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Many pioneering attempts to record and reproduce sound were made during the latter half of the 19th century – notably Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph of 1857 – and these efforts culminated in the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. Digital recording emerged in the late 20th century and has since flourished with the popularity of digital music and ...
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording. Acoustic analog recording is achieved by a ...
Jul 18, 2023 · The phonograph is a mechanical device that captures and plays back sound using several key components, including a rotating cylindrical or disc-shaped platform, a stylus and a diaphragm. The phonograph converts acoustic energy into mechanical energy to record sound. Sound waves enter a microphone or other input device, causing the diaphragm to ...
- Desiree Bowie
- Overview
- The early years
In 1877 the U.S. inventor Thomas Edison heard “Mary had a little lamb” emanate from a machine into which he had just spoken the ditty. It was the first time a recording of the human voice had been reproduced, and the event signaled the birth of the phonograph.
Edison sent representatives, machines, and cylinders to Europe almost as soon as he had invented the phonograph, and between 1888 and 1894 recordings were made by such notables as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and even Johannes Brahms, who played a Hungarian rhapsody. The first “celebrity” recording, however, was made in Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey, laboratories when the pianist Josef Hofmann, then a 12-year-old prodigy, paid a visit to Edison’s studio in 1888. Hans von Bülow followed shortly after with a recording of a Frédéric Chopin mazurka on the piano.
In 1894 Charles and Émile Pathé built a small phonograph factory in a suburb of Paris and began to record singers as eminent as Mary Garden. Within a decade their catalog boasted some 12,000 items, and their name became almost synonymous with the cylinder phonograph in Europe. Meanwhile, Emile Berliner, a German immigrant living in Washington, D.C., had filed a patent in 1887 for a “Gramophone,” using a disc rather than a cylinder, and he began manufacturing Gramophones and discs in 1894. The discs had the commercial advantage of being more easily manufactured than the cylinders. One of his representatives established a branch in London, the Gramophone Company (in 1898); a branch in Berlin, Deutsche Grammophon AG; and one in France, the Compagnie Français du Gramophone, while Berliner’s brother set up a disc-pressing facility in Hannover, Germany. Most of Europe’s recording industry thus was started by Berliner’s representatives, and in the United States the small Berliner organization was to turn into the giant Victor company.
By the beginning of the 20th century, recording industries had been established in Germany, Austria, Russia, and Spain. Much of the managerial and technical talent, not to mention equipment, had been imported from America. (By 1970, the positions had been reversed: Europe had gained command of most of the American market.)
During the 1890s, recordings had become popular primarily through coin-in-the-slot phonographs in public places. Talent was incidental to the novelty of the apparatus; most of the recordings were of whistlers, bands, comic numbers, ditties, and the like. In the first years of the 20th century, Victor and its affiliates raised cultural expectations with its Red Seal series (Red Label in Europe), particularly with discs made, beginning in 1902, by Enrico Caruso. By 1910 the vast majority of record sales—some estimates are as high as 85 percent—were classical.
The Red Label had been initiated in 1901 in Russia with some of the first 10-inch disc recordings made, and the basso Fyodor Chaliapin was among the first artists to record on the new Russian Red Label.
In 1877 the U.S. inventor Thomas Edison heard “Mary had a little lamb” emanate from a machine into which he had just spoken the ditty. It was the first time a recording of the human voice had been reproduced, and the event signaled the birth of the phonograph.
Edison sent representatives, machines, and cylinders to Europe almost as soon as he had invented the phonograph, and between 1888 and 1894 recordings were made by such notables as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and even Johannes Brahms, who played a Hungarian rhapsody. The first “celebrity” recording, however, was made in Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey, laboratories when the pianist Josef Hofmann, then a 12-year-old prodigy, paid a visit to Edison’s studio in 1888. Hans von Bülow followed shortly after with a recording of a Frédéric Chopin mazurka on the piano.
In 1894 Charles and Émile Pathé built a small phonograph factory in a suburb of Paris and began to record singers as eminent as Mary Garden. Within a decade their catalog boasted some 12,000 items, and their name became almost synonymous with the cylinder phonograph in Europe. Meanwhile, Emile Berliner, a German immigrant living in Washington, D.C., had filed a patent in 1887 for a “Gramophone,” using a disc rather than a cylinder, and he began manufacturing Gramophones and discs in 1894. The discs had the commercial advantage of being more easily manufactured than the cylinders. One of his representatives established a branch in London, the Gramophone Company (in 1898); a branch in Berlin, Deutsche Grammophon AG; and one in France, the Compagnie Français du Gramophone, while Berliner’s brother set up a disc-pressing facility in Hannover, Germany. Most of Europe’s recording industry thus was started by Berliner’s representatives, and in the United States the small Berliner organization was to turn into the giant Victor company.
By the beginning of the 20th century, recording industries had been established in Germany, Austria, Russia, and Spain. Much of the managerial and technical talent, not to mention equipment, had been imported from America. (By 1970, the positions had been reversed: Europe had gained command of most of the American market.)
During the 1890s, recordings had become popular primarily through coin-in-the-slot phonographs in public places. Talent was incidental to the novelty of the apparatus; most of the recordings were of whistlers, bands, comic numbers, ditties, and the like. In the first years of the 20th century, Victor and its affiliates raised cultural expectations with its Red Seal series (Red Label in Europe), particularly with discs made, beginning in 1902, by Enrico Caruso. By 1910 the vast majority of record sales—some estimates are as high as 85 percent—were classical.
The Red Label had been initiated in 1901 in Russia with some of the first 10-inch disc recordings made, and the basso Fyodor Chaliapin was among the first artists to record on the new Russian Red Label.
At the Paris World Fair, Poulsen's wire-tone recorders, "Telegraphones," were a sensation. All of today's magnetic recording methods, including hard drives and the magnetic strips on credit cards, are only possible thanks to Poulsen's invention. The American Telegraphone Company was founded in the US. It made millions of dollars through stock ...
music recording, physical record of a musical performance that can then be played back, or reproduced. Because music evaporates as soon as it is produced, humans, seeking permanence in life’s ephemera, have long sought ways to record and reproduce it. The efforts to capture the fleeting sounds of music have followed two basic methods: that of ...
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Jun 16, 2023 · This story is part of The Butterfly Effect, a special Spark series about small inventions that have gone on to change the world. (CBC) While the beginning of recorded sound is often linked to ...
