Search results
The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves produced by the human voice or musical instruments.
In the early 1950s, the tape recorder also conquered the domestic sphere. The devices were easy to use and delivered good music quality. Portable suitcase-sized devices corresponded with the economic prosperity of the time. But the devices were expensive: brand new, this device cost 398 DM—almost a full month's wages.
Feb 25, 2008 · Early recordings lacked the high and low extremes of sound, and despite refinements in record materials, the record of early 1925 essentially was identical to that of 1889. Performers would record into horns of varying sizes, and the sound vibrations were recorded directly on a wax disc by means of a diaphragm to which the engraving tool was attached.
Aug 24, 2015 · Bucks Burnett, a Texas record collector, record store owner, and museum operator, died in October, 2023. Burnett was one of the early and vocal advocates of collecting music on 8-track tapes. In the early 1990s, 8-tracks were bottoming out in terms of popularity and value. Bucks was one of many who nostalgically latched onto them as collectibles.
- 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.
The first recording devices were scientific instruments used to capture and study sound waves. These devices were capable of recording voices and other sounds long before the phonograph. The most famous of these was Leon Scott’s 1857 Phonoautograph. This device used a horn to direct sound toward a flexible diaphragm placed at the small end.
People also ask
What were the earliest recording technologies?
What were the first recording devices?
What is the history of sound recording?
What is sound recording technology?
What was the earliest method of sound recording & reproduction?
How was music recorded before analog sound recording was invented?
In the 1920s, Phonofilm and other early motion picture sound systems employed optical recording technology, in which the audio signal was graphically recorded on photographic film. The amplitude variations comprising the signal were used to modulate a light source which was imaged onto the moving film through a narrow slit, allowing the signal to be photographed as variations in the density or ...
