Plantronics, Inc. is an American electronics company — branded Poly to reflect its dual Plantronics and Polycom heritage — producing audio communications equipment for business and consumers. Its products support unified communications, mobile use, gaming and music. Plantronics is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California, and most of its products are produced in China and Mexico. On March 18, 2019, Plantronics announced that it would change its name to Poly following its acquisition of Polycom, although it continues to trade on the New York Stock Exchange as Plantronics, Inc. (POLY; listed as PLT until May 24, 2021). On March 28, 2022, HP Inc. announced its intent to acquire Poly for $1.7 billion in cash as it looks to bolster its hybrid work offerings, such as headsets and videoconferencing hardware. Including debt, the deal valued at $3.3 billion and closed in August 2022. History In the early 1960s, airline headsets were so large and cumbersome that many pilots had switched back to the use of handheld microphones for communications. The speed and complexity of jet airliners caused a need for the introduction of small, lightweight headsets into the cockpit. In 1961, United Airlines solicited new designs from anyone who was interested. Courtney Graham, a United Airlines pilot, was one of the many who thought the heavy headsets should be replaced by something lighter. He collaborated with his pilot friend Keith Larkin to create a small, functional design which was robust enough to pass airlines standards. (Larkin had been working for a small company called Plane-Aids, a Japanese import company which offered spectacles and sunglasses that contained transistor radios in their temple pieces.) The final design, incorporating two small hearing aid-style transducers attached to a headband was submitted to United Airline approval. UAL's approval of the innovative design caused Graham and Larkin to incorporate as Pacific Plantronics (now called Plantronics, Inc.) on May 18, 1961. They introduced the first lightweight communications headset, the MS-50, to the commercial marketplace in 1962. In the mid-1960s, the Federal Aviation Agency selected Plantronics as the sole supplier of headsets for air traffic controllers, and thereafter was selected to supply headsets to the operators of the Bell Telephone company. SPENCOMM and NASA In 1961, NASA astronaut Wally Schirra contacted Courtney Graham, a fellow pilot, to discuss creating a design for a small, lightweight headset to be used in the Mercury spacecraft. Pacific Plantronics assembled its Space Environmental Communications