The company was founded in Vienna, Austria in 1947 by two Viennese scientists: physicist Rudolf Görike and engineer Ernst Pless.

[3] Originally, its main business was to provide technical equipment for cinemas: loudspeakers, film projectors and light meters.

[4] The business slowly expanded and AKG started selling car horns, door intercoms, carbon microphone capsules for telephones, headsets and cushion speakers.

About this time, the company developed its first patents, the moving coil technology and the principle of mass load membranes, allowing its products to have extended frequency ranges.

AKG Acoustics USA, still headquartered in the San Fernando Valley, also houses regional offices for Crown Audio, another Harman Industries subsidiary.

[12] Among its professional products especially noteworthy is the first C 12 (introduced in 1953) and its successors and alternate versions, which include the Telefunken Ela M 250 and M 251 (1960), the C 24 stereo microphone, the C 412, and over a dozen different models which have carried the designation "C 414" in various forms.

AKG microphones have been used for shooting Hans Hass's film Adventures in the Red Sea and were installed on the MIR space station.

[28] They received particular notoriety from their prominent display in Eddie Murphy's 1985 music video for "Party All the Time" (which features the K240 Monitor).