Phonograph
A phonograph, later called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910), and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable,
The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison.[1][2][3][4] Phonograph use would grow the following year. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, which is predominantly used in many languages. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the stylus or needle, pickup system, and the sound and equalization systems.
The disc
Terminology
The terminology used to describe record-playing devices is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In modern contexts, the playback device is often referred to as a "turntable", "record player", or "
The term "phonograph", meaning "sound writing", originates from the Greek words φωνή (phonē, meaning 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, meaning 'writing'). Similarly, the terms "gramophone" and "graphophone" have roots in the Greek words γράμμα (gramma, meaning 'letter') and φωνή (phōnē, meaning 'voice').
In
United States
In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to Emile Berliner's Gramophone, a very different machine which played nonrecordable discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs.[9])
Australia
In Australian English, "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in British English. The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June 1878 to a meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria by the Society's Honorary Secretary, Alex Sutherland who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year.[10] On 8 August 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione, along with a range of other new inventions, including the microphone.[11]
Early history
Phonautograph
The phonautograph was invented on March 25, 1857, by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville,[12] an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris.[13] One day while editing Professor Longet's Traité de Physiologie, he happened upon that customer's engraved illustration of the anatomy of the human ear, and conceived of "the imprudent idea of photographing the word." In 1853 or 1854 (Scott cited both years) he began working on "le problème de la parole s'écrivant elle-même" ("the problem of speech writing itself"), aiming to build a device that could replicate the function of the human ear.[13][14]
Scott coated a plate of glass with a thin layer of
The device's true significance in the history of recorded sound was not fully realized prior to March 2008, when it was discovered and resurrected in a Paris patent office by First Sounds, an informal collaborative of American audio historians, recording engineers, and sound archivists founded to make the earliest sound recordings available to the public. The phonautograms were then digitally converted by scientists at the
Paleophone
Charles Cros, a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising a definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the French Academy of Sciences, a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish priority of conception of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute.[24]
An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised a more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure.[25] The author of this article called the device a phonographe, but Cros himself favored the word paleophone, sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of the past').[citation needed]
Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the public domain free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception.[26]
Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at the age of 45.[27]
The early phonographs
The music critic Herman Klein attended an early demonstration (1881–2) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he writes "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."[32]
The Argus newspaper from Melbourne, Australia, reported on an 1878 demonstration at the Royal Society of Victoria, writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. "Rule Britannia" was distinctly repeated, but great laughter was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of "He's a jolly good fellow," which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a very cracked voice."[33]
Early machines
Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally
Introduction of the disc record
By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced
Oldest surviving recordings
Lambert's lead cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording,[36] although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial.[37] Wax
The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact.[40]
A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri, has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including a slightly earlier one which is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned.[clarification needed] These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb, not preserved, has been called the first instance of recorded verse.[41]
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early sound-on-film newsreel camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording.[42] Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th-century media legends such as P. T. Barnum and Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth are amongst the earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present.[43][44]
Improvements at the Volta Laboratory
Although Edison had
Volta's early challenge
Meanwhile, Bell, a
Volta Graphophone
The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph."[46] Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables.[45]
One interesting exception was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by Chichester Bell. Tainter was granted U.S. patent 385,886 on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch.[45]
The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus.[45]
Graphophone commercialization
In 1885, when the Volta Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed
After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in the City of Washington, businessmen from Philadelphia created the American Graphophone Company on March 28, 1887, in order to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace.[47] The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone,[47] which itself later evolved into Columbia Records.[48][49]
A coin-operated version of the Graphophone, U.S. patent 506,348, was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph U.S. patent 428,750 demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company.[50]
The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of
Disc vs. cylinder as a recording medium
Discs (that aren't re-recordable) are not inherently better than cylinders at providing audio fidelity. Rather, the advantages of the format are seen in the manufacturing process: discs can be stamped, and the matrixes to stamp disc can be shipped to other printing plants for a global distribution of recordings; cylinders could not be stamped until 1901–1902, when the gold moulding process was introduced by Edison.[51]
Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records and "gramophones". His "
Dominance of the disc record
In the 1930s,
First all-transistor phonograph
In 1955, Philco developed and produced the world's first all-transistor phonograph models TPA-1 and TPA-2, which were announced in the June 28, 1955 edition of The Wall Street Journal.[55] Philco started to sell these all-transistor phonographs in the fall of 1955, for the price of $59.95. The October 1955 issue of Radio & Television News magazine (page 41), had a full page detailed article on Philco's new consumer product. The all-transistor portable phonograph TPA-1 and TPA-2 models played only 45rpm records and used four 1.5 volt "D" batteries for their power supply. The "TPA" stands for "Transistor Phonograph Amplifier". Their circuitry used three Philco germanium PNP alloy-fused junction audio frequency transistors. After the 1956 season had ended, Philco decided to discontinue both models, for transistors were too expensive compared to vacuum tubes,[56][57] but by 1961 a $49.95 ($509.29 in 2023) portable, battery-powered radio-phonograph with seven transistors was available.[58]
First direct-drive turntable
The direct-drive turntable was invented by Shuichi Obata, an engineer at Matsushita (now Panasonic).[59] In 1969, Matsushita released it as the Technics SP-10,[60] the first direct-drive turntable on the market.[61]
The most influential direct-drive turntable was the
Cue lever
More sophisticated turntables were (and still are) frequently manufactured so as to incorporate a "cue lever", a device which mechanically lowers the tonearm on to the record. It enables the user to locate an individual track more easily, to pause a record, and to avoid the risk of scratching the record which it may take practice to avoid when lowering the tonearm manually.[63]
Arm systems
In some high quality equipment the arm carrying the pickup, known as a tonearm, is manufactured separately from the motor and turntable unit. Companies specialising in the manufacture of tonearms include the English company SME.
Linear tracking
Early developments in linear turntables were from Rek-O-Kut (portable lathe/phonograph) and Ortho-Sonic in the 1950s, and Acoustical in the early 1960s. These were eclipsed by more successful implementations of the concept from the late 1960s through the early 1980s.[64]
Pickup systems
The pickup or cartridge is a
The pickup includes a stylus with a small diamond or sapphire tip which runs in the record groove. The stylus eventually becomes worn by contact with the groove, and it is usually replaceable.
Styli are classified as spherical or elliptical, although the tip is actually shaped as a half-sphere or a half-ellipsoid. Spherical styli are generally more robust than other types, but do not follow the groove as accurately, giving diminished high frequency response. Elliptical styli usually track the groove more accurately, with increased high frequency response and less distortion. For DJ use, the relative robustness of spherical styli make them generally preferred for back-cuing and scratching. There are a number of derivations of the basic elliptical type, including the shibata or fine line stylus, which can more accurately reproduce high frequency information contained in the record groove. This is especially important for playback of quadraphonic recordings.[65]
Optical readout
A few specialist laser turntables read the groove optically using a laser pickup. Since there is no physical contact with the record, no wear is incurred. However, this "no wear" advantage is debatable, since vinyl records have been tested to withstand even 1200 plays with no significant audio degradation, provided that it is played with a high quality cartridge and that the surfaces are clean.[66]
An alternative approach is to take a high-resolution photograph or scan of each side of the record and interpret the image of the grooves using
Stylus
A development in stylus form came about by the attention to the
The Shibata-designed stylus offers a greater contact surface with the groove, which in turn means less pressure over the vinyl surface and thus less wear. A positive side effect is that the greater contact surface also means the stylus will read sections of the vinyl that were not touched (or "worn") by the common spherical stylus. In a demonstration by JVC[70] records "worn" after 500 plays at a relatively very high 4.5 gf tracking force with a spherical stylus, played "as new" with the Shibata profile.[citation needed]
Other advanced stylus shapes appeared following the same goal of increasing contact surface, improving on the Shibata. Chronologically: "Hughes" Shibata variant (1975),[71] "Ogura" (1978),[72] Van den Hul (1982).[73] Such a stylus may be marketed as "Hyperelliptical" (Shure), "Alliptic", "Fine Line" (Ortofon), "Line contact" (Audio Technica), "Polyhedron", "LAC", or "Stereohedron" (Stanton).[74]
A keel-shaped diamond stylus appeared as a byproduct of the invention of the CED Videodisc. This, together with laser-diamond-cutting technologies, made possible the "ridge" shaped stylus, such as the Namiki (1985)[75] design, and Fritz Gyger (1989)[76] design. This type of stylus is marketed as "MicroLine" (Audio technica), "Micro-Ridge" (Shure), or "Replicant" (Ortofon).[74]
Record materials
To address the problem of steel needle wear upon records, which resulted in the cracking of the latter, RCA Victor devised unbreakable records in 1930, by mixing polyvinyl chloride with plasticisers, in a proprietary formula they called Victrolac, which was first used in 1931, in motion picture discs.[77]
Equalization
Since the late 1950s, almost all phono input stages have used the RIAA equalization standard. Before settling on that standard, there were many different equalizations in use, including EMI, HMV, Columbia, Decca FFRR, NAB, Ortho, BBC transcription, etc. Recordings made using these other equalization schemes will typically sound odd if they are played through a RIAA-equalized preamplifier. High-performance (so-called "multicurve disc") preamplifiers, which include multiple, selectable equalizations, are no longer commonly available. However, some vintage preamplifiers, such as the LEAK varislope series, are still obtainable and can be refurbished. Newer preamplifiers like the Esoteric Sound Re-Equalizer or the K-A-B MK2 Vintage Signal Processor are also available.[78]
In the 21st century
Although largely replaced since the introduction of the compact disc in 1982, record albums still sold in small numbers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Starting in the late 2000s, record sales began to grow: in 2008, LP sales grew by 90% over 2007, with 1.9 million records sold.[79]
Turntables continued to be manufactured and sold in the 2010s, although in small numbers. While some people still like the sound of vinyl records over that of digital music sources (mainly compact discs), they represent a minority of listeners. As of 2015, the sale of vinyl LPs has increased 49–50% percent from the previous year, although small in comparison to the sale of other formats which although more units were sold (Digital Sales, CDs) the more modern formats experienced a decline in sales.[80] In 2017, vinyl LP sales were slightly decreased, at a rate of 5%, in comparison to previous years' numbers, regardless of the noticeable rise of vinyl records sales worldwide.[81] In 2022, vinyl sales surpassed CD sales for the first time since 1987: 41 million vinyl records were sold, grossing $1.2 billion in revenue, compared to only 33 million CDs sold, amounting to $483 million.[82]
USB turntables have a built-in audio interface, which transfers the sound directly to the connected computer.[83] Some USB turntables transfer the audio without equalization, but are sold with software that allows the EQ of the transferred audio file to be adjusted. There are also many turntables on the market designed to be plugged into a computer via a USB port for needle dropping purposes.[84]
See also
- Archéophone, used to convert diverse types of cylinder recordings to modern CD media
- Audio signal processing
- Compressed air gramophone
- List of phonograph manufacturers
- Talking Machine World
- Vinyl killer
Notes
- ^ The names record player and turntable have gradually become synonymous, however the second one is more associated with devices requiring separate amplifiers and loudspeakers. Originally, the term turntable referred to the part of phonograph's mechanism providing rotation of the record.[citation needed]
- ^ Historical phonographs could record sound.
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Further reading
- Bruil, Rudolf A. (January 8, 2004). "Linear Tonearms." Retrieved on July 25, 2011.
- Gelatt, Roland. The Fabulous Phonograph, 1877–1977. Second rev. ed., [being also the] First Collier Books ed., in series, Sounds of the Century. New York: Collier, 1977. 349 p., ill. ISBN 0-02-032680-7
- Heumann, Michael. "Metal Machine Music: The Phonograph's Voice and the Transformation of Writing." eContact! 14.3 — Turntablism (January 2013). Montréal: CEC.
- Koenigsberg, Allen. The Patent History of the Phonograph, 1877–1912. APM Press, 1991.
- Reddie, Lovell N. (1908). "The Gramophone And The Mechanical Recording And Reproduction Of Musical Sounds". Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution: 209–231. Retrieved 2009-08-07.
- Various. "Turntable [wiki]: Bibliography." eContact! 14.3 — Turntablism (January 2013). Montréal: CEC.
- Weissenbrunner, Karin. "Experimental Turntablism: Historical overview of experiments with record players / records — or Scratches from Second-Hand Technology." eContact! 14.3 — Turntablism (January 2013). Montréal: CEC.
- Carson, B. H.; Burt, A. D.; Reiskind, and H. I., "A Record Changer And Record Of Complementary Design", RCA Review, June 1949
External links
- c.1915 Swiss hot-air engined gramophone at Museum of Retro Technology
- Interactive sculpture delivers tactile soundwave experience Archived 2021-03-08 at the Wayback Machine
- Very early recordings from around the world
- The Birth of the Recording Industry
- The Cylinder Archive
- The Berliner Sound and Image Archive
- Cylinder Preservation & Digitization Project – Over 6,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections, University of California, Santa Barbara, free for download or streamed online.
- Cylinder players held at the British Library Archived 2012-02-06 at the Wayback Machine – information and high-quality images.
- History of Recorded Sound: Phonographs and Records
- EnjoytheMusic.com – Excerpts from the book Hi-Fi All-New 1958 Edition
- Listen to early recordings on the Edison Phonograph
- Mario Frazzetto's Phonograph and Gramophone Gallery.
- Say What? – Essay on phonograph technology and intellectual property law
- Vinyl Engine – Information, images, articles and reviews from around the world
- The Analogue Dept – Information, images and tutorials; strongly focused on Thorens brand
- 45 rpm player and changer at work on YouTube
- Historic video footage of Edison operating his original tinfoil phonograph
- Turntable History on Enjoy the Music.com
- 2-point and Arc Protractor generators on AlignmentProtractor.com