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Re: Audio recording: some interesting research tid-bits

From: Mark Eckell <mark_eckell~at~hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:42:31 +0000
To: jvf~at~Gilead.org.il

This really sounds like a dream come true especially a dream nobody would
have thought of. What an incredible find!

It would be really terrific if a copy (or copies) of the recording were
available for the NAJVS annual meeting in May. It certainly would be a
headline event.


>From: Andrew Nash <anash~at~julesverne.ca>
>Reply-To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
>To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>
>Subject: Re: Audio recording: some interesting research tid-bits
>Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:01:44 -0500
>
>
>
>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 - 21:42:42 IST

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