A simple chronology runs: tin foil cylinder > wax cylinder > shellac disc > vinyl disc
The truth is more nuanced. When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, he filed patents that included disc-shaped records. But cylinders were the first to work well, and the first to be successfully brought to market.
1853/4
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the phonautograph, the first device for recording airborne sounds. These could only record, not play back. In 2008 FirstSounds.org successfully reconstructed the sound of Scott de Martinville singing – a recording made on lampblacked paper, 17 years before Edison invented the phonograph.
1877
Parisian poet Charles Cros writes a letter containing a method for recording and playing back sound. He is without the funds to develop his idea.
Thomas Edison plays back his own voice saying ‘Halloooo’, recorded on a strip of paper at Menlo Park, New Jersey.
The first hint of a new sound recording invention is published in a letter to Scientific American.
Nov 29th, Swiss-born machinist John Kruesi is handed a sketch by Edison. Kruesi builds the phonograph. The first successful playback from this tinfoil cylinder phonograph (Edison saying ‘Mary had a little lamb’) takes place December 6.
The tinfoil phonograph is demonstrated at the New York City offices of Scientific American.
Here’s how it worked: a piece of tin-foil is wrapped around a cylinder. You shout into a mouthpiece containing a diaphragm attached to a needle while rotating the cylinder. Your voice makes the needle vibrate, carving a groove in the tin-foil. Place the needle back at the start, rotate the cylinder and it plays back the sound. The tinfoil can only stand a few repeats before it is destroyed.
Demonstration phonographs tour the world, generating interest and coverage. However, these were expensive, unreliable and hard to use. Edison’s attention turns towards electric lightbulbs.
1880s
Alexander Graham Bell sets up the Volta lab in Washington DC. With Massachusetts-born engineer Charles Tainter, they begin working on an answer to the phonograph. They produce a vast array of prototypes, including the first lateral-cut or zig-zag record in the Summer of 1881. (Most early records are vertical-cut or ‘hill-and-dale’.)
1885
Earliest recorded swear word. Volta Labs, Washington DC. The speaker is thought to be Volta Labs associate Harry G. Rogers, and the word is thought to be f@*k.
1885
The Volta team finally launch a second generation phonograph. The ‘Graphophone’ uses wax-coated card cylinders, incised with vertical-cut/’hill-and-dale’ grooves. It’s aimed at the business community – a cylinder could record a few minutes of dictation, which could then be handed to typists.
1887
A third type of record appears, made by German-American Emile Berliner. He’s granted patent 372,786 for the ‘Gramophone’, which uses a disc, photo-engraved with a lateral-cut groove.
Edison launches a much improved phonograph, now with a battery-powered electric motor and wax cylinders.
1888
Berliner demonstrates his gramophone at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. He uses a one-sided 7-inch disc with lateral-cut grooves, hand-cranked at 30 rpm with roughly 2-minutes capacity.
Oldest recording of a public performance – Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt, Friday 29th June 1888, 2pm, Crystal Palace, London. It is recorded from the press gallery by Edison-representative Colonel Gouraud. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qDwz3JdD1c)
1889
A log book from Edison’s laboratory records the company’s first forays into recording music. The first entry, from May 24th, notes a series of flute recordings by Mr. F. Goede. The log book is known as the ‘founding document’ of the recording industry.
A Washington DC court reporter named Edward Easton forms the Columbia Phonograph Co. The first record label catalogue is printed the following year.
First commercially issued Berliner discs are made by German toy makers. These are tiny and made of rubber. Sound reproduction is so poor that they come with the text of what is being said on the reverse.
1890
The first ‘juke box’, a coin-operated cylinder phonograph with four listening tubes, earns more than $1,000 in six months after being installed San Francisco’s Palais Royale Saloon. Commercial nickel phonographs keep the fledgling industry alive during the depression of the 1890s.
Early hit makers of the 1890s were the US Marine Band and John Yorke Atlee – a moustachioed government clerk by day, a deep-voiced whistler by night.
1896
Berliner begins using shellac from the Duranoid Co in Newark, New Jersey. This makes better sounding records than hard rubber.
Cylinders sounded better than early discs, but Berliner could mass-produce copies from zinc masters. Cylinders had no method of mass-production – to make 100 copies of a record, the artist had to perform the song 100 times. The only way to speed up this process was to perform in front of more than one recording machine.
1897
Eldridge Reeves Johnson creates a simple and reliable disc phonograph that becomes a bestseller. His company merges with Berliner’s, forming Victor Talking Machine.
1898
Gramophone Company, based in the UK, is founded by Berliner. American musician Fred Gaisberg joins the Gramophone Company in London as its first recording engineer.
English artist Francis Barraud paints a Jack Russell Terrier dog named Nipper listening to a wind-up cylinder phonograph. Once modified to a disc gramophone, the image is used for the His Master’s Voice (HMV) label in 1901. It will also become the trademark and logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, later known as RCA Victor.
1900
Thomas Lambert develops a successful method of mass-duplicating ‘indestructible’ cylinders.
1902
Edison introduces ‘Gold Moulded’ cylinders – mass-produced by a moulding process.
Fred Gaisberg is rapidly becoming one of the first modern record ‘producers’, nabbing performing stars of the day for the Gramophone Company. In 1902 he records tenor Enrico Caruso, paying Caruso £100 out of his own pocket. The resulting records are a sensation.
Victor introduce an all-enclosed cabinet phonograph, advertised as the ‘Victrola’ upright. ‘Victrola’ becomes the name for phonograph players with interior sound-projecting horns.
The first ‘albums’ begin to appear – collection of 78rpm discs collected together in a binder.
78.26rpm becomes the standard for motorized phonographs because it was easily achieved using a standard 3600-rpm motor and 46-tooth gear (78.26 = 3600/46).
1912
Edison’s Blue Amberol is the last incarnation of the cylinder line for the Edison Company. These could boast 4:45 run time.
Having argued against discs for a generation, the firm introduces the Edison Diamond Disc. The last Blue Amberol is made in 1929.
1925
Pre-1925 sound recording is known as the Acoustic Era. The Electric Era begins when new Western Electric condenser mics allow engineers to capture a greater frequency range. The Magnetic Era (from 1945) sees studios use magnetic tape to record masters ahead of cutting records. The Digital Era begins in 1975 – the first all-digitally-recorded LP is Ry Cooder’s Bop ‘Til You Drop in 1979.
1931
Alan Blumlein at EMI files a UK patent for a new means of stereo recording and reproducing. Stereo reproduction is pioneered by the film industry, but it takes a long time to filter down to domestic record buyers.
1948
The first vinyl record is introduced at the soon-to-be standardized 33 1/3 rpm speed by Columbia Records. It uses microgroove plastic to extend a 12-inch record’s playtime to 21 minutes on each side.
RCA Victor presses its first 45rpm 7″ vinyl record – ‘PeeWee the Piccolo’. They come with a wider play hole at the centre, designed to work better with autochangers.
For a generation, the new vinyl speeds co-exist with shellac 78s.
1952
Emory Cook creates a stereo record using two separate channels, in two separate groups of grooves, played using a twin-headed cartridge mounted on a tonearm.
In November, the NME publishes the first official singles chart.
‘Monaural’ is when all the music is contained in a single audio channel. In the mid-50s record companies began issuing stereo recordings on two-track prerecorded reel-to-reel magnetic tape. Until 1957, virtually all disc records were monaural.
1957
In November, the small Audio Fidelity Records label releases the first mass-produced stereophonic disc. Side 1 featured the Dukes of Dixieland, Side 2 sound effects. From this period, albums began to be sold in both mono and stereo.
1977
LP sales reach their global peak. The Voyager Golden Record, designed to spin at 16rpm, containing 90 minutes of music, 120 images, greetings and sound effects, is launched into space aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes.
1979
Sony launch the Walkman.
1982
The first compact discs go on sale. One of the stories is that they are 120mm wide because Sony insisted Beethoven’s entire 9th Symphony (74 minutes) should be able to fit on one disc.
1997
MP3.com is founded. This is a forerunner to the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, designed to allow musicians to easily share content.
2001
Apple launches the iPod.
2006
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon found Spotify, aiming to create a legal alternative to file sharing platforms.
2008
Global sales of LPs go up for the first time since 1984.
2022
Vinyl albums outsell CD albums for the first time since 1987. The US also saw its biggest week for vinyl since 1991: selling 2.2million LPs in the week ending December 22.
Jonathan Scott 