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Plantronics
Plantronics is one of Santa Cruz, California's oldest and largest continuous employers. The company specializes in telecommunications hardware, particularly lightweight headsets. The company has actually capitalized on that niche since its founding in 1962. The company was founded by Courtney Graham and Keith Larkin in response to United Airline's open call for new designs in headsets for pilots. United Airlines, like many airlines of the time, was plagued with the heavy and clunky headset used in that era. The impracticality of the old headsets led to a trend of many pilots reverting back to the use of handheld microphones. Larkin and Graham's design won the United Airlines contract, and thus Pacific Plantronics (now Plantronics) was created.
In the mid-1960s, the Federal Aviation Agency made Plantronics the sole supplier of air traffic controller headsets. The company was chosen to supply the headsets for Bell Telephone's operators shortly thereafter. Plantronics' reputation in the field led to contracts with NASA and a host of other agencies and businesses. In fact, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and said, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, he said it through a Plantronics headset. The company's current range of Bluetooth products for mobile handsets are all named after NASA spacecrafts – Discovery, Voyager, and Explorer. On the consumer end, Plantronics offers wireless office headsets, Bluetooth mobile headsets, and computer and gaming headsets.