Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 11 (1927-08)

464 The Phonograph Monthly Review vsie lips of the same material enunciated the conso- nants.” These machines were short lived, but the great amount of speculation during the nine- teenth century on such automatons prepared the way for the phonograph. In 1806, Thomas Young, an English physicist, proved by means of a stylus and a tuning fork that sound vibrations could be recorded on the head of a drum. Experiments continued in this vein for the telephone, too, was then looming in man’s imagination and in 1857 M. Leon Scott, a Frenchman, closely following previous discoveries, got very near to the realization of our talking ma- chine. He made a machine called the Phonauto- graph which consisted of a diaphragm and stylus so arranged as to record sound waves on a lamp- blacked rotating cylinder. Charles Cros, another Frenchman, wrote an article explaining how the Scott machine could be made to talk and delivered it to the Academie des Sciences in 1877, but did nothing practical with it. In the same year Thomas Edison, attempting to relay and strengthen the sound made by Bell’s telephone transmitter actually made the Scott Phonauto- graph talk! He built his machine on similar prin- ciples to those of the earlier machine but used tinfoil instead of carboned cylinders for record- ing. The tinfoil impressions had sufficient strength to give back the recorded vibrations to the diaphragm when the groove was passed along the stylus a second time. For ten years Edison did nothing important to improve his discovery. The telephone was being developed at the same time and no doubt claimed much of his attention. The most important labor- atories working on the two inventions were: (1) the Volta Laboratory Association, which included Alexander Graham Bell, his brother Dr. Chester Bell and Sumner Tainter, an associate, located in Washington; (2) Edison, located in New York City; and (3) Emil Berliner’s Laboratory, also located in Washington. The Volta people suc- ceeded in substituting a wax for the original tin- foil cylinder, but Edison bettered the wax with a harder compound. In 1886 the Volta association obtained a patent which provided for the cutting of a record instead of indenting it as by the Edi- son method and a year later formed the American Craphophone Company of West Virginia. Much litigation followed with the Edison interests, so in 1890 the two parties joined hands as the Amer- ican Phonograph Company with Jesse Lippincott as president. By this time the third laboratory mentioned above, Emil Berliner’s, had developed and placed the disk machine on the market. This machine was eventually to render the Edison cyl- inder machine obsolete. During this development the talking machine was fast becoming a new wonder of the world. Its emissaries were re- ceived with much awe throughout Europe. Many wouldn’t believe it and in Russia the Edison rep- resentative was suspected of magic and hurried out of the country by the Czar’s secret police. In these exciting nineties, Eldridge Johnson, later of the Victor Talking Machine Company, came across a talking machine in his machine shop. He says, “It sounded much like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head.” However, he saw possibilities in this mechanical parrot and experimented with it. He soon got into trouble with the Berliner company over the Berliner patents, the chief difficulty be- ing his use of the lateral cut groove which Ber- liner had patented in 1895 instead of the original “hill and dale” method of Edison. After long litigation an agreement of great advantage to both parties was reached and the Victor Talking Machine was formed in 1901. Its family tree consisted of the American Graphophone Com- pany, The Improved Record Company and The Eldridge Johnson Incorporated. By 1903 the Vic- tor company absorbed the Universal Talking Ma- chine Company, makers of Zonophone products. In the mean time, the American Phonograph Company of 1890 had ceased operations, but the Bell-Tainter half continued to market through a selling organization originally formed in 1886 by Edward D. Easton and called the Columbia Com- pany, which later became the Columbia Grapho- phone Company and after many changes the Col- umbia Phonograph Company of today, while the Edison half of this early company became the National Phonograph Company and finally in 1912 the present Thomas A. Edison Inc. At first this new marvel appealed as a toy. One would whistle at it and it would whistle back, perhaps fainter but no doubt shriller. One’s laughter, shouts and screams all came back to him in a fairly recognizable form and a “banjo recording was a delight”(?) It soon found its wav into bad company, and became a familiar sight in amusement parks and saloons as a nickle machine. What wheezy songs a nickle would evoke from the contraption, filling the listener with wonder and admiration! The phonograph had to be smuggled into England, for the Amer- ican companies controlled the European rights. There it became a traveling side show. A crowd never failed to assemble wherever it was shown and the shillings flowed out of their pockets. Manv a person spent hard earned money to hear Gladstone’s voice, which, incidentally, had been imitated for the recording by someone else as the original record had worn out earlv. But the imi- tation proved so good, or perhaps the reproduction was then so poor, that many who should have known the difference were completely taken in. Records were at first very scarce and valuable since only a few could be made from the original. The chief pleasure of the then necessarily wealthy phonograph owners was in the recording of their own voices or anything else and playing the rec- ord back. Then came the electroplating process in an adaption for the phonograph industry. The mother wax record could now be duplicated in metal, from which almost any number of records could be obtained. The recording end of the in- dustry increased, record sales mounted and the various companies became interested in the re- cording artist! Firms pleaded with celebrities and offered them generous contracts if they would make records. In 1902 Caruso made his first