Carbon Microphone

The carbon microphone, also known as a carbon button microphone (or sometimes just a button microphone) or a carbon transmitter, is a sound-to-electrical signal transducer consisting of two metal plates separated by granules of carbon. One plate faces outward and acts as a diaphragm. When sound waves strike this plate, the pressure on the granules changes, which in turn changes the electrical resistance between the plates. (Higher pressure lowers the resistance as the granules are pushed closer together.) A direct current is passed from one plate to the other, and the changing resistance results in a changing current, which can be passed through a telephone system, or used in other ways in electronics systems to change the sound into an electrical signal.

Before the proliferation of vacuum tube amplifiers in the 1920s, carbon microphones were the only practical means of obtaining high-level audio signals, and were widely used in telephone systems. Their low cost, inherently high output and "peaked" frequency response characteristic were well suited for this application, and their use in new telephone installations continued up to the 1980s, long after they had been replaced by other types of microphones in other applications. (In most Western copper-wire telephone networks, old fashioned carbon-microphone based telephones can still be used without modification.) Carbon microphones were widely used in early AM radio broadcasting systems (usually modified telephone microphones), but their limited frequency response, as well as a fairly high noise level, led to their abandonment for that use by the late 1920s. They continued to be widely used for low-end public address, and military and amateur radio applications for some decades afterward.