Part 25.  The Power of Electricity.

The History of the Phonograph. Chapter 3

Because the sounding horns were so big, people started to see just how big they could make their hats..

... and he won!

Welcome back! In Chapter 2, we discovered how the phonograph and the gramophone became linked to the music industry. Starting out as a novelty, people began to use it to treasure their favorite music. Unfortunately both the recording methods and the playback left a lot to be desired.

Which is a good segue to kick off our next chapter..

Thanks to the invention of the vacuum tube in 1915, the 20’s saw the record player enjoy 2 big jumps in it’s evolution.
Fittingly the first was in the recording of music and the second was in the playback.

As often happens in highly competitive technological industries, the development of alternatives to the carbon microphone (the transducer used in telephones), happened at relatively the same time from multiple places.

Please note: we will cover the evolution of the microphone in much greater depth in another thread.

The Carbon microphone (or button mike) was invented in 1876 by Emile Berliner a week before Edison, but unfortunately is next to useless to record music with, as it has a terrible signal to noise ratio and woeful frequency range. So as mentioned in part 24, bands would have to crowd together to play before a large recording horn, the loudest instruments were put at the back and the quietest in front.

I always though microphone was a silly name, look they don't resemble small telephones at all!

Although the idea of a condenser mike had been around since the early days of the telephone, it’s very low output made it also next to useless, but thanks to the invention of the vacuum tube amplifier, the problems of output and high impedance were no longer a problem as the sound could be amplified and then sent to drive an electromagnetic recording head.  Suddenly the frequency range that could be recorded grew substantially as did the level of volume that could be played back.

Bands and Orchestras could sit and play in the normal positions, and the change in quality of the recording was magnitudes better.

In 1917, E.C.Wente of Bell Labs developed the first modern condenser microphone, but the early ones were problematic, it was not until the mid 20’s did these

microphones really start to shine. (or was that the the battery powered torch?)

Many competitors such as Western Electric, RCA and Neuman, also started to release condenser mikes and the refinement and evolution of these transducers continues today.

It would have pretty useless to improve the recording quality if you couldn’t hear the difference right?

The worlds 1st electronical record player.. and yes electronical IS a WORD!

Well in 1925 they did that too.
In 1925 Victor introduced it’s Victor Orthophonic Victrola, it was groundbreaking because it was specifically designed to play electrically recorded disks, without going too far into the details, it had a relatively flat frequency response equaling clearer, sharper more vibrant sounding music.

Thanks to wikipedia, here’s a quote from the front page of the New York Times after it’s first public performance.

“The audience broke into applause… John Philip Sousa [said]: ‘Gentleman [sic], that is a band. This is the first time I have ever heard music with any soul to it produced by a mechanical talking machine.’ … The new instrument is a feat of mathematics and physics. It is not the result of innumerable experiments, but was worked out on paper in advance of being built in the laboratory….”

Turntables at the time were operated by a spring driven motor, that the user would have to re-wind for each record played, but as electricity became more prevalent in the home, the clock work motor was replaced by an electric one, and the needle and diaphragm was replaced by a pick up, this was usually a stylus made from steel or sapphire that was attached to a transducer that would then convert the sound to an electric signal. The playing (exponential) horn, was replaced with an amplifier and loud speaker.

In 1927: The Automatic Music Instrument Co introduced a new nifty device – the jukebox .nuff said.

The Great Depression, was a time of much turbulence for most industry’s and the record industry was not spared, unlike music boxes and player pianos/piano players the record industry managed to survive, and return to thrive. Unfortunately not before their were plenty of casualties, with many phonographic and gramophone companies merging or going out of business.

The industry pretty much ground to halt in October of 1929, when Wall Street crashed.

People needed their money for far more important things than buying records, especially as those already with a radio were provided music and entertainment for free.

In fact due to losing massive market share against electronic recording, and elctronical playback gramophones, Edison discontinued the production of phonograph records and their players. Some versions of the story state that Edison who was 82 years old at the time did this the day before the Crash!

To give you an idea just how badly the industry was hit, in 1927, 987,000 machines were produced and 104,000,000  records were sold. In 1932 those numbers dropped to 40,000 and 6,000,000 respectively.

A much older, but much more comfortable looking Edison, By this time he had invented a chair with 4 legs.

In order to try and raise sales in the 30’s record companies started to market collections of music based on 1 genre or performer, these albums of records were specially designed and usually had artwork on the front and liner notes on the back and/or the inside. Most of these albums consisted of 3 or 4 records with each disk having a song on each side. In 1948, when12inch Long Players (LP) started to be released they normally had the same amount of tracks on the 1 disc as the 78rpm albums used to, this is why an LP has come to be known as an album.

The record industry may have survived the Depression, but it’s father Thomas Edison didn’t, he died at the age of 84 in 1931.

And on this rather final note we’ll end our current chapter on the phonograph.

The Phonograph was dead and so was it’s creator. But the gramophone was still alive and in place to become the dominant musical influence of the 20th century.

More will be revealed next in Chapter 4 of our series on the history of the record player. CLICK HERE.

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CLICK HERE for the INDEX of History Of Electronic Music