“Spark: Jim West’s Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone” with Ainissa Ramirez on January 29, 2026

This post was written by Colleen Gardina and Sean Bryant, engineering specialists in the Library’s Science Section.

Come join us on Thursday, January 29, 2026, at 2 p.m. (Eastern Time), for a virtual conversation with author, science communicator and past Kluge Chair in Science and Society, Ainissa Ramirez, about her new children’s picture book, “Spark: Jim West’s Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone” (Candlewick Press, 2025). We will hear about inventor and acoustician Jim West, and his development of a new and revolutionary kind of microphone and discuss how Ainissa used the Library of Congress’s science collections to conduct research for her book.

James Edward Maceo “Jim” West was born in 1931 in Farmville, VA and, as a child, he loved to take things apart to see how they worked. Later, Jim decided to pursue a degree in physics and went to Temple University. One summer, he got an internship at Bell Labs where he worked with scientists studying sound. The scientists needed special headphones to determine the shortest time between two beeps that a human ear could detect. Jim designed and built the headphones – and later discovered that they worked while not connected to an electrical source. The plastic he had used was an “electret.” It could hold an electrical charge long term.

Microphones work kind of like headphones in reverse and Jim used what he found to create a brand-new kind – the foil electret microphone. These microphones did not require power sources, so they could be made miniature. Today, they are made by the billions and are essential parts in all kinds of consumer electronics – from computers to cell phones.

Ainissa Ramirez is an award-winning author who holds a doctorate in materials science from Stanford University. She began her career at Bell Labs, where she met Jim West, before working for a time as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Yale. Today, she is a science communicator, explaining scientific topics for general audiences both nationally and internationally. Ainissa’s book, “Spark: Jim West’s Electrifying Adventures in Creating the Microphone,”  shares the story of how Jim West invented the foil electret microphone, a component commonly found in many of the devices we use today.

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