Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1931-11)

22 The Phonograph Monthly Review Syomas Alua iEftmutt The recent death of Thomas A. Edison, the Grand Old Man of the Phono- graph, has focussed anew the interest of American phonograph enthusiasts upon the inventor of the phonograph, the genius to whom they owe so much. All over the world people are paying their tribute and respect to the great inventor, but it is we enthusiasts and music lovers perhaps who have the deepest debt of gratitude to pay. The Origin of the Phonograph By VETERAN N OTWITHSTANDING the ever-increasing popu- larity of the phonograph, very few people really know the true origin of this domestic instrument. Many years ago an American lad was anxious to become an expert operator. He was engaged, at a very small wage, to work in a telegraph office at Indianapolis in the day-time, but so keen was he to succeed that his day’s work did not content him. It was at night-time, when the line, was being used for newspaper work, that speed in receiving mes- sages was essential; and the lad foresaw a chance— if he could obtain some of this nightwork to do—of becoming an expert and so increasing his salary. His services accepted, this ambitious boy sat himself at his instrument, and with the help of another lad, transcribed as much of the report as they could, carrying the remainder in their memory. While one was writing out, the other was taking down. This plan worked fairly well until a new dispatcher was put on the other end of the line, who proved to be so fast that the two lads found it hopeless to keep up with him. However, this did not dampen the enthusiasm of the former boy, and the difficulty which confronted him only spurred him on to invent an instrument which would record the messages more quickly. This lad’s name was Thomas Alva Edison. He obtained two old Morse registers and converted them into a kind of tape machine. A strip of paper was run through the first receiving machine, and as the dots and dashes were received from the dispatcher, they were printed in indentations on the paper. The paper was then run through a second instrument at a much slower speed. As the messages came through on one machine at the rate of forty words per minute, Edison would take them down from the other register at an easy speed of twenty-five. All went well, until one night when some very important work was in progress; the election of a President was being established, and copy was con- tinually pouring in at a speed that proved fatal to the lad. He was unable to keep up to this new speed, with the result that he fell hopelessly behind with his work of transcription. Frantic complaints were received from the newspapers, and Edison’s little invention was banned from further use. But he kept his machine for converting telegraph clicks into printed marks and subsequently into sounds. It re- corded telegrams by indenting a strip of paper with the Morse code and repeated messages many times at a far greater speed. At this time (1877) Edison was experimenting and improving on Graham’s Bell’s invention, the telephone. His mind was pervaded with theories of sound vibrations and their transmission by drum-like membranes. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. He asked himself if indentations on paper can be made to reproduce the clicks of a telegraph instrument, why cannot the vibrations of a membrane also be recorded and reproduced? Hastily rigging up an instrument, he pulled a strip of paper through it and shouted “Hello”! He then pulled it back again and listened breathlessly. A dis- tinct sound was audible. Edison was positive he had discovered a crude type of talking machine. Not con- i tent with this, he desired improvement, by substitut- ing tinfoil, instead of the usual strip of paper, on a cylinder about four inches long, which revolved by the turning of a handle and by using a steel needle < for the indentations, with the result that within a comparatively short time he had perfected a machine he called a phonograph. ^ He also derived considerable assistance from his experimenting with his automatic telegraph recorder, for he saw that his phonograph was not merely a sound-writer, but a sound-maker. For when the steel needle began to travel again over the indentations it had made in the tinfoil, it caused the membrane to vibrate in response to its movements. As the mem- brane vibrated so it made waves in the air, and these *,