Evolution of Audio

1. Evolution of Audio By: Cade Pearson

2. 1877 • Thomas Alva Edison, working in his lab, succeeds in recovering Mary's Little Lamb from a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a spinning cylinder. • He demonstrates his invention in the offices of Scientific American, and the phonograph is born.

3. 1878 • The first music is put on record: cornetist Jules Levy plays "Yankee Doodle."

4. 1881 • Clement Ader, using carbon microphones and armature headphones, accidentally produces a stereo effect when listeners outside the hall monitor adjacent telephone lines linked to stage mikes at the Paris Opera

5. 1887 • Emile Berliner is granted a patent on a flat-disc gramophone, making the production of multiple copies practical.

6. 1888 • Edison introduces an electric motor-driven phonograph.

7. 1895 • Marconi successfully experiments with his wireless telegraph system in Italy, leading to the first transatlantic signals from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901.

8. 1898 • Poulsenpatents his "Telegraphone," recording magnetically on steel wire.

9. 1900 • Poulsen unveils his invention to the public at the Paris Exposition. Austria's Emperor Franz Josef records his congratulations. • Boston's Symphony Hall opens with the benefit of Wallace Clement Sabine's acoustical advice

10. 1901 • The Victor Talking Machine Company is founded by Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson. • Experimental optical recordings are made on motion picture film.

11. 1906 • Lee DeForest invents the triode vacuum tube, the first electronic signal amplifier.

12. 1910 • Enrico Caruso is heard in the first live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, NYC.

13. 1912 • Major Edwin F. Armstrong is issued a patent for a regenerative circuit, making radio reception practical.

14. 1913 • The first "talking movie" is demonstrated by Edison using his Kinetophone process, a cylinder player mechanically synchronized to a film projector.

15. 1916 • A patent for the super heterodyne circuit is issued to Armstrong. • The Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) is formed. • Edison does live-versus-recorded demonstrations in Carnegie Hall, NYC.

16. 1917 • The Scully disk recording lathe is introduced. • E. C. Wente of Bell Telephone Laboratories publishes a paper in Physical Review describing a "uniformly sensitive instrument for the absolute measurement of sound intensity" -- the condenser microphone.

17. 1919 • The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is founded. It is owned in part by United Fruit.

18. 1921 • The first commercial AM radio broadcast is made by KDKA, Pittsburgh PA.

19. 1925 • Bell Labs develops a moving armature lateral cutting system for electrical recording on disk. Concurrently they Introduce the Victor Orthohombic Victrola, "Credenza" model. This all-acoustic player with no electronics is considered a leap forward in phonograph design. • The first electrically recorded 78 rpm disks appear. • RCA works on the development of ribbon microphones.

20. 1926 • O'Neill patents iron oxide-coated paper tape.

21. 1927 • "The Jazz Singer" is released as the first commercial talking picture, using Vitaphone sound on disks synchronized with film. • The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) is formed. • The Japan Victor Corporation (JVC) is formed as a subsidiary of the Victor Talking Machine Co.

22. 1928 • Dr. Harold Black at Bell Labs applies for a patent on the principle of negative feedback. It is granted nine years later. • Dr. Georg Neumann founds a company in Germany to manufacture his condenser microphones. Its first product is the Model CMV 3.

23. 1929 • Harry Nyquist publishes the mathematical foundation for the sampling theorem basic to all digital audio processing, the "Nyquist Theorem." • The "Blattnerphone" is developed for use as a magnetic recorder using steel tape.

24. 1931 • Alan Blumlein, working for Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) in London, in effect patents stereo. His seminal patent discusses the theory of stereo, both describing and picturing in the course of its 70-odd individual claims a coincident crossed-eights miking arrangement and a "45-45" cutting system for stereo disks. • Arthur Keller and associates at Bell Labs in New York experiment with a vertical-lateral stereo disk cutter.

25. 1932 • The first cardioids ribbon microphone is patented by Dr. Harry F. Olson of RCA, using a field coil instead of a permanent magnet.

26. 1933 • Magnetic recording on steel wire is developed commercially. • Snow, Fletcher, and Steinberg at Bell Labs transmit the first inter-city stereo audio program.

27. 1935 • AEG (Germany) exhibits its "Magnetophon" Model K-1 at the Berlin Radio Exposition. • BASF prepares the first plastic-based magnetic tapes.

28. 1936 • BASF makes the first tape recording of a symphony concert during a visit by the touring London Philharmonic Orchestra. Sir Thomas Beecham conducts Mozart. • Von Braunmühl and Weber apply for a patent on the cardioids condenser microphone.

29. 1938 • Benjamin B. Bauer of Shure Bros. engineers a single microphone element to produce a cardioids pickup pattern, called the Undine, Model 55. This later becomes the basis for the well known SM57 and SM58 microphones. • Under the direction of Dr. Harry Olson, Leslie J. Anderson designs the 44B ribbon bidirectional microphone and the 77B ribbon unidirectional for RCA. • RCA develops the first column loudspeaker array.

30. 1939 • Independently, engineers in Germany, Japan and the U.S. discover and develop AC biasing for magnetic recording. • Western Electric designs the first motional feedback, vertical-cut disk recording head. • Major Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, makes the first experimental FM broadcast. • The first of many attempts is made to define a standard for the VU meter.

31. 1940 • Walt Disney's "Fantasia" is released, with eight-track stereophonic sound.

32. 1941 • Commercial FM broadcasting begins in the U.S. • Arthur Haddy of English Decca devises the first motional feedback, lateral-cut disk recording head, later used to cut their "ffrr" high-fidelity recordings.

33. 1942 • The RCA LC-1 loudspeaker is developed as a reference-standard control-room monitor. • Dr. Olson patents a single-ribbon cardioids microphone (later developed as the RCA 77D and 77DX), and a "phased-array" directional microphone. • The first stereo tape recordings are made by Helmut Kruger at German Radio in Berlin.

34. 1943 • Altec develops their Model 604 coaxial loudspeaker.

35. 1944 • Alexander M. Poniatoff forms Ampex Corporation to make electric motors for the military.

36. 1945 • Two Magnetophon tape decks are sent back to the U.S. In pieces in multiple mailbags by Army Signal Corps Major John T. (Jack) Mullin.

37. 1946 • Webster-Chicago manufactures wire recorders for the home market. • Brush Development Corp. builds a semiprofessional tape recorder as its Model BK401 Sound mirror. • 3M introduces Scotch No. 100, a black oxide paper tape. • Jack Mullin demonstrates "hi-fi" tape recording with his reconstructed Magnetophon at an Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) meeting in San Francisco.

38. 1947 • Colonel Richard Ranger begins to manufacture his version of a Magnetophon. • Bing Crosby and his technical director, Murdo McKenzie, agree to audition tape recorders brought in by Jack Mullin and Richard Ranger. Mullin's is preferred, and he is brought back to record Crosby's Philco radio show. • Ampex produces its first tape recorder, the Model 200. • Major improvements are made in disk-cutting technology: the Presto 1D, Fairchild 542, and Cook feedback cutters. • The Williamson high-fidelity power amplifier circuit is published. • The first issue of Audio Engineering is published; its name is later shortened to Audio.

39. 1948 • The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is formed in New York City. • The microgroove 33-1/3 rpm long-play vinyl record (LP) is introduced by Columbia Records. • Scotch types 111 and 112 acetate-base tapes are introduced. • Magnecord introduces its PT-6, the first tape recorder in portable cases.

40. 1949 • RCA introduces the microgroove 45 rpm, large-hole, 7-inch record and record changer/adaptor. • Ampex introduces its Model 300 professional studio recorder. • Magnecord produces the first U.S.-made stereo tape recorder, employing half-track staggered-head assemblies. • A novel amplifier design is described by McIntosh and Gow.