This is debatable; the recent rise in popularity of record players might be simply because people have an emotional connection to records. Some attribute their popularity to a nostalgia factor, while others like that records are so tangible. Do you prefer to listen to old vinyl records? Do you think they produce a "warmer" sound? Let us know in the comments below! The Written Sound The Economist "In February a news report echoed around the internet, purporting to play back 6,year-old voices and other sounds from a clay pot.
Before the s -- before the invention of tapes, compact discs and MP3 players -- people listened to recorded music on record players. There was no fast forward, rewind or shuffle. Instead, you chose an album and enjoyed about 25 minutes of music by one artist before flipping it over for more or putting another record on the turntable.
From the time the phonograph was invented in until it was slowly phased out and replaced by other music media nearly years later, the technology used to play recorded sounds changed only slightly. And today, records and record players are even enjoying a comeback. In this article, we'll look back to see how Thomas Edison's favorite invention works and how it has influenced on culture and society.
Up first, we'll see how the idea of recording sound came to be, and whether Edison was actually the first person to discover it. In , Thomas Edison and his assistants attached a needle to the diaphragm of a telephone receiver with the idea that the needle could be used to etch an impression of sound onto quickly moving paper, thus creating a recording or sound writing. Edison understood that sound is the vibration of particles across a medium, such as air, in waves.
He developed a way to imprint or record the waves so that they could be played back or turned back into sound using a second needle. He eventually designed a device he called the phonograph that had a brass cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, which rotated and moved lengthwise when turned by a hand crank.
On one side was a diaphragm, or very thin membrane, connected to a needle. When sound waves were forced into the receiving end, it caused the membrane to vibrate and the needle to etch a groove into the foil as the cylinder was being turned by the crank, thus recording sound. A second needle and an amplifier were on the other side. When the cylinder was set to the beginning and the needle placed in the grooves, the original sound was reproduced as the vibrations were amplified. Edison created his first voice recording by shouting the words to "Mary had a little lamb" into a mouthpiece, causing the sound waves to vibrate a needle and etch the nursery rhyme into tinfoil for playback.
The phonograph was a breakthrough, as it had the ability not only to record sound, but to play it back. Edison originally thought that the phonograph would be useful in offices for dictation, for families to record their history or for teachers to record lessons. He considered applying the technology to toys such as talking dolls and music boxes. But the phonograph proved too difficult for most people to use, and the tinfoil on which the recordings were made did not last.
Interest in the machine waned as its applications proved impractical in its current state. Edison put it aside to pursue work on other inventions.
When he resumed work on the phonograph nearly 10 years later, another inventor had moved it one step closer to the record player.
Even before Edison's invention, other inventors made discoveries about recording sound. In the s, French printer Leon Scott used a phonautograph to imprint sound waves onto a glass cylinder. And in , just before Edison's discovery, another French inventor, Charles Cros wrote of a machine called the paleophone that could record sounds, but he never patented it [source: Schoenherr ].
Although Edison temporarily stopped work on his phonograph, interest in recording and playing sound was not abandoned. Ten years after its invention, in , a German inventor in the U.
Instead of a cylinder with the sound etched in tinfoil or wax, he developed a device that rotated a hard rubber and later, shellac disc on a flat plate by the turn of a crank. But unlike its predecessor, the phonograph, Berliner's machine, the gramophone, could only play recordings.
So Berliner started the Gramophone Company, which manufactured not only the machines, but the records played on them. What was lost in the ability to both record and play back sound in one machine resulted in a new system whereby mass-produced recordings could be played and shared repeatedly. Berliner's company merged with that of inventor Eldridge Johnson to become the Victor Talking Machine Company in It manufactured and advertised both gramophones and records.
Johnson refined the design of the gramophone, which until that time had been dominated by a large horn to amplify the sound. In order to fit more comfortably in a home, the horn was tilted down and the entire device placed in a cabinet. This new design, introduced in , was called the Victrola. Meanwhile, the company also manufactured discs recorded by famous opera singers and musicians, giving the public unprecedented access to music [source: Shoenherr , Morton: Phonograph ].
Over time, the design of the gramophone and the recording process were continuously changing, yet the core elements of the needle in a groove remained the same. By the midth century, most households had what was then commonly known as a record player and most recently called a turntable. Its mass popularity lasted until about the mids when cassette tape recordings overtook records.
These signals are fed into electronic amplifiers. Electric amps vibrate and feed the resulting sound into speakers, which amplify it and make it louder. Record players still use the whole needle and groove methodology that a phonograph used, although record players today are much more high tech. So how do they work exactly? The needle, or stylus of a record player is one of several parts that make up a transducer.
A transducer is what changes mechanical energy into electrical energy and changes electrical energy into mechanical energy. The whole system contains a stylus, magnets, coils, cantilever, and a body within a cartridge. The mechanical energy from the sound waves is converted into electrical energy, which is then sent into the amplifier and out to the speakers.
When a vinyl record is made, a needle is used to create grooves in the vinyl that is basically recorded information of the desired sound or music. A needle or stylus is also used to read the information contained in the grooves, playing it back so that we can hear the recorded information. On the left side of the groove and on the right side are channels of audio information that makeup stereo sound. Fun factoid; once upon a time, records were made of rubber. Now, they are vinyl. Another fun factoid; the little grooves in a record would be roughly meters long if you were to unwind it into a straight line.
A master copy of a record is made using a stylus to cut grooves into a round disk. The master copy is ridged instead of grooved. The stamp is pressed into steam-softened vinyl, using a hydraulic press. The vinyl disc is cooled with water and viola… a finished vinyl record is born. Once a vinyl record is made, it is played on a record player.
A record player is sometimes called a turntable. The receiver consisted of a tin foil wrapped cylinder and a very thin membrane, called a diaphragm, attached to a needle. Sound waves were directed into the diaphragm, making it vibrate. A hand crank turned the cylinder to rotate the tinfoil cylinder while the needle cut a groove into it to record the sound vibrations from the diaphragm.
The output side of the machine played the sound through a needle and an amplifier. The needle was set in the groove and the cylinder set to the beginning. The amplified vibrations played back the recorded sounds.
The recording medium used in the original phonograph was awkward to use and broke easily.
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