The phonoscope (Nov 1896-Dec 1899)

The Phonoscope (Copyrighted, 1896) A Monthly Journal Devoted to Scientific and Amusement Inventions Appertaining to Sound and Sight Vol. II. NEW YORK, DECEnBER, 1898 No. \2 Hmerican (Srapbopbone Company vs. IRational Gramophone Company UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT, For the Southern District of New York. American Graphophone Com J pany, Complainant, / vs /Equity The National Gramophone Com I pany and Frank Seamann. | Defendant's Brief on Motion for Preliminary Injunction. By Mr. Gustav Bissing. (Continued) "The difficulty of tracking the groove increases as its width and depth diminish. With record grooves equal in size and shape, the reproducer will follow a pitch of ten to the inch as readily as it will one of one hundred; but should the reproducer, for any reason, leave the groove it might, in the case of the course pitch travel along on the surface of the record cylinder between the grooves, while with the fine pitch the space between grooves being too narrow to support the reproducer the motion of the cylinder throws it to one side or the other and into the groove. If, in the case of the coarse pitch the width of the groove is made equal to the pitch, the tracking will be less difficult than in the case of the finer pitch, as there is no place for the reproducer to rest outside the groove, and when the groove is large it is more effective in guiding the reproducer. A disturbance that would throw the reproducer out of a fine groove would not interfere with the tracking of the large one. We were for a long time embarrassed in our work by the difficulty of reproducing from a narrow and shallow record. On the one hand, the success of the method of engraving depended upon reducing to a very fine hair-like line the cross-section of the record groove. On the other hand, it was utterly impossible with the reproducing instrumentalities of the time to reproduce from such a recoid. This difficulty was so great that we gave up for a time all hope of producing satisfactory results by the rubbing method of reproducing and made numerous experiments with other methods, as by jets of air and other fluids. After conceiving the idea of the yielding pressure reproducer, which brought us back to the rubbing method, it required a great number of experiments to determine the construction of a reproducer which would automatically track such a fine groove as could be made by the engraving method and maintain constant contact therewith at uniform pressure." What Mr. Tainter here says about a narrow groove requires a word of explanation. Manifestly he needed a groove which was narrow in an absolute sense measured by the ordinary standard of things about us. But the Chapman photograph sufficiently shows that his groove, in a sense relative to the depth, was quite broad. Nor should confusion arise from the shape of the cutting style shown in the Bell & Tainter Patent. The style there shown has sides meeting at an acute angle. But it is to be remembered that only the extreme point of the style operates in cutting, for the depth of the record grooves in the wax cylinder is not over one five-hundredth of an inch, So small a dimension it would be impossible to indicate in a drawing made to scale, which is the case with the drawings showing the cutting tools in the patent. How the extreme point is shaped, the patent does not and cannot tell. The Chapman photograph shows how the tool must have been shaped to make the blank which was bought from the agents of complainant's corporation. This, then, disposes of the lateral adjustment of the stylus mounting. But in addition to the slight flexibility laterally, it is manifestly also necessary to have a flexibility to the support of the stylus in a vertical direction toward and from the bottom of the record groove, for manifestly if the diaphragm be rigidly mounted in a vertical direction then it would be necessary to so adjust it that normally the point of the stylus will reach to the bottom of the deepest record groove. When, therefore, the shallower record grooves come into play, there will be a useless amount of friction and wear and a corresponding distortion of the record. Therefore, Bell and Tainter allowed sufficient flexibility in a vertical direction in mounting their reproducing stylus, so that the stylus could gravitate to the bottom of the groove and could rest with a yielding pressure against the record at the bottom of the groove. Manifestly, we repeat, the whole idea of Bell and Tainter's construction is to have the reproducing stylus rest with a yielding pressure against the bottom of the groove, for here their record is found and here the undulating line imparts motion to the stylus in a direction perpendicular to the surface of the wax cylinder. Both the lateral and the vertical flexibility of Bell and Tainter's universal joint, then, assist in permitting the stylus to get to the bottom of the record groove. This is the sum and substance of the function of the flexible mounting for the reproducing stylus. This, then, was the second feature of the invention claimed by Bell and Tainter, namely, the combination with their wax cylinder of a loose mounting in a lateral and vertical direction in the suppport for the stylus, having, it is true, an exceedingly minute compass, but still a compass large enough to enable the stylus to automatically fall into one of the two adjacent grooves from the ridge between the grooves, or, when placed within the purview of the groove, to gravitate down the very slightly inclined and rather wide side wall of the groove to the bottom of the groove, where the sound record is actually found. The peculiar shape of the sound-record groove of Bell and Tainter, shallow and exceedingly wide in comparison, was made necessary by the fact that, with the engraving or cutting process, a deep groove would have encountered so much resistance in the recording operation as to make the sound record untrue to the original sound. A shallow groove was necessary. This shallow groove, however, required some means by which the stylus could be automatically guided to the bottom of the groove, and that means, as adopted by Bell and Tainter, was the loose mounting of the stylus support. This flexiblie or universal mounting, as we have said, has a compass not necessarily larger than one one-hundredth of an inch. The combination of the peculiar wax-like sound record of Bell and Tainter with the flexible or universal mounting for the reproducing stylus which we have described has been held patentable both by Judge Groscup and by Judge Shipman; and, so far as we are aware, these two features — the wax cylinder with a cut or engraved record of the shape described per se and the wax cylinder with a cut or engraved record of the shape described in combination with the flexibly mounted stylus — are all that have been held patentable up to the present time to Bell or Tainter by any United States Court. We may now turn to the work of Mr. Emile Berliner as embodied in the well-known Gramophone, the infringing character of which is alleged in the bill of complaint. Just as Bell and Tainter found the basic ideas of their invention in the Edison Phonograph and just as they, adopted certain changes to make this type of Phonograph successful, so Berliner found the basic ideas of his invention in the Scott Phonautograph and later in the theories of the Frenchman Cros, and after years of experiment hit upon plans which put the impractical and uncommercial ideas of these earlier scientists into practical and commercial form. The Scott Phonautograph, which is well known to students of science and is described in the Lyons affidavit and in the Berliner Franklin Institute lecture, is a device for recording but not for reproducing speech. It consists of a membrane carrying a stylus, which bears against a rotating cylinder covered with lamp black. As the cylinder rotates, sounds are uttered in the vicinity of the diaphragm and the diaphragm is set into vibration. By means of these vibrations the style removes the lamp black in the cylinder along an undulatory line. The action is precisely like that of writing with a stylus on a smoked-glass plate. The stylus does not move perpendicular to the surface carrying the lamp black, so as to make a groove with an undulating bottom or a groove of varying depth, but, we repeat, the style is moved laterally only, so as to make a laterally undulating line upon the surface of the cylinder, which accurately pictures the sound which has been uttered against the diaphragm. The French Cros carried Scott's idea further, and attempted not only to record sound in the manner set out by Scott, but also to reproduce the sound thus recorded. Without going here at .large into the processes detailed by Cros, which are fully set out in the affidavit of Mr. Lyons, it may be said that he suggested the inscription of the sound record along a latterally undulating line on the surface of a smoked plate, and then, by a process of photo-engraving, the making of a metal plate carrying in its face a groove of even depth, but with lateral undulations corresponding to the sound waves. From this groove of even depth, with the sound record on the side walls thereof, he proposed to reproduce the sound. That is to say, while the Edison Phonograph had the sound record in the form of a groove with an undulating bottom, Cros' idea was to have the sound record along the sides of a groove, the bottom of which was entirely even. So, too, while Edison reproduced by moving a reproducing stylus perpendicular to the face of the record material, Cros proposed to reproduce by moving the stylus laterally in a direction parallel to the face of the record material. Now, Berliner, after four years of constant experiment, devoted to this subject alone, was enabled, without departing from the fundamental principle of Cros, to put his ideas into practical form, just as Bell and Tainter, after their experiments, succeeded in putting the ideas of Edison into practical form without departing from the fundamental principle of Edion. Berliner, although ignorant of Cros' work until after his own experiments had well progressed, effected this improvement on the Cros conception by using, as his original record plate, a zinc plate covered with a very thin fatty film instead of Cros' smoked glass plate, which fatty film Berliner removes along a laterally undulating line of even depth by the recording stylus. After having removed the material of the fatty film along the laterally undulating line, the zinc plate is placed in an etching bath, and the material of the zinc plate is eaten out along a groove having undulations in a lateral direction, but having a uniform depth, depending merely upon the time of the immersion of the zinc plate in the etching bath. When the groove has been etched to a sufficient depth, the zinc plate is removed from the etching bath and placed in an electro-plating bath, where it is electroplated with copper. The copper plate thus obtained has on its face, in a raised form, a ridge