Before Elvis And The Beatles There Was Tom Edison

Before Elvis And The Beatles There Was Tom Edison

REWIRE YOURSELF

by Richard Robinson

I'm not sure what percentage of the sound we hear every day is pre-recorded. I guess 20 % of the sound I hear isn't there, added to another 10 or 15% that's live but electronically processed. This year our eardrums celebrate the hundredth anniversary of recorded sound. By way of celebration, this month's Rewire Yourself takes you back to the days before transistors. #1: In 1877 Tom Edison applied for a patent on his tinfoil phonograph. The cylinder shaped record used on Edison's machine dominated the early consumer market. In 1887 Emile Berliner invented the flat disc phonograph. The photo shows a Berliner flat disc machine vintage 1893. To operate it you cranked the handle at 70 rpm. Between 1894 and 1902 Berliner and his partner, Eldridge Johnson, invented the eritire phonograph and record system as we know it today. In addition, they formed the Victor Talking Machine Company. But until about 1912, it's wax cylinders and the Edison system that are the big success. So much of a success that at one point in 1906 Edison was backordered two and a half million cylinders.

#2: Before the microphone was invented, recordings were made acoustically directly onto the wax cylinders. The singers and musicians arranged themselves so they sounded 'balanced' when a cylinder was cut. They then did their tune over and over again, as it was orily possible to cut a dozen or so cylinders at a time.

#3: Listening to new releases in the CREEM offices of the 1890's wasn't all that much fun. (That's publisher Barry Kramer with the moustache.) In fact, until the Victor company came out with their first Victrola in 1906, the phonograph wasn't all that attractive. But when you bought a Victrola you got a ton of solid mahogany that was perfect for your living room, if you happened to be named Babbitt.

#4: The phonograph was a novelty in the 1890's. People went out to a phonograph parlor to listen to the cylinders. The early years of recorded sound were followed by the electronicization of recording sound. With over one hundred million records sold in 1921, the record was a commercial success of the highest order. By 1925 the record business had gotten it together enough to standardize the 78 rpm record at 78 rpm and Bell Labs invented the first electronic mike so that electrical recording was possible.

In the 1930's the long playing record, stereo and term "hi fi" first occurred. In the 1940's the Germans invented the magnetip tape recorder. Then came Elvis and the Beatles and that's how I wound up writing this column.