History of Technology in Music Production

1. History of Technology in Music Production In the beginning…………

2. …The Phonograph • 1877 - Edison made the first recording of a human voice ("Mary had a little lamb") on the first phonograph Dec. 6 and filed for an American patent Dec. 24. He was granted the patent on Feb. 19, 1878. The phonograph used cylinders wrapped with tin foil and had a 2-3 minute capacity.

3. The Graphophone • The Edison tin foil phonograph was obtained from Edison in 1879 by Gardiner G. Hubbard and given to Alexander Graham Bell for the purpose of improving the phonograph. After two years of experiments, Bell and Charles Tainter sealed this machine and called it a "graphophone" . • The graphophone pictured is one of the first practical devices developed at the Volta Laboratory Dec. 4, 1885 by Charles Sumner Tainter, based on his patent #341,288 granted May 4, 1886, and illustrated in the Harper's Weekly article of July 1886.

4. The Graphophone from Harper's Weekly, July 1, 1886, pp. 458-460 • One of the most brilliant conceptions of Mr. THOMAS A. EDISON was that a record could be made of sounds, from which the sounds could be reproduced. After considerable experiment, Mr. Edison invented the instrument known the world over as the Phonograph. This little machine consists of a cylinder about three inches in diameter, covered with a shallow spiral groove, upon which is placed tin-foil. The cylinder is so arranged that it will travel horizontally back or forth by means of a screw, and is operated by a crank. The sounds are communicated to the tin-foil by a steel point attached to a diaphragm that is agitated by the sounds coming through a tube, to which is attached a mouth-piece. The concussion of the sound waves striking upon the diaphragm forces the metal point forward, which is already in contact with the tin-foil, and makes indentations as the cylinder revolves with the movement of the crank. • In order to reproduce the sounds the diaphragm is replaced to its point of starting, and the steel point goes over the record, following the path of the indentations made on the tin-foil upon the rotation of the cylinder. The point agitates the diaphragm, which in turn agitates the air in the tube, and the repetition of the sound is thereby produced. • Several hundred of the machines above described were put upon the market, and quite a number were sold, but the Phonograph failed to make a success, for the reason that the machine was not only a clumsy piece of mechanism, frequently getting out of adjustment, but more especially because of the fact that the surface upon which the record was made was pliable, and likely to be obliterated by a mere accidental pressure upon it.

5. Believing in the possibility of making a successful machine to record and reproduce sounds, Professor ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, Dr. CHICHESTER A. BELL, and Mr. SUMNER TAINTER associated themselves together, under the name of the Volta Laboratory Association, and established a laboratory in the city of Washington, one of the principal objects of which was to experiment upon methods of recording and reproducing sound. After several years of experiment, the inventors of the Graphophone now desire that the writer shall introduce to the world the results they have obtained. • The word "Graphophone" is a simple transposition of the word "Phonograph," and is intended to convey the same meaning • Mr. SUMNER TAINTER soon saw that tin-foil presented a surface unfit for the purpose it was called upon to fulfill, because of its pliability and destructibility. Many and elaborate experiments were made to discover a substance upon which a perfect and durable sound record could be made. Mr. TAINTER conceived the idea of using a surface upon which the sound record could be cut, instead of indenting a soft and pliable surface as is done in the EDISON machine. It was finally decided upon to use a paper surface coated with a preparation composed of wax and paraffin.

6. The Graphophone is made in two forms, one to make the records upon a cylindrical surface, the other upon a disk or flat surface, the same principles, however, governing each machine. The machines are provided with two diaphragms, one used in making the record, and the other in reproducing the sound. The cylindrical machine stands about five or six inches high by eight wide, and weighs about ten pounds. There is no skill required in the manipulation of the machine, the rotation of the cylinder being accomplished by a crank or automatic motion. Mr. TAINTER has exhibited a great amount of ingenuity and skill in devising the various parts of the machine, and suiting them to the purposes for which they were designed. The instrument is a marvel of perfection in accuracy of the movements of all its parts. • Upon a diaphragm three inches in diameter a steel point is attached, which cuts a minute hair line in the surface of the waxed cylinder upon the agitation of the diaphragm by a sound. The indentation is so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, and yet these records can be gone over time and again, and are just as perfect after a hundred repetitions as they were at first… • Upon a cylinder six inches in length by an inch and a quarter in diameter one is enabled to record at least five minutes' conversation. The cylinder-holder is constructed with a ball joint at one end, and call be easily tipped so as to allow the hollow cylinder to be rapidly slipped on or off. • The disk machine possibly has some advantages over the cylindrical machine because of the fact that the record is made upon a flat surface, and appears in the form of a spiral line. For the purpose of copying records, and possibly for preservation, the flat surface is probably superior, but as each machine has advantages peculiar to itself, it is a difficult matter to judge which will prove the superior for all purposes.

7. 1889 - The Columbia Phonograph Co. was organized January 15 by Edward D. Easton with rights to market a treadle-powered graphophone; however, Easton would have more success selling music rather than business machines, especially cylinders of the popular United State Marine Band under John Phillip Sousa. Easton produced the first record catalog in 1890, a one-page list of Edison and Columbia cylinders.

8. The Gramophone • 1887 - A third type of phonograph was invented by Emile Berliner; he was granted patent 372,786 for a "Gramophone" using a non-wax disc photo-engraved with a lateral-cut groove .

9. The Victor Co. • 1896 - Eldridge Johnson improved the gramophone with a motor designed by Levi Montross and his own patent 601,198 filed Aug. 19, 1897, for a simple and inexpensive machine that became the first popular disc phonograph by 1900; he then merged his Consolidated Talking Machine Co. with Berliner's company to create the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1901 with the “little nipper” dog as trademark.

10. 1903 - Eldridge Johnson began to sell the Victor IV phonograph, the first model equipped with his tapered tone arm, patent 814,786 filed Feb. 12. • 1906 - Victor introduced the first all-enclosed cabinet phonograph that by 1907 was being widely advertised as the "Victrola" upright with enclosed tapered horn; Victor would spend $50,000,000 on print advertising and $17,000,000 on catalogs and brochures by 1929, creating the generic name victrola that is applied to all phonograph players designed as furniture. • This model plays both 10 and 12 inch records and had three storage holes for fresh needles. To adjust the volume, the front doors can be opened or closed to suite the ambient noise in the room. With the doors closed, the player is often loud enough to play in a crowded room, however, the sound is substantially improved with both doors open as far as possible. Along with the adjustment for record speed, this model includes a brake to hold the table while the record is being changed. The spring must be wound for each record played.. It is recorded on one side of the disk only. This machine was offered in several kinds of wood case and was a relatively "deluxe" model. It sold for as much as $35 at the time. That compared to "popular" machines selling for as little as $5 at the time.

11. Edison • The Edison Standard is a general category for the Cylinder playing phonographs sold by the Edison Phonograph company distributors. These machines played two or four minute cylinder records (depending on model and state of "upgrade") and often had large "cygnet" horns rather than the standard small horns (pictured here). The player featured here is a Standard Model C that has been upgraded to play either 2 or 4 minute records. The smaller horns became near extinct in that the popularity of the flat record coincided with the popularization of the automobile. It seems that the smaller horns worked quite well for filling auto's with oil. As the flat record replaced the cylinders, the horns were thusly otherwise useless.

12. Cylinder vs. Disc • 1900 - Thomas Lambert developed a successful method of mass-duplicating "indestructible" cylinders of celluloid; his patent 645,920 described making a copper negative matrix by electrolysis from a wax master, and using heat and pressure to "mould" durable celluloid copies from the matrix. Although Lambert's patent was upheld by the courts, Edison would use expensive lawsuits to drive Lambert's company and the Indestructible Phonograph Record Company out of business by 1907. • 1902 - Edison introduced "Gold Molded" cylinders for $.50 each with an improved hard wax surface and able to be mass-produced by a molding process . • 1912 - Edison introduced celluloid blue Amberol cylinders that played for 4 minutes. When played with a diamond stylus, the new cylinder had low surface noise that resulted in higher acoustic quality than flat discs.

13. 1913 - Edison finally conceded victory to the flat disc when he began to sell the Diamond-Disc players and recordings. The Diamond discs had a surface of Condensite plastic laminated to a solid core and a thickness of 1/4 inch. Condensite was a resin plastic like Bakelite, the first artificial plastic patented in 1909 by Leo Baekeland. The players used the same Diamond Point Reproducer used in the Blue Amberols but tracked at heavier force.

14. Acoustical Recording (before 1925) • Before the electrical revolution, musicians recorded in studios crowded together playing into a large acoustical horn that focused the sound waves into the vibrating diaphragm of a acoustic phonograph that cut grooves in a wax-coated master disc.

15. The Electrical Revolution • 1925 - The Orthophonic phonograph, sound motion pictures and public address systems were all products of the electrical recording revolution pioneered by Bell Labs. Henry C. Harrison at Bell Labs developed a matched-impedance recorder to improve the frequency range from the previous narrow 250-2,500 cycles range of acoustic recorders to a wider range of 50-6,000 cycles using the condenser microphone, tube amplifier, balanced-armature speaker, and a rubber-line acoustic recorder with a long tapered horn. This system was licensed to the Victor Talking Machine Co. that used it in April to make the first electrical recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The new system was sold in October by Victor as the Orthophonic phonograph, capable of playing back acoustically-produced and electrically-produced records. It was this recording system that finally standardized recording speeds at 33-1/3 rpm for professional Vitaphone 16-inch discs, and 78 rpm for consumer 10 and 12-inch discs. Stokowski recording a record Victor record label with "VE" logo at top and bottom indicating that it was electrically recorded for the orthophonic, 1926

16. Stereo • 1931 - The EMI studio that opened Nov. 12 at Abbey Road in London, was the largest sound recording studio in the world; Louis Sterling hired Alan Blumlein to install Blumlein's own electrical recording system and Sterling stopped paying royalties to Western Electric. Alan Blumlein patented the "binaural" (stereo) recording method in England. • 1932 - in March, several test recordings were made at the Academy of Music using two microphones connected to two styli cutting two tracks on the same wax disk. On March 12 Stokowski recorded his first binaural disc, Scriabin's "Poem of Fire," although it was not called "stereo" at that time. Keller had apparently made similar dual recordings in New York in 1928 but were lost. • After the development of amplifiers and microphones, musicians could record in the same seating arrangement used in live concerts, with a single microphone to send electrical signals to an amplifier connected to an electro-magnetic disc-cutter.

17. Tapes • 1898 - Valdemar Poulsen patented in Denmark on Dec. 1 the first magnetic recorder, called the "telegraphone," using steel wire; he exhibited his device at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and formed the American Telegraphone Co. in Nov. 1903 after Congress validated his American patent 661,619. • 1931 - Pfleumer and AEG begin to construct the first magnetic tape recorders. • 1936 - first BASF/AEG tape recording on Nov.19 of live concert by Sir Thomas Beecham. • 1949 - Magnecord added a 2nd head to its PT-6 tape recorder (mono model first introduced at the May 1948 NAB show) to create one of the first open reel stereo tape recorders. • 1954 - RCA Victor sold the first prerecorded open reel stereo tapes for $12.95.

18. 1963 - Philips demonstrated its first compact audio cassettes using high-quality BASF polyester 1/8-inch tape; sold the next year in the U.S. with the Norelco Carry-Corder dictation machine, but the demand for blank tape used for personal music recording was unanticipated by Philips. • 1966 - U.S. cars equipped with 8-track stereo cartridge developed by William Lear (who founded the Learjet aviation company in 1962), Ampex, and RCA. • 1969 - Dolby Noise Reduction introduced for pre-recorded tapes.

19. Digital • 1962 – Tom Stockham at MIT began creating digital audio tape recordings using a large TX-0 computer and a A/D-D/A converter from Bernie Gordon at EPSCO. In 1968 he left MIT for the University of Utah, and in 1975 founded Soundstream with Malcolm Low (the L in KLH) and developed a 16-bit digital audio recorder. • 1963 - The Mellotron electronic music sampler recorded musical notes on loops of tape for each key on a keyboard. Unlike the 1920 Theremin that only produced oscillations, or the 1935 Hammond electronic organ, the Mellotron could create realistic sounds of different instruments such as a clarinet or violin. It was used by the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and by Led Zeppelin to create the flute sound at start of the 1971 recording of Stairway to Heaven. Music samplers would not be able to record digitally until Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie in 1979 developed the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument (CMI) that used 500k floppy disks.

20. 1969 - The Philips development began with efforts by Dutch physicists Klaas Compaan and Piet Kramer to record video images in holographic form on disc. Their prototype in 1972 used a laser beam to read a track of pits as the coded FM video signal. Lou Ottens of Philips had helped develop the compact audio cassette and required that the video disc be small size. A digital PCM code was substituted for the FM signal, the disc was made of polycarbon and 115mm diameter and tracked from inside to the outside. Another prototype was demonstrated in March 1979. Sony agreed to collaborate with Philips to develop standards. The compact disc as sold to the public for $15 would be made of plastic coated with a layer of aluminum and protected with a final layer of lacquer, costing less than $1 to manufacture. The master disc was made of glass, coated with photo emulsion, exposed to laser, then etched in chemical bath leaving pits in a spiral groove. The CD rotated at variable speeds of 200 rpm near the edge to 500 rpm near the center. The size would be 120mm, use 16-bit encoding and a sampling frequency of 44,100 per second. The maximum playing time would be 74 minutes, long enough to hold Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

21. 1980 - The Philips/Sony compact disc standard was finalized. The Sony CDP-101 compact disc player was introduced in Tokyo Oct. 1, 1982, in Europe in the fall of 1982, and in the U.S. in the spring of 1983. The first CD pressing plant in the U.S. was opened in Terre Haute IN in 1984, a center of shellac record production since the 19th century because of limestone deposits. • 1982 - First digital audio 5-inch CD discs marketed, merging the consumer music industry with the computer revolution. Sony’s 1st CD player

22. MIDI and Digital Recording • 1981 - At the October meeting of the AES, Dave Smith and Chet Wood from Sequential Circuits presented a paper on the Universal Synthesizer Interface that became the basis of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol adopted August 1982 and demonstrated at the first North American Music Manufacturers show in Los Angeles in 1983. The first MIDI keyboards by Roland and Sequential Circuits, and the Yamaha DX7, were put on sale in 1983. MIDI made it possible for keyboards, sequencers, and other equipment to talk to each other. • 1982 - Tom Jung used digital audio to make direct 2-track recordings and released the first jazz CDs on his DMP label. He would later pioneer 20-bit recording in order to make full use of the CD 16-bit dynamic range with the added necessary recording headroom of 10dB and reduce the noise evident in lower amplitudes. Digital Audio and the computer revolution made it possible for the individual to record and high-quality music.

23. Electronic Music • "I have been waiting a long time for electronics to free music from the tempered scale and the limitations of musical instruments. Electronic instruments are the portentour first step toward the liberation of music." -- Edgard Varese