Phonograph

The phonograph was the first common device for recording and reproducing sound from the 1870s to the 1880s. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Alva Edison. In its later forms, it is also called gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the United Kingdom since 1910). Sound vibration waveforms are recorded as the corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove etched or printed on the surface of a rotating cylinder or disk, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated, while a playback stylus traces the groove and therefore vibrates, very weakly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm that produced sound waves that were coupled into the open air through a burning horn, or directly into the listener's ears through earphones. While other inventors produced devices that could record, Edison's phonograph was the first to reproduce recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound on a sheet of aluminum foil wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus that responds to sound vibrations produces an up and down groove in the sheet. Alexander Graham Bell's laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting pencil that moved back and forth in a zigzag groove around the record.

In the 1890s, Emile Berliner began the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat records with a spiral groove from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for record recording and playback, which is predominantly used in many languages. The gramophone ended up prevailing over the phonograph, due to the lower production cost of the recordings intended for this device, given that thousands of copies could be made from a single original mold. While to record cylinders en masse, several phonographs were needed to record the cylinders.

The gramophone mechanism was simpler, cheaper and had a longer life, which is why it remained and ended up displacing the phonograph. However, for some time the phonograph had a great advantage over the gramophone: the user could perform home recordings, a fact that could only become a reality again with wire recorders and later tape recorders, the latter with great commercial success. The gramophone was progressively replaced, starting in the 1940s, by the tape recorder. and the turntable for recording and playing vinyl records, respectively.

Etymology

The word phonograph comes from the Greek φωνη (sound, voice) and γράφος (to write).

The use of terminology is not uniform throughout the world. In more modern usage, the playback device is often called a 'record player'. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, turntables are often colloquially called 'decks'. In later electric phonographs (better known since the 1940s as record players), the movements of the stylus are converted into an analog electrical signal by a transducer, and then converted back to sound by a speaker.

Arguably any device used to record sound or play recorded sound could be called a type of 'phonograph', but in practice, the word has come to mean historical sound recording technologies, involving audio frequency modulations of a physical trace or slot. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the XX, "phonograph", "gramophone", "grafophone", "zonophone" and similar were still specific brands from various manufacturers of sometimes very different machines (i.e. cylinders and discs); so considerable use was made of the generic term 'talking machine', especially in print. The "talking machine" It had previously been used to refer to complicated devices that produced a crude imitation of speech by simulating the functioning of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips, a possible source of confusion both then and now.

The phonautograph

The first known invention of a device capable of recording a sound vibration, known as a "phonautograph", was invented by the Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and patented on March 25, 1857. It could transcribe a sound vibration to a visible medium, but it did not have a way to be reproduced afterwards. The device consisted of a horn or barrel that collected the waves onto a membrane to which a rope was tied. When the wave arrived, it vibrated and moved and the sound vibration could be recorded in a visible medium. Initially, the phonautograph was recorded on smoked glass. A later version used smoked paper rolled on a drum or cylinder. Another version drew a line representing sound vibration on a roll of paper. The phonautograph was considered a laboratory curiosity for the study of acoustics. It was used to determine the frequency of a musical tone and to study sound and speech. It was not understood until after the development of the phonograph, since the wave recorded by the phonautograph was in fact a recording of sound that only needed a suitable reproduction medium to sound.

In 2008, American scholars of sound history reproduced the sound recorded by a phonautograph for the first time.

	Au Clair de la Lune This 1860 fonoautogram (by Leon Scott) is the first known replayable and recognizable recording of a human voice.
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The team managed to access the papers with recordings of Leon Scott's phonautograph that were stored in the patent office of the French Académie des Sciences. They scanned the embossed paper with a sophisticated computer program developed years earlier by the US Library of Congress. The waves on the paper were translated by a computer into audible, recognizable sounds. One of them, created on April 9, 1860, turned out to be a 10-second recording (lo-fi but recognizable) of someone singing the French folk song 'Au Clair de la Lune'. This "phonautogram" It is the first known sound recording, as well as the first recording that is, currently, playable. Long before the recording of a talking clock by Frank Lambert and that of a Handel concerto made by the Edison Company, which date from two and three decades later, respectively.

Edison's phonograph

It was not until 1877, when the phonograph was created, that it was the first device capable of reproducing sound. When Thomas Alva Edison announced the invention of his first phonograph, the first piece performed was "Mary had a little lamb" ("Mary had a little lamb") on November 21, 1877. Edison showed the device for the first time on November 29 of that same year and patented it on February 19, 1878.

The phonograph uses an analog mechanical recording system, in which sound waves are transformed into mechanical vibrations using an acoustic-mechanical transducer. These vibrations move a stylet that carves a helical groove on a phonograph cylinder. To play the sound, the process is reversed.

At first, tin-coated cardboard cylinders were used, later waxed cardboard and, finally, solid wax. The wax cylinder, of higher quality and durability, was marketed since 1889, a year after the gramophone appeared.

On December 2, 1889, a representative of the Edison house, Theo Wangeman, recorded a performance of the famous composer Johannes Brahms. It was a fragment of the Hungarian Dances in a version for solo piano. This recording is still preserved, but its quality is terrible.

Inventions after the phonograph

Since 1877, multiple devices similar to the phonograph were developed and the so-called "talking machines" emerged. However, only the gramophone managed to overshadow Edison's invention.

In 1887, Emile Berliner patented the gramophone, an instrument very similar to the phonograph that was used to provide sound for motion pictures and was the starting point of the CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System).[1]

Due to its defects, in 1888 Emilio Berliner invented the gramophone, quickly displacing the phonograph after it did not use a cylinder but a flat record. With the gramophone, Mr. Berliner formed the Victor Talking Machine company in 1901, a company that was purchased by RCA in 1929.

Phonographs in the 21st century

Record players are still manufactured and sold in the 2010s, although in small quantities. While some audiophiles still prefer the sound of vinyl records over that of digital music sources (mainly compact discs), they represent a minority of listeners. As of 2015, the sale of vinyl records has increased by 49-50% compared to the previous year, although it is small compared to the sale of other formats that although they sold more units (digital downloads or CDs), the most formats moderns experienced a decline in sales. The quality of record players, tonearms and cartridges available has continued to improve, despite declining demand, allowing turntables to remain competitive in the high-end audio market. Vinyl enthusiasts often engage in remodeling and sometimes tuning vintage systems. The chart to the right illustrates that users on an enthusiast forum post as many photos of discontinued equipment as they do of current models.

Updated versions of the 1970s Technics SL-1200 (production ceased in 2010) have remained an industry standard for DJs to this day. Turntables and vinyl records remain popular in the (mostly dance-oriented) mix of electronic music, where they allow great freedom for the physical manipulation of the music by the DJ.

In hip hop music and occasionally other genres, the turntable is used as a musical instrument by DJs, who use turntables in conjunction with a DJ mixer to create unique rhythmic sounds. The manipulation of a record as part of the music, rather than normal playback or mixing, is called turntablism. The basis of turntablism, and its most well-known technique, is scratching, pioneered by Grand Wizzard Theodore. It wasn't until "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock in 1983 that the turntablism movement was recognized in popular music outside the context of hip hop. In the 2010s, many hip hop DJs use DJ CD players or digital recording emulator devices to create scratch sounds; However, some DJs still scratch with vinyl records.