THE PHONOGRAPH.
INVENTION OF PHONOGRAPH BY EDISON--SCOTT’S PHONAUTOGRAPH--
IMPROVEMENTS OF BELL AND TAINTER--THE GRAPHOPHONE--LIBRARY OF WAX
CYLINDERS--THE GRAMOPHONE.
Following closely upon the discovery of the telephone the phonograph
came, literally speaking for itself, and adding another surprise to the
wonderful inventions of that prolific period. It was in the latter part
of 1877 that Thomas A. Edison showed to a few privileged friends a
modest looking little machine. He turned the crank, and to the
astonishment of those present it said. “Good morning! How do you do? How
do you like the phonograph?” Its voice was a little metallic, it is
true, but here was presented an insignificant looking piece of mechanism
which was undeniably a talking machine and one with an unlimited
vocabulary. So-called talking machines had been made before, of which
the Faber machine was a type. These, by an arrangement of bellows to
furnish air, and flexible pipes in imitation of the larynx and vocal
organs, made laborious and wheezy efforts to imitate the mechanical
functions of the throat and tongue in articulate speech, but the method
was fundamentally faulty and no success was attained. Edison followed no
such leading. His phonograph made no attempt at imitating in
construction the complex organization of the human throat, but was as
wonderful in its divergence therefrom and in its simplicity as it was in
the success of its results. The machine was patented by him Feb. 19,
1878, No. 200,521, and its life principle is simply and clearly defined
in the first claim of the patent, as follows:
“The method herein specified of reproducing the human voice, or
other sounds, by causing the sound vibrations to be recorded
substantially as specified, and obtaining motion from that record as
set forth for the reproduction of sound vibrations.”
The invention was a striking and interesting novelty and at once
attracted the attention of scientific men as well as the general public.
Its first public exhibition was about the latter part of January, 1878,
before the Polytechnic Association of the American Institute, at New
York. It spoke English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Hebrew with
equal facility. It imitated the barking of a dog and crowing of a cock,
and then catching cold, coughed and sneezed and wheezed until it is said
a physician in the audience proposed sending a prescription for it. It
was also suggested by an irreverent man that it might take the place of
preachers in the rendition of sermons, while another thought that as it
reproduced music with equal facility it might take the place of preacher
and choir both. In the spring of 1878 it was exhibited at Washington by
Edison and his assistant, Mr. Batchelor. Mr. Edison was the guest of Mr.
U. H. Painter, and in his parlors it was shown to a party of gentlemen.
From Mr. Painter’s house the machine was taken to the office of the
Assistant Secretary of the Interior, thence to the Academy of Sciences,
in session at the Smithsonian Institution, and at night it was taken to
the White House and exhibited to President and Mrs. Hayes.
[Illustration: FIG. 189.--FIRST PHONOGRAPH.]
The form of the first phonograph is shown in Fig. 189. It consisted of
three principal parts--the mouthpiece A, into which speech was uttered,
the spirally grooved cylinder B, carrying on its periphery a sheet of
tin foil, and a second mouthpiece D. The cylinder B and its axial shaft
were both provided with spiral grooves or screw threads of exactly the
same pitch, and when the shaft was turned by its crank its screw
threaded bearings caused the cylinder to slowly advance as it rotated.
The mouthpiece A had adjacent to the cylinder a flexible diaphragm
carrying a little point or stylus which bore against the tin foil on the
cylinder. When the mouthpiece A was spoken into and the cylinder B was
turned, the little stylus, vibrating from the voice impulses, traced by
indentations a little jagged path in the tin foil that formed the
record. To reproduce the record in speech again, the mouthpiece A was
adjusted away from the cylinder, the cylinder run back to the starting
point, and mouthpiece D was then brought up to the cylinder. This
mouthpiece had a diaphragm and stylus similar to the other one, only
more delicately constructed. This stylus was adjusted to bear lightly in
the little spiral path in the tin foil traced by the other stylus, and
as the tin foil revolved with the cylinder its jagged irregularities set
up the same vibrations in the diaphragm of mouthpiece D as those caused
by the voice on the other diaphragm, and thus translated the record into
sounds of articulate speech, exactly corresponding to the words first
spoken into the instrument. In Fig. 190 is shown a further development
of the phonograph, in which a single mouthpiece with diaphragm and
stylus serves the purpose both of recorder for making the record and a
speaker for reproducing it, a trumpet or horn being used, as indicated
in dotted lines, to concentrate the vibrations in recording and to
augment the sound in reproducing.
[Illustration: FIG. 190.--SECOND FORM OF PHONOGRAPH.]
The phonograph is in reality a development of the phonautograph, which
was an instrument invented by Leon Scott in 1857 to automatically record
sounds by diagrams. There is a model of Scott’s phonautograph in the
National Museum at Washington, D. C, and it consists of a chamber to
catch the sound waves and an elastic diaphragm with stylus working on a
revolving cylinder bearing a sheet of paper coated with lampblack. The
phonograph’s record-making mouthpiece, with its diaphragm and stylus, is
substantially a phonautograph, but instead of simply causing the stylus
to trace a record on carbon-coated paper and stopping with this result,
Edison traced a record in a substance--tinfoil--which was capable of
mechanically translating that record into sound again by a mere reversal
of the function of the stylus and diaphragm. This was the very essence
of simplicity and logical reasoning. All records had been heretofore
traced for visual inspection only. Edison’s record was not for visual
inspection, but was endowed with the mechanical function of reproducing
sound.
From the first Edison believed that his phonograph was to fill an
important place in the business activities of the world, since here
seemed a silent but faithful stenographer which reproduced the words of
the speaker with absolute fidelity, even to the quality of emphasis and
inflection, and which made no mistakes, was always even with the speaker
in its work, and asked no questions. For a number of years, however, the
invention lay dormant and served no other purpose than that of a
scientific curiosity or an amusing toy. The difficulty of its practical
application largely existed in the perishable form of the record, which,
being in tinfoil, was liable to be mutilated and distorted, and was not
well adapted for storage or transportation.
A few years after the announcement of Mr. Edison’s invention. Dr.
Alexander Graham Bell, the distinguished inventor of the telephone, with
his associates, Messrs. Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter,
directed their attention to the improvement of the phonograph. Dr. Bell
had received from the French government, upon the recommendation of the
French Academy of Sciences, the Volta prize of 50,000 francs as a
recognition of his successful work in acoustics and the invention of the
telephone, and with this sum he built the Volta Institute in Washington
and carried on the work of developing the phonograph.
On May 4, 1886, Chichester A. Bell and Sumner Tainter obtained patents
Nos. 341,214 and 341,288, which covered a great improvement in the
record of the phonograph. This invention substituted for the tinfoil
sheet a surface of wax, which was finally fashioned into a cylinder, and
instead of merely indenting the record on tinfoil the stylus cut a
distinct groove or kerf in the wax cylinder as it revolved, dislodging
therefrom a minute filament or shaving and forming a record which was
not only far more positive in its translating effect and more easily
transported and stored, but was also less perishable, and besides it
could be easily effaced without loss of the cylinder by simply smoothing
off the surface of the cylinder again when it was desired to make a new
record. This invention quickly grew into practical use, and is known as
the “Graphophone.”
[Illustration: FIG. 191.--THE GRAPHOPHONE, RECORDING AND REPRODUCING
DEVICES.]
In Fig. 191 is shown on the left a cross section of the diaphragm,
recording stylus, and wax cylinder, of the graphophone, the stylus
plowing a tiny groove in the wax cylinder in the act of recording the
speech, and on the right is shown the reproducing stylus traversing the
record groove in the wax cylinder, and the diaphragm chamber with which
the ear tubes are connected. The grooves in the wax, although giving
forth mechanical movement that is translated into sound, are very
minute, being only 6/10,000 of an inch deep.
When the possibilities of the graphophone became known, capital was
quickly supplied for its commercial exploitation, and the Columbia
Phonograph Company was organized. At the present time, owing to the
great increase in the business, the control of the graphophone business
is vested in two branches, the Columbia Phonograph Company, which has
charge of the selling, and which has offices throughout all the
principal cities of this country and some of the larger ones of Europe,
and the American Graphophone Company, which attends to the manufacturing
branch, and whose factory is located at Bridgeport, Conn., where, it is
said, that in 1898 the production of the factory reached the point of
one graphophone for every minute of the day, making a total daily output
of 600 machines. Although the Bell and Tainter patents of 1886 represent
the basic principles of the graphophone, its development and perfection
have been contributed to in many subsequent improvements by Messrs.
Bell, Tainter, McDonald, and others. The more important of these are
covered by patents No. 375,579, Dec. 27, 1887; No. 380,535, April 3,
1888; No. 527,755, Oct. 16, 1894, and No. 579,595, March 30, 1897.
At the beginning of this industry it was thought that the principal use
of the instrument would be found in business applications, to take the
place of the stenographer, but it proved difficult to revolutionize
office methods, especially as the earlier machines were somewhat
intricate, and the business man had no time to divide in engineering a
machine. These difficulties, however, have been so far overcome by
modern improvements and simplification of the machine that its use in
business houses as an amanuensis has become quite common. The greatest
use of the graphophone is, however, for amusement purposes. Its songs,
orchestral and solo renditions, and its humorous monologue reproductions
constitute to-day a great library of wax cylinders, regularly catalogued
and sold by the thousands. It will readily be understood that the
formation of the cylinders must constitute a great business of itself
when it is remembered that many record cylinders accompany each
graphophone, and that the latter are turned out at the rate of one a
minute by a single company. Many thousands of these cylinders are made
daily. Some are sent out simply as plain wax cylinders, onto which the
records are made by the voice of the purchaser, while others have
records made for them of popular music, monologues in dialect, humorous
speeches, etc. The waxy composition, which is in reality a species of
soap, is melted in huge pots, and then passes from one floor to
another, undergoing a refining process in its progress, and finally
reaches the molds. These molds are arranged in rows around a horizontal
wheel about eight feet in diameter. The wheel is kept revolving, and a
man on one side is kept constantly busy in filling the molds with the
molten material as they reach him. A half revolution of the wheel brings
the filled molds to the other side of the room, and by that time the
material has hardened sufficiently to enable another attendant,
stationed there, to remove the cylinders from the molds. Thus the wheel
is kept going, receiving at one side a charge of the melted wax and
discharging at the other molded cylinders, which are afterwards turned
true on the surface. The record-making department is both unique and
interesting. Here the records of music are produced, and they are made
by bands and performers engaged for the purpose, many of which,
operating at the same time, produce such a medley as to be scarcely
distinguishable to the visitor. The records are tested by about half a
hundred women, each of whom has a little compartment or booth framed in
by glass partitions. The duty of the tester is to decide upon the merits
of the record by actually listening to it on the graphophone.
A very important feature in record-making, from a commercial standpoint,
is in means for cheaply duplicating records. If every record cylinder
had to be made by the separate act of a performer such records would be
very expensive. An original record is first made by some celebrated
musician or speaker, and this record is afterwards multiplied and
reproduced in large numbers. For this purpose an original record by
suitable mechanism is made to take the place of the speaker or singer,
and so multiplies and reproduces the original record. The duplicating of
records was contemplated by Edison from the first, as seen in his
British patent, 1,644 of 1878, and later appliances for accomplishing
such results are covered under Tainter’s patent, No. 341,287, Bettini’s,
No. 488,381, and McDonald’s, No. 559,806. The diaphragms used in the
recorders and reproducers are made of French rolled plate glass, thinner
than a sheet of ordinary writing paper. The recording stylus is shaped
like a little gouge to cut the little grooves in the wax, while the
corresponding stylus of the reproducer has a ball-shaped end to travel
in the groove. Both the recording stylus and reproducing ball are made
of sapphire, chosen on account of its hardness, to resist the great
frictional wear to which they are subjected. When a record is to be
effaced from a cylinder, it is turned off smooth on a sort of lathe, and
the cutting tool or knife for this purpose is also made of sapphire.
The latest, loudest, and most impressive form of the talking machine is
the “Graphophone Grand.” This has a horn attachment exceeding the big
horn of a brass band in size, and the wax cylinder is about four inches
in diameter. Its reproductions in music and speech are so full and
strong as to be clearly heard at the most remote part of a large hall,
and its versatile voice lends effective rendition to all sorts and kinds
of sounds, from the inspiring chords of “A Choir Invisible” to the
grandiloquent and facetious rattle of a noisy and hustling auctioneer.
[Illustration: FIG. 192.--MODERN PHONOGRAPH.]
It is not to be understood, however, that the graphophone is the only
speaking machine on the market, for about 250 patents have been granted
on phonographs and graphophones. The National Phonograph Company, under
many later patents granted to Mr. Edison, manufactures and sells the
phonograph shown in Fig. 192, which is a very ingenious and effective
instrument. This modern form of phonograph is actuated either by
electricity or spring power, is regulated by a speed governor, and
bifurcated ear tubes connect with the diaphragm case, which tubes are
placed in the ears when the instrument is operated.
[Illustration: FIG. 193.--THE GRAMOPHONE RECORDER.]
The gramophone is also another speaking machine. This is the invention
of Mr. E. Berliner and covered by him in patent No. 372,786, Nov. 8,
1887. An illustration of the gramophone recorder is given in Fig. 193.
Instead of a wax cylinder this machine employs a flat disc on which the
record is formed as a volute spiral groove, gradually drawing toward the
center. It is produced as follows: A zinc disc is covered by a thin film
of acid resisting material, such as wax or grease, and is placed in a
horizontal pan, mounted to revolve as a turn table about a vertical
axis. A stylus and diaphragm, with speaking tube attached, are arranged
above the disc, and when spoken into the vibrations of the diaphragm
cause, through the stylus, a record to be traced through the wax, down
to the zinc. As the waxed disc and pan are revolved, the stylus and
diaphragm are gradually moved by gears toward the center of the disc.
While the record is being traced the waxed disc is kept flooded with
alcohol from a glass jar, seen in the cut, to soften the film and
prevent the clogging of the stylus. The disc, when completed, is then
rinsed off and etched with acid, chromic acid being used, to prevent
liberation of hydrogen bubbles. The etched disc is then electrotyped to
form a matrix, and from this electrotype hard rubber duplicates of the
original record are molded, which are capable of giving 1,000
reproductions. These rubber discs are placed on the reproducing
instrument, which is arranged to cause the stylus to freely trail along
in the spiral groove, and when the disc is rotated under the said stylus
its record is converted into articulate speech. Such flat disc records
give quite loud reproductions, are not easily destroyed, and may be
compactly stored and transported. In the gramophone the diaphragm stands
at right angles to the record disc and the stylus does not vibrate
endwise to make a path of varying depth, as in the phonograph and
graphophone, but the stylus vibrates laterally and traces a little
zigzag line.
The cost of a talking machine is from $5 to $150. The wax cylinders cost
from 25 cents to $3.00, and the cylinders will hold a record of from 800
to 1,200 words, equivalent to about three or four pages of print in an
octavo volume. An important part of such machines is the motor, which
must maintain a uniform rate of speed, and much ingenuity has been
displayed on this part of the machine. Probably the largest use of the
phonograph or graphophone is for home amusement and exhibition purpose.
The coin operated, or “nickel-in-the-slot” machine, finds a popular
demand, while its utilitarian use as an amanuensis, or stenographer, is
as yet a subordinate one.
Although twenty-one years of age, and of full growth, the phonograph is
ever a wonderfully new and impressive device. When listening to it for
the first time the conflict of emotions which it excites is difficult to
analyze. A voice full of human quality, of clear and familiar
enunciation, and speaking in the most matter of fact way about the most
matter of fact things, proceeds from an insignificant and insensible bit
of metal, presenting the apparently anomalous condition of speech
without a speaker. When convinced that there is no trick, astonishment
struggles with admiration and a desire for a personal introduction. We
speak into it, and have the unique experience of listening to our own
voice emanating from a different part of the room, instead of our own
mouths. It is really difficult to believe one’s own senses, and no
wonder that it inspires the superstitious with a feeling of awe. If Mr.
Edison had lived a few centuries earlier, and had produced such an
instrument, his life might have paid the penalty of his ingenuity, for
without doubt he would have been classed as a wizard, and of close kin
to the evil one.
The phonograph is the truth-telling and incontrovertible witness whose
memory is never at fault, and whose nerves are never discomposed by any
cross-examination. As evidence in court its word cannot be doubted, and
the witness confronted by his own utterances from the phonograph must
yield to its infallible dictum. The dying father, unable to write, may
dictate to it his last will and testament, and leave a message for his
loved ones, and long after the sod is green on his grave, that message
would still be audible, and fresh and true to all the tender inflections
of the heart’s emotions. By its aid the Holy Father, at Rome, may give
his personal and audible blessing to his children throughout the world,
though separated by thousands of miles. Who can tell what stories of
interesting and instructive knowledge would be in our possession if the
phonograph had appeared in the ages of the past, and its records had
been preserved? The voices of our dead ancestors, whose portraits hang
on the wall, and the eloquent words of Demosthenes and Cicero would be
preserved to us. In fact, we should be brought into vocal contact with
the world’s heroes, martyrs, saints, and sages, and all the great actors
and teachers whose personalities have made history, and whose teachings
have given us our best ideals. But perhaps the most practical and best
characterization of the phonograph is given in Mr. Edison’s own terse
words. He says: “In one sense it knows more than we know ourselves, for
it retains the memory of many things which we forget, even though we
have said them. It teaches us to be careful of what we say, and I am
sure makes men more brief, more businesslike, and more
straightforward.”