THE SCIENCE AND APPLICATIONS OF ACOUSTICS - H. H. Arnold ...

19Sound Reproduction19.1 Historical OverviewUntil 1877 when Thomas Edison (1847–1931) developed the phonograph, therewas no way to record and reproduce sounds. While working to improve theefficiency of a telegraph transmitter, Edison noted that the noise emanating fromthat type of machine resembled spoken words when operating at high speed.This caused him to wonder if he could record a telephone message. He beganexperimenting with the diaphragm of a telephone receiver by attaching a needleto it. He reasoned that the needle could prick a paper tape to record a message.He continued to experiment and he tried a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which tohis surprise, played back the short message he had recorded, “Mary had a littlelamb.” The word phonograph was Edison’s trade name for his device that playedcylinders rather than disks.Edison’s phonograph was followed by Alexander Graham Bell’s (1847–1922)gramophone that played a wax cylinder that could be replayed many times, but theprogram content had to be recorded separately for each copy. No mass reproductionof the same music or sounds was possible.In 1877, a German immigrant Emile Berliner (1851–1929) working inWashington, DC, invented a system of recording that could be used over and overagain. Berliner switched from a cylinder-type medium to a flat disk. He patented thegramophone (the true precursor of the modern phonograph), enhanced by a springmotor developed by Elridge Johnson (1867–1945), which allowed the turntable torevolve at a steady speed without the need for hand cranking of the gramophone.Berliner also invented the carbon microphone that became part of the first Belltelephones and founded the Gramophone Company to mass-produce his sounddisks and his gramophone for playing them. He made two smart marketing moves:he persuaded popular artists, among them Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba,to record their music; and in 1908 he used Francis Barraud’s painting of “HisMaster’s Voice” as the company logo.Until the late 1920s, motion pictures were silent except for the music accompanimentprovided by the theater management in the form of a piano player orlive orchestra. All this changed in 1926 when the Warner Brothers (Jack, Harry,569