"Wavy Lines of Sound"

Birth of a record: “At one moment we see a mass of dough; 30 seconds later it emerges from the press transformed.”

Listen to some early recordings that reveal what Harrison unkindly termed “the scratchy futility of the mechanical phonograph.”

This 1899 recording of the ragtime standard “Hello, Ma Baby,” performed by Len Spencer, was a hit for the Berliner Gramophone Company, whose process for mass-producing shellac discs led to the birth of the record industry.

“At the Ball That’s All,” performed by Harry Mayo and Harry Tally, was a 1915 offering from Thomas Edison’s Diamond Disc label. The recording was distributed on thick, heavy 10-inch discs, played at 80 RPM.

Since his 1877 invention of the phonograph, which recorded sound on a cone made of tinfoil, Edison had continued with the cylinder format until Emile Berliner’s disc records put an end to the wax-cylinder era. Although Edison’s discs, first introduced in 1911, were heavier and more expensive than competitors’ and were designed to be compatible only with the Edison phonograph, his patented production process promised superior durability and sound quality.

Credit: Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division

To hear more go to the Library of Congress American Memory collection

71 Years Ago in TR

January/February 2009
By Matt Mahoney

A research physicist looks to the past and future of recorded music.

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When George R. Harrison, then director of applied physics at MIT, surveyed the state of the art in audio recording and playback in the November 1938 issue of Technology Review, he was full of wonder at the progress achieved in the 60 years since Edison had introduced the phonograph. Although cheap and durable vinyl had yet to replace shellac as the recording industry's medium of choice, and all-electric record players had only recently superseded acoustic ones, Harrison confidently assured his readers that they were on the cusp of a new, "high-fidelity" era.

Grown long accustomed to the scratchy futility of the mechanical phonograph, the world is only slowly realizing the possibilities of more perfect sound reproduction. The electric phonograph and the talking motion picture as we know them are far from perfect in their re-creation of sound, but this limitation now arises from the high cost of the apparatus needed to achieve perfect results. Perfectly faithful reproducing devices should eventually be available as commonly as imperfect ones are today.

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