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Part 24. How A Business Machine And A Child’s Toy met In The Middle.
The History of the Phonograph. Chapter 2
In the last episode we found out about the invention of the first ever, audio recording device, and Thomas Edison’s creation the Phonograph, that started an r-evolution that would change the world.
Today we continue our story looking at an invention that became the humble record player we know and love today.
In 1886, Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester Bell invented a device that used wax coated cylinders that were engraved using a vertical method that became known as hill and dale. Their device was named the Graphophone.
Emile's wife was going to kill him when she realized he chopped up the garden hose..
In 1887, Emile Berliner, a German born American came up with a method of using a lateral stylus movement that imprinted it’s vibrations as it moved in a spiral along a zinc disc.
He named this invention the Gramophone. (any one watch the Grammy’s??)
Looking at early patents from Edison, it’s clear that he also considered the idea of recording sound as a spiral on disc, but as the velocity and pressure of the stylus is greater the closer to the middle the disc, he opted to go for the more “scientifically correct” cylinder where the velocity and pressure remain constant.
It’s interesting to note, that Edison didn’t see the phonograph’s primary use as a music player, and initially wasn’t marketed in this way at all.
In a suggested list of it’s 10 most useful applications, Edison listed 8 of them based around the voice for educational, business and archival purposes, only 2 refer to music reproduction including music-boxes and toys. (and none of them refer to using them as placemats in cafes??!)
Despite Edison’s intentions for the Phonograph to become a business machine, by 1889, something of a commercial recording industry had started up. The first phonographic parlor was opened in San Francisco, here customers would select which songs to listen to on their hired phonograph salon.
Initially musicians would have to record into several phonographs at once and keep repeating the performance until enough copies were created to satisfy the demand.The recordings were all made acoustically, the music was recorded through a horn that led to the recording diaphragm.
Both the frequency range and the sensitivity was of low quality, and wax was a poor medium for capturing music.
Singer’s would almost have to put their face into the recording horn, apparently standard violins were barely usable, but Cello’s and double bases were completely un-recordable.
But despite all this, the novelty value of hearing music jump off a cylinder or disc was immense. The start of the century saw the industry start to pick up speed.
Canned music!
Phonograph cylinders were sold in cardboard tubes, with cardboard lids at each end. These tubes were used to protect the recordings. These containers and the shape of the cylinders (together with the “tinny” sound of early records compared to live music) prompted bandleader John Phillip Sousa to famously make fun of the records as canned music. But he did still record on them.
Click here to hear 1 of Sousa’s recordings.
Berliner’s invention of the gramophone gave the industry a much-needed boost, he also invented a method of creating a matrix (or master disc) that could be used to duplicate almost unlimited copies.
Despite that fact that his first commercial applications were for toys, he quickly realized the gramophones’ musical potential and hired famous musicians to be recorded to promote his discs.
The maximum available duration had a big impact on music of the time.
By the beginning of the 20th century both cylinder s and the early discs played for 2 minutes.
In 1903 Victor released a 12 inch disc that could record a whopping 3 minutes 30 seconds! This had a massive influence on the duration of commercial music, and to a very large degree is where we get the short radio friendly edits of pop songs today.
Here’s a clip of Jene Bailey’s Orchestra playing “All Aboard For Heaven” c. April 1925 it’s played from a restored 1901 Zon- O-
Phone “Home” disc phonograph or Gramophone.
That’s not to say that longer tracks were not recorded. One of the workarounds to this problem was to release sets of records. The first multi-record release happened in 1903. HMV England released the very first complete recording of an Opera, Verdi’s ‘Erani’ and it came in a tidy little package of 40 single sided discs!
The Famous His Masters Voice Dog, He'd be 23,000 years old now in dog years.
In America at the start of 1900, there were 2 leading flat disc manufactures that were far bigger than the rest, Columbia whose discs were played at 80 rpm and Victor whose discs played at a speed of 76rpm. The fact that both companies’ discs could be played on each others respective players meant that eventually the speeds met in the middle and 78rpm became the standard for the fist few decades.
So the phonograph and the gramophone had grown up a little, starting as a business machine and a children’s toy respectively, people were starting to enjoy them both as a way of connecting to music. And remember this is all before electricity was used in households!
The next 30 years saw many changes as the industry matured into something the world had never seen before.
Find out what in part 25 CLICK HERE.
CLICK HERE for the previous chapter
CLICK HERE for the INDEX of History Of Electronic Music
Posted by Angelika in THE HISTORY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC No Comments
Part 23. In The Beginning there was soot…
The History of the Phonograph. Chapter 1.
In 2008 something incredible happened in the history of sound.
It was rewritten.
Up until 2 years ago, it was common belief that Thomas Edison was the first person to record sound that was capable of play back.
That was until modern technology “caught up” to the world’s first sound recorder.
The Phonoautograph, you speak in that thingy there and turn that whatsit over there, and then call for help because you ruined it. -image courtesy of firstsounds.org-
In 1855 Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville ,a French printer and bookseller from Paris created the device he called the Phonoautograph. It Consisted of a mouthpiece horn and membrane that was attached to a stylus which recorded the fluctuations of sound on a rotating cylinder that was wrapped in smoke blackened paper. (phew that sentence was almost as long as Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s name!)
Unfortunately he wasn’t able to devise a way to play back the sound recorded, (which to my way of thinking is the equivalent of eating some funny mushrooms and then writing down the secret to the universe then afterward not being able to read what what you wrote.)
As a result the phonoautograph was manufactured and sold as a laboratory instrument for analyzing sound. (and the secret to the universe will stay in my 2nd drawer neatly folded until the chosen one with magical reading skills come along).
Just over 150 years later Scientists at Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California analyzed a cylinder that Martinville recorded back in 1860. Incredibly, they managing to playback a ten second recording of the French folksong Au Clair de la Lune.
To hear the earliest known recorded sound that was trapped in charcoal for 148 years watch the above youtube clip, or click here. This is will take you to the home site of the firstsounds.org project.
NOTE: for those wondering. It categorically does not say “Help me! The evil Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville has trapped me in soot for nearly 150 years!”
Because that would just be silly.
Another Frenchman, scientist Charles Cros, conceptualised the phonograph, but was unable to create a working model.
By the time Cros’ theory was made public, Thomas Edison had created a working phonograph.
Thus both Edison and Charles Cross are recognized with independent discoveries of the phonograph. ( A good fact to remember for the pub trivia).
This phonograph was made a long time ago but photographed recently, we know this because it's in c-o-l-o-u-r!
In 1877 Thomas Edison was working on 2 other inventions, the telephone and the telegraph.
While trying to create a machine that would write telegraphic messages, a “telegraph repeater,” which would “record Morse code signals by indenting dots and dashes on a paper tape,” , he noticed that the tape of the machine gave off a noise similar to words. Speculating on this, Edison designed a device with the intention to be able to record a telephone message.
At first he used a stretched taught diaphragm attached to an embossing needle that was passed rapidly against paraffin paper, later he refined his design by swapping the paper for a tinfoil wrapped cylinder. It had 2 needles, 1 for writing on to the cylinder and 1 for playing it back, which was achieved by swapping the mouthpiece for a “reproducer” which had a more sensitive diaphragm.
Edison gave this design to his head lab mechanic, John Kreusi, legend has it that Kreusi built it in 30 hours!
On getting his hands on the machine, Edison tested it out immediately by reciting the nursery rhyme “mary had a little lamb”.
Despite expecting some success, he was amazed when the machine spoke his words back to him in a small tinny voice.
.
.
Edison organized a presentation with his good friend, the editor of the Scientific America
“Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night.”Need less to say the folks witnessing were impressed, the following quote is from the same article as quoted above found in the Scientific American Nov.17, 1877.
“It has been said that Science is never sensational; that it is intellectual, not emotional; but certainly nothing that can be conceived would be more likely to create the profoundest of sensations, to arouse the liveliest of human emotions, than once more to hear the familiar voices of the dead. Yet Science now announces that this is possible, and can be done…. Speech has become, as it were, immortal.”My favorite of all the recordings can be found in the creative commons it’s of an after dinner Speech at the “Little Menlo” in London.
George Gouraud had come to London to demonstrate Edison’s “Perfected” Phonograph. Gouraud demonstrated the phonograph to various celebrities in a series of Phonograph Parties in the autumn of 1888 and made recordings of their reactions as messages for delivery to Thomas Edison. Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was one of these guests, and it is his speech to Edison that appears here.
Transcription:
| “ | George Gouraud:
Arthur Sullivan:
-Arthur Sullivan
|
I just love the line that Edmund Yates has his lucid intervals..
You can listen for yourself by clicking on this link Arthur_Sullivan_-_wax_cylinder_recording
Edison may have been the bad boy of the inventer gang, but his 3 legged chair sucked.
Even though interest was great, it would be another 20 years before the world would really take to this world changing invention.
And it truly was, Edison had discovered the fundamental nature of sound.
Sound at it’s simplest description are fluctuations in air pressure.
The effect of vibration (waves) as they are reflected and captured by the minute diaphragm that vibrates in our ear in response.
This means that every sound has it’s own vibrational signature, by speaking into Edison’s Phonograph, the diaphragm vibrates in response to the vibrations of your voice, which is then embossed on the tin foil, playback was basically achieved by reversing the process.
This remains the fundamental method of all analog recording and playback we use today.
(which to me is the equivalant of eating normal mushrooms and writing down the secret to the universe and then everyone being able to read and understand it!)
What happens next? Does Edison’s Phonograph fall into the wrong hands? Does Edouard-of-the-long-french-name succeed in capturing anyone else using just tinfoil and a rubber band?
CLICK HERE FOR PART 24 THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT INTO THE HISTORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH.
CLICK HERE for the INDEX of History Of Electronic Music