Phonograph cylinder[edit]

"Kham Hom" ("Sweet

Words")

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Phonograph
cylinder recording
of Siamese (Thai)
musicians visiting Berlin,
Germany in 1900.

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On April 30, 1877, French poet, humorous writer and inventor Charles Cros submitted a sealed
envelope containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris fully explaining his proposed
method, called the paleophone.[10] Though no trace of a working paleophone was ever found,
Cros is remembered by historians as the earliest inventor of a sound recording and reproduction
machine.[citation needed]
The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph
cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878.[11][12] The invention soon
spread across the globe and over the next two decades the commercial recording, distribution,
and sale of sound recordings became a growing new international industry, with the most popular
titles selling millions of units by the early 1900s.[citation needed] The development of mass-production
techniques enabled cylinder recordings to become a major new consumer item in industrial
countries and the cylinder was the main consumer format from the late 1880s until around 1910.

Disc phonograph[edit]

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Recording of Bell's voice on a wax disc in 1885, identified in 2013 [more details]

Emile Berliner with disc record gramophone

The next major technical development was the invention of the gramophone record, generally
credited to Emile Berliner[by whom?] and patented in 1887,[13] though others had demonstrated similar
disk apparatus earlier, most notably Alexander Graham Bell in 1881.[14] Discs were easier to
manufacture, transport and store, and they had the additional benefit of being marginally louder
than cylinders. Sales of the gramophone record overtook the cylinder ca. 1910, and by the end of
World War I the disc had become the dominant commercial recording format. Edison, who was
the main producer of cylinders, created the Edison Disc Record in an attempt to regain his
market. The double-sided (nominally 78 rpm) shellac disc was the standard consumer music
format from the early 1910s to the late 1950s. In various permutations, the audio disc format
became the primary medium for consumer sound recordings until the end of the 20th century.
Although there was no universally accepted speed, and various companies offered discs that
played at several different speeds, the major recording companies eventually settled on a de
facto industry standard of nominally 78 revolutions per minute. The specified speed was 78.26
rpm in America and 77.92 rpm throughout the rest of the world. The difference in speeds was
due to the difference in the cycle frequencies of the AC electricity that powered
the stroboscopes used to calibrate recording lathes and turntables.[15] The nominal speed of the
disc format gave rise to its common nickname, the "seventy-eight" (though not until other speeds
had become available). Discs were made of shellac or similar brittle plastic-like materials, played
with needles made from a variety of materials including mild steel, thorn, and even sapphire.
Discs had a distinctly limited playing life that varied depending on how they were manufactured.
Earlier, purely acoustic methods of recording had limited sensitivity and frequency range. Mid-
frequency range notes could be recorded, but very low and very high frequencies could not.
Instruments such as the violin were difficult to transfer to disc. One technique to deal with this
involved using a Stroh violin which uses a conical horn connected to a diaphragm that in turn is
connected to the violin bridge. The horn was no longer needed once electrical recording was
developed.
The long-playing 331⁄3 rpm microgroove LP record, was developed at Columbia Records and
introduced in 1948. The short-playing but convenient 7-inch (18 cm) 45 rpm microgroove
vinyl single was introduced by RCA Victor in 1949. In the US and most developed countries, the
two new vinyl formats completely replaced 78 rpm shellac discs by the end of the 1950s, but in
some corners of the world, the 78 lingered on far into the 1960s.[citation needed] Vinyl was much more
expensive than shellac, one of the several factors that made its use for 78 rpm records very
unusual, but with a long-playing disc the added cost was acceptable. The compact 45 format
required very little material. Vinyl offered improved performance, both in stamping and in
playback. Vinyl records were, over-optimistically, advertised as "unbreakable". They were not,
but they were much less fragile than shellac, which had itself once been touted as "unbreakable"
compared to wax cylinders.