in 1965, and every president since Lyndon Johnson has spoken into it. This is the story of the SM57: a radio parts company started in Chicago in 1925, a 25-year-old engineer named Ben Bauer who figured out in 1939 how to make one microphone element listen in one direction, the Unidyne 55 that ended up in front of Truman, Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis, and Ernie Seeler, the classical music lover whose Unidyne III design became the SM57 and SM58. It was built for TV studios, nearly cancelled in the early 1970s, rescued by live sound engineers in Las Vegas, and became the microphone on snare drums and guitar amps all over the world. Watch the 12AX7 story, the tube inside the guitar amps the SM57 has been pointed at for 60 years: https://youtu.be/CtTuwJBRiD0 Have you ever used an SM57 or an SM58? Ever dropped one, or seen one survive something it shouldn't have? Tell me in the comments. And if I got a date, a number or a name wrong, tell me there too. I read every comment and I pin corrections. Parts That Changed History tells the stories behind the chips, machines and parts that shaped the modern world, and the people who built them. Subscribe for a new story every day. SOURCES Wikipedia: Shure SM57; Shure (company) Mix, "1965 Shure SM57 Dynamic Microphone," 2006 Shure, "10 Things You Might Not Know About the SM58" The Broadcast Bridge, "How a 25-Year-Old Engineer Changed the History of Microphones" MusicRadar, "How the Shure SM57 became an industry standard microphone" Produce Like A Pro, "History of the Shure SM57" Encyclopedia.com, "Shure Inc." (International Directory of Company Histories) #SM57 #Shure #Microphone