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130 The AudioVisual Handbook
The record was a heavy metal cylinder, wrapped in a sheet of tinfoil. The recorder included a diaphragm and a stylus. Sound vibrations caused the stylus to indent the tinfoil as the coated cylinder revolved past it. The reproducer was similar to the recorder, but much more sensitive. The results were poor and indistinct. The machine was cumbersome and impractical, but was of scientific interest and opened the door for further development of sound recording.
About 1882, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, Sumner Tainter, and Chichester A. Bell developed a process of recording on a wax cylinder. The recording was of the hill-and-dale type. They also developed a reproducing machine which became the early Gramophone of the American Gramophone Company.
Contemporaneously, Edison, working independently, developed a recorder for making cylindrical hill-and-dale records in wax, and a reproducer, which later became known as the Phonograph. As in the case of the Bell and Tainter machine, ear tubes were necessary for the use of the listener.
About the year 1887, Emile Berliner developed a disc record of the lateral-cut type— recording lateral vibrations of the needle. The special screw feed mechanism which was required on the cylinder reproducing machines was no longer necessary. The Berliner process used a zinc plate or disc coated with a fine layer of acid-resisting material. The recording stylus produced a spiral groove, cutting through the acid-resistant coating. The disc was then subjected to an acid bath in which the acid would eat in the zinc a groove of sufficient depth to vibrate the stylus of the reproducing machine. This zinc plate was then used as a "master" from which, by suitable processes, commercial records were made in a hard material. His reproducing machine was called the Gramophone and the reproduction was loud enough to eliminate the use of earphones. Because of the action of the acid on the zinc, the scratch was almost sufficient to drown out the music or other recorded sound.
Eldredge R. Johnson, who was operating a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, at this time, became interested in the Berliner machine. He refined and improved it. In 1896, he began the manufacture of the Gramophone for the Berliner Company. Johnson developed the spring motor — previous reproducing machines were operated by hand— and patented it in 1898. As a result of this, he was given reciprocal rights in the Berliner patents and worked in conjunction with the Berliner Company until 1901, when the Victor Talking Machine Company was founded. During the next twenty-four