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Here’s how it happened…
My wife (Jennifer) told me about a homemade reading tool she had seen in our son’s (Austin) first grade classroom. She said that by using plumbing pipe, the teacher had constructed what looked like a small, hand-held “phone”.

When we met with his teacher for conferences, she told us how her students use their “phone” during their “read aloud” time, for taking spelling tests, and checking math facts aloud. Our son said, “I like the phone, but the books are really big and, when I want to turn the page or raise my hand to ask a question, I have to put my phone down.”

As any good parent would do, we jumped in to address our son’s complaint. So, after tearing apart an old headset, I took the headband to Home Depot and worked with someone there to build the plumbing-pipe version of this “phone”. Then we added the headband by binding the “phone” and headband together with a hose clamp and….the hands-free WhisperPhone concept was born!

Jeff Waffensmith led the design team for WhisperPhone…way to go Jeff! Among many large companies, Jeff had recently worked with Plantronics, a leading headphone manufacturer. As such, we had a “head” start on the design and engineering of WhisperPhone. After several months of meetings, test fittings, and laughs with teachers and kids, we launched WhisperPhone!

We recently created a larger WhisperPhone to also help older students and adults with learning to read, spell, learning a new language, finding their singing voice, and more…we hope you enjoy our site and the WhisperPhone as much as we enjoyed making it a reality!

  - Steve Swain & Jeff Waffensmith