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Re: Audio recording: some interesting research tid-bits

From: Brian Taves <btav~at~loc.gov>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:43:19 -0500 (EST)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Following up on Andrew's lead, here's some info on the Library of Congress
web site about recording preservation.

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/record.html

http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/cyn.html

We have an enormous collection of the cylinders here.


Brian Taves
Motion Picture/Broadcasting/Recorded Sound Division
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20540-4692
Telephone: 202-707-9930; 202-707-2371 (fax)
Email: btav~at~loc.gov


Disclaimer--All opinions expressed are my own.


On Thu, 30 Mar 2006, Andrew Nash wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>


Brian Taves
Motion Picture/Broadcasting/Recorded Sound Division
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, D.C. 20540-4692
Telephone: 202-707-9930; 202-707-2371 (fax)
Email: btav~at~loc.gov


Disclaimer--All opinions expressed are my own.
Received on Fri 31 Mar 2006 - 03:44:58 IDT

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