The name “Dralowid” is an abbreviation of DRAhtLOse WIDerstand — literally “wireless resistor.”
This curious phrase has nothing to do with wireless radio transmission. In the 1920s, it referred to resistive components that were not made from wound wire, but from carbon mixtures or ceramic composites.
The company Steatit‑Magnesia AG (later Dralowid) originally produced technical ceramics, insulators, and resistors. Their specialty was precisely these non‑wound carbon resistors — the “drahtlos” type.
When they eventually began manufacturing microphones, they simply kept the name.
And so a microphone was born that is named after… a resistor.
Which is wonderfully absurd in its own way.
Dralowid often marketed its microphones with the slogan:
“Für jedermann – für jeden Zweck.”
“For everyone – for every purpose.”
And it wasn’t an exaggeration. The DR1 was used in homes, schools, sports events, factories, amateur concerts, and even in small regional radio studios.
It was truly a people’s microphone — something like a “Volksmikrofon.”
And thanks to that, it became one of the most widespread microphones of the 1930s in Germany and beyond.