Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1927-03)

266 The Phonograph Monthly Review THOMAS A. EDISON The Eightieth Anniversary of His Birth and the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Invention of the Phonograph T HE recent celebration of the 80th birthday of Thomas A. Edison, the Grand Old Man of the Phonograph, has focussed anew the interest of American phonograph enthusiasts up- on the inventor of the phonograph, the genius to whom they owe so much. All over the world, people are paying their tribute of honor and re- spect to the great inventor, but it is we enthusi- asts and music lovers perhaps who have the deepest debt of gratitude to pay. The Phonograph Monthly Review expresses the feelings of all its readers when it thanks Mr. Edison again for his great gift to the world and wishes him many more years of happy and use- ful life. The interest aroused by the announcement of the long-distance forty-minute Edison records has prompted many readers to write to the magazine asking for information about them. As announced before, one of the wonderful new Edison instru- ments has been sent to the Studio, upon which we play the library of standard and current Edi- son releases which the Edison Company provides us with. The new instrument is fully equipped for playing the long-distance records and these are expected in very shortly for test and review. So as soon as possible a full report will be pub- ished in these pages. In the meantime, in this season of the celebra- tion of Mr. Edison's 80th birthday and the Cen- tennial of Beethoven's death, in which the phono- graph is playing such an important part, it might be well to tell again the story of the invention of the phonograph just a half century ago. “I was experimenting," Edison says, “on an automatic method of recording telegraph mes- sages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the Disc talking ma- chine of today. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the Disc. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm travel- ing over the disk, and any signals given through the magnet were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disk was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signal to be repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is 35 to 40 words a minute, but with this machine several hundred words were possible. “From my experiments on the telephone I knew of the power of a diaphragm to take up sound Thomas A. Edison vibration, as I had made a little toy which, when you recited loudly in the funnel, would work a pawl connected to the diaphragm, and this en- gaging a rachet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a pulley. This pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: ‘Mary had a little lamb,' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I reacned the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the diaphragm properly I could cause such record to reproduce the original movement imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice. “Instead of using a disk, I designed a little ma- chine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made and the piece work price, $18.00, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of