Jules Verne Forum

<jvf@Gilead.org.il>

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec 19961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009

Re: Audio recording: some interesting research tid-bits

From: Andrew Nash <anash~at~julesverne.ca>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:01:44 -0500
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

After reading Garmt's messages and the replies, I had to do my own research, and here are some interesting tidbits:

Besides the commercially released brown wax cylinders, the UCSB collection also contains a small series of home recordings. These cylinders were made from wax "blanks," which Edison claimed could be reused up to one hundred times by literally shaving off the old grooves. In this way, brown wax blanks could perhaps be considered an early rewritable medium, akin to a CD-RW today. For these home recordings, discerning identification information as well as playback speed is often impossible. Yet hearing them can be a fascinating, even otherworldly experience: a crying baby who cannot be pacified, say, or a drunken caterwauler flailing through a song, their identities forever lost to time.

Extracted from site: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/history-brownwax.php

Edison stopped making cylinder record players in 1929 but recording on reusable wax cylinders remained common in dictating machines until the end of the Second World War. The Museum has 31 such machines made by Edison and Dictaphone Corp (740325).

Extracted from site: http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/collection/cylinder_play.cfm

Shortly after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording sound, in 1877, he thought that the main use for the new device would be for recording speech in business settings. (Given the low audio fidelity of earliest versions of the phonograph, thinking that recording speech would be more important than recording music may not have been as absurd an assumption as it may seem in retrospect.) Some early phonographs were indeed used this way, but this did not become common until the mass production of reusable wax cylinders in the late 1880s. The differentiation of office dictation devices from other early phonographs (which commonly had attachments for making one's own recordings) was gradual.

Extracted from site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictaphone

Alexander Graham Bell took this invention a step further by replacing the foil-covered cylinder with one coated with wax. The needle cut a pattern that varied in depth onto the wax surface. For recording, Bell relied on a very sharp stylus and firm membrane. During playback, he switched to a dull stylus and a looser membrane so as not to destroy the original impressions. To reuse the cylinder, the wax could be shaved and smoothed. For the first time, sound recording could be accomplished on removable and reusable media. The process was further improved with the addition of an electric motor to replace the hand crank, so that recording and playback took place at uniform speeds. Recorded cylinders were then metal-plated to create a mould so that a number of copies of the original could be produced.

Extracted from site: http://www.uefap.com/speaking/function/narrate.htm

Optical carriers

The compact disc is probably the greatest innovation in the reproduction of sound since Edison's wax cylinders.

Extracted from the site: http://www.nb.no/verneplan/lyd/english/long.html

I particularly like this one (below)..it seems that Edison perfected the tin recording, then moved on to the light bulb, and Alexander Graham Bell made the change to wax ..and here's the good part...*****using his winnings from the Volta Prize of $10,000 from the French government for his invention of the telephone...***
So thanks to the French government, we now have a recording of Jules Verne!!!
So this has become a French ($10,000 prize)/American (Edison)/Canadian (Bell)/ and now Dutch (Garmt/Appel)/ and German (Krauth
) collaboration.....Hurray for the International community!!!

Edison took his new invention to the offices of Scientific American in New York City and showed it to staff there. As the December 22, 1877, issue reported, "Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night." Interest was great, and the invention was reported in several New York newspapers, and later in other American newspapers and magazines.

............

The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established on January 24, 1878, to exploit the new machine by exhibiting it. Edison received $10,000 for the manufacturing and sales rights and 20% of the profits. As a novelty, the machine was an instant success, but was difficult to operate except by experts, and the tin foil would last for only a few playings.

Eventually, the novelty of the invention wore off for the public, and Edison did no further work on the phonograph for a while, concentrating instead on inventing the incadescent light bulb

In the void left by Edison, others moved forward to improve the phonograph. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell won the Volta Prize of $10,000 from the French government for his invention of the telephone. Bell used his winnings to set up a laboratory to further electrical and acoustical research, working with his cousin Chichester A. Bell, a chemical engineer, and Charles Sumner Tainter, a scientist and instrument maker. They made some improvements on Edison's invention, chiefly by using wax in the place of tin foil and a floating stylus instead of a rigid needle which would incise, rather than indent, the cylinder. A patent was awarded to C. Bell and Tainter on May 4, 1886. The machine was exhibited to the public as the graphophone. Bell and Tainter had representatives approach Edison to discuss a possible collaboration on the machine, but Edison refused and determined to improve the phonograph himself. At this point, he had succeeded in making the incandescent lamp and could now resume his work on the phonograph. His initial work, though, closely followed the improvements made by Bell and Tainter, especially in its use of wax cylinders, and was called the New Phonograph.

Extracted from the site: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html

and from the same page: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html
Please note the mention of "2 minute recording time"..so if Garmt found 5 cylinders = 10 mins, and it was an interview, we may have 5 or more minutes of Verne's voice (i.e. 2 participants, 5 mins each!)

In 1894, Edison declared bankruptcy for the North American Phonograph Company, a move that enabled him to buy back the rights to his invention. It took two years for the bankruptcy affairs to be settled before Edison could move ahead with marketing his invention. The Edison Spring Motor Phonograph appeared in 1895, even though technically Edison was not allowed to sell phonographs at this time because of the bankruptcy agreement. In January 1896, he started the National Phonograph Company which would manufacture phonographs for home entertainment use. Within three years, branches of the company were located in Europe. Under the aegis of the company, he announced the Spring Motor Phonograph in 1896, followed by the Edison Home Phonograph, and he began the commercial issue of cylinders under the new company's label. A year later, the Edison Standard Phonograph was manufactured, and then exhibited in the press in 1898. This was the first phonograph to carry the Edison trademark design. Prices for the phonographs had significantly diminished from its early days of $150 (in 1891) down to $20 for the Standard model and $7.50 for a model known as the Gem, introduced in 1899.

Standard-sized cylinders, which tended to be 4.25" long and 2.1875" in diameter, were 50 cents each and typically played at 120 r.p.m. A variety of selections were featured on the cylinders, including marches, sentimental ballads, coon songs, hymns, comic monologues and descriptive specialities, which offered sound reenactments of events.

The early cylinders had two significant problems. The first was the short length of the cylinders, only 2 minutes. This necessarily narrowed the field of what could be recorded. The second problem was that no mass method of duplicating cylinders existed. Most often, performers had to repeat their performances when recording in order to amass a quantity of cylinders. This was not only time-consuming, but costly.

The Edison Concert Phonograph, which had a louder sound and a larger cylinder measuring 4.25" long and 5" in diameter, was introduced in 1899, retailing for $125 and the large cylinders for $4. The Concert Phonograph did not sell well, and prices for it and its cylinders were dramatically reduced. Their production ceased in 1912.

.........

A new business phonograph was introduced in 1905. Similar to a standard phonograph, it had alterations to the reproducer and mandrel. The early machines were difficult to use, and their fragility made them prone to failure. Even though improvements were made to the machine over the years, they still cost more than the popular, inexpensive Dictaphones put out by Columbia. Electrical motors and controls were later added to the Edison business machine, which improved their performance. (Some Edison phonographs made before 1895 also had electric motors, until they were replaced by spring motors.)

At this point, the Edison business phonograph became a dictating system. Three machines were used: the executive dictating machine, the secretarial machine for transcribing, and a shaving machine used to recycle used cylinders. This system can be seen in the Edison advertising film, The Stenographer's Friend, filmed in 1910.

Extracted from the site: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html

And I'm sure there is lots more out there....
Andrew Nash

Garmt de Vries <G.deVries~at~phys.uu.nl>
At 02:55 AM 30/03/2006, you wrote:

Dear all,

I have received many reactions to my message about the audio recording of the interview with Jules Verne. I'm sorry that I don't have time to reply to each of you individually right now (I'm in the middle of a renovation).

Some fair points have been made by various people: don't mess around with the cylinders yourself, as they are very fragile; keep them safe, because you never know what some people may do when they hear about this; and keep it quiet for the moment. These are things I hadn't considered in my enthusiasm.

I have made a couple of phonecalls, and it turns out there's a museum that maintains an archive of old recordings, and also has a lot of experience with digitizing vinyl records, wax cylinders, etc. Rina Appel and I have been invited to come to the museum on Friday, so that's what we'll do, rather than working on the cylinders ourselves. The technician I talked with couldn't promise that the entire interview could be transferred in one evening, but most probably we will be able to make a short sample, which I'll post as promised.

Once the operation is underway, we'll see how we go about going public with it. For the time being, the cylinders will be stored in a safe at a bank.

Cheers,
Garmt.

Received on Thu 30 Mar 2006 - 19:02:33 IST

JV.Gilead.org.il
Copyright © Zvi Har’El
$Date: 2009/02/01 22:36:11 $$