Today in History: Thomas Edison patents the phonograph
Edison’s invention came about as spin-off from his ongoing work in telephony and telegraphy.
On this day in 1878, Thomas Edison was awarded US Patent No 200 521 for his invention, the phonograph, which would pave the way for future musical technology.
The technology that made the modern music business possible came into existence in the New Jersey laboratory where Thomas Alva Edison created the first device to both record sound and play it back. In an effort to facilitate the repeated transmission of a single telegraph message, Edison devised a method for capturing a passage of Morse code as a sequence of indentations on a spool of paper.
Reasoning that a similar feat could be accomplished for the telephone, Edison devised a system that transferred the vibrations of a diaphragm, i.e., sound, to an embossing point and then mechanically onto an impressionable medium – paraffin paper at first, and then a spinning, tin-foil-wrapped cylinder as he refined his concept.
Edison and his mechanic, John Kreusi, worked on the invention through the autumn of 1877 and quickly had a working model ready for demonstration. The 22 December 1877 issue of Scientific American reported that “Mr Thomas A Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night”.
The patent awarded to Edison on 19 February 1878, specified a particular method – embossing – for capturing sound on tin-foil-covered cylinders. The next critical improvement in recording technology came courtesy of Edison’s competitor in the race to develop the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.
His newly established Bell Labs developed a phonograph based on the engraving of a wax cylinder, a significant improvement that led directly to the successful commercialisation of recorded music in the 1890s and provided a vocabulary to the recording business, e.g., ‘cutting’ records and ‘spinning wax’ – that has long outlived the technology on which it was based.
Information courtesy of: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-alva-edison-patents-the-phonograph
Do you perhaps have more information pertaining to this story? Email us at northside@caxton.co.za (remember to include your contact details) or phone us on 011 955 1130.
For free daily local news on the West Rand, also visit our sister newspaper websites
