The Best Audio Amplifiers Over The Years — Now

The Evolution of Audio Recordings

While Edison mastered taking credit for being the first to make a recording, that honour actually goes to a Frenchman who recorded the song, Au Clair De La Lune, in 1857, decades before the Edison claim. Based on his research on how the human ear worked, he created a device that recorded sound waves focused at a membrane and stylus that wrote on oil lamp unburned carbon residue (i.e. soot). That paper drum recording was called a “Phonautograph”.

The 1877 process Edison patented in 1878 eventually entered the commercial market when a cousin of Alexander Graham Bell patented the “Gramaphone” in 1886. It used a wax covered cardboard disk that made replaying the recording more durable. In 1888-89 Emile Berliner introduced the flat disk and the first playback machine called a Gramaphone. Edison engage this evolution in 1888 with a improved wax cylinder and the race for audio fidelity was off. Between 1896 and 1913 Edison marketed his Standard, Home and Gem versions of disks while Bell pursued the more more profitable vending machine versions of music distribution. Berliner on another hand focused on the market when he opened the “Gramophone Company” offices at Covent Garden in England. His gramophone featured better clockwork style motors, wire playback needles, more solid rubber with record surfaces using bits of slate and shellac. These changes meant needles now wore out before the record and more consistent reliable playback. His changes were a key turning point that came in with the new century in 1900.

Then in the first decade, as record speeds varied between 68 and 80 RPM, along came the French company Pathe. It’s work to perfect sound used the Edison grove modulation technique rather the Berliners side to side, on a flat disc. It also reversed the play to run from the inside to the outer grooves at a 90 plus RPM speed. This brought forward the impact of end of performance crescendos. Its Tournaphone player also featured a bigger makes better horn. Unfortunately by the end of World War I however only the Berliner records remained available to the consumer.

In 1925 the record industry of the time settled on the speed of 78.26 RPM. Of course there were exceptions like Columbia Records ‘Speed 80’ records and Pathe’s 86 RPM records. As the second World War arrived so to did the electric era of phono cartridges, motors, amplifiers and real speakers. The 78 RPM, with one song on each side, dominated music until after the Second World War and well into the Big Band Ear of music.

The end of the 1950’s brought a new turning point that included vinyl records, reel to real recording with tape recorders, and stereo. Hi Fidelity truly meant something and transistor radios were opening up music to a broader consumer markets.