Phonograph record

The phonograph is a device invented in 1877 for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms it is also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name since c. 1900). The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones. In later electric phonographs (also known as record players (since 1940s) or, most recently, turntables^[1]), the motions of the stylus are converted into an analogous electrical signal by a transducer, then converted back into sound by a loudspeaker.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison.^[2][3][4][5] While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders, and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a "zig zag" groove around the record.

In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the stylus or needle, and the sound and equalization systems.

The disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. From the mid-1980s on, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply because of the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc and other digital recording formats. Records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles and DJs. Vinyl records are still used by some DJs and musicians in their concert performances. Musicians continue to release their recordings on vinyl records. The original recordings of musicians are sometimes re-issued on vinyl.

Contents

• 1Terminology
  • 1.1United Kingdom
  • 1.2United States
  • 1.3Australia
• 2History
  • 2.1Predecessors to the phonograph
  • 2.2Phonautograph
  • 2.3Paleophone
  • 2.4First phonograph
  • 2.5Early machines
  • 2.6Introduction of the disc record
  • 2.7Oldest surviving recordings
• 3Improvements at the Volta Laboratory
  • 3.1Volta's early challenge
  • 3.2Volta Graphophone
  • 3.3Graphophone commercialization
• 4Disc versus cylinder as a recording medium
• 5Dominance of the disc record
  • 5.1First all-transistor phonograph
• 6Turntable technology
  • 6.1Turntable construction
  • 6.2Turntable drive systems
• 7Arm systems
  • 7.1Linear tracking
• 8Pickup systems
  • 8.1Piezoelectric (crystal/ceramic) cartridges
  • 8.2Magnetic cartridges
  • 8.3Strain gauge cartridges
  • 8.4Electrostatic cartridges
  • 8.5Optical readout
• 9Styluses (or "styli")
• 10Record materials
• 11Equalization
• 12Phonographs in the 21st century
• 13See also
• 14References
• 15Further reading
• 16External links

Terminology[]

Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, the playback device is often called a "turntable", "record player", or "record changer". When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, turntables are often called "decks".

The term phonograph ("sound writing") was derived from the Greek words φωνή (phonē, "sound" or "voice") and γραφή (graphē, "writing"). The similar related terms gramophone (from the Greek γράμμα gramma "letter" and φωνή phōnē "voice") and graphophone have similar root meanings. The roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph ("light writing"), telegraph ("distant writing"), and telephone ("distant sound"). The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording, involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone" and the like were still brand names specific to various makers of sometimes very different (i.e. cylinder and disc) machines; so considerable use was made of the generic term "talking machine", especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips – a potential source of confusion both then and now.

United Kingdom[]

In British English, "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. Originally, "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision^[6] decreed that it had become a generic term; it has been so used in the UK and most Commonwealth countries ever since. The term "phonograph" was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records.

"Gramophone" generally referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records,  33 ¹⁄₃-rpm LPs (long-playing records) and 45-rpm "single" or two-song records, and EPs (extended-play recordings), the common name became "record player" or "turntable". Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio (*radiogram*) and, later, might also play audiotape cassettes. From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, monophonic) or a "stereo" (most systems being stereophonic by the mid-1960s).

United States[]

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Early_phonograph,_Deaf_Smith_County_Museum,_Hereford,_TX_IMG_4857.JPG)

Early phonograph at Deaf Smith County Historical Museum in Hereford, Texas

In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to Emile Berliner's upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played discs. "Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but in the early 20th century the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played.

By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrolas (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were however still called "phonograph records" or simply "records", almost never "victrola records".

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Wikipedia

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