ca. 1899.]]
and his early phonograph.]]
The phonograph, record player, or gramophone is a device that was mostly commonly used from the late 1870s through the 1980s for playing sound recordings.
Terminology
Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, this device is often called a
turntable,
record player, or
record changer. When used in conjunction with a
mixer as part of a
DJ set up, they are often called
decks.
The term phonograph ("sound writer") is derived from the Greek words (meaning "sound" or "voice" and transliterated as phonē) and (meaning "writing" and transliterated as graphē). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the -graph root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.
F. B. Fenby was the original author of the word. An inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph".
Volta's early challenge
Meanwhile Bell, a
scientist and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after his invention of the
telephone. According to
Sumner Tainter, it was through
Gardiner Green Hubbard that Bell took up the phonograph challenge. Bell had married
Hubbard's daughter Mabel in 1879 while Hubbard was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine which seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate.
In 1879 Hubbard got Bell interested in improving the phonograph, and it was agreed that a laboratory should be set up in Washington. Experiments were also to be conducted on the transmission of sound by light, which resulted in the selenium-celled photophone.
Volta Graphophone
By 1881 the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent. Wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. Rather than apply for a patent at that time, however, they deposited the machine in a sealed box at the Smithsonian, and specified that it was not to be opened without the consent of two of the three men.
The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph."
One interesting exception was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by Chichester Bell. Tainter was granted Patent No. 385886 for it on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch.
The preserved Bell and Tainter records are of both the lateral cut and the Edison-style hill-and-dale (up-and-down) styles. Edison for many years used the "hill-and-dale" method with both cylinder and disc records, and Emile Berliner is credited with the invention of the lateral cut Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been experimenting with both types, as early as 1881.
The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent, and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin-foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus.
Graphophone commercialization
In 1885, when the Volta Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed
patent applications and began to seek out investors. The
Volta Graphophone Company of Alexandria, Virginia, was created on January 6, 1886 and incorporated on February 3, 1886. It was formed to control the patents and to handle the commercial development of their sound recording and reproduction inventions, one of which became the first
Dictaphone.
After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in the City of Washington, businessmen from Philadelphia created the American Graphophone Company on March 28, 1887, in order to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace. Not long later Lippincott purchased the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. He then created the North American Phonograph Company to consolidate the national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph. In the early 1890s Lippincott fell victim to the unit's mechanical problems and also to resistance from stenographers. This would postpone the popularity of the Graphophone until 1889 when Louis Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company would popularize it again through the promotion of nickel-in-the-slot 'entertainment' cylinders.
The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of dictating machines in business, because their wax recording process was practical and their machines were durable. But it would take several more years and the renewed efforts of Edison and the further improvements of Emile Berliner and many others, before the recording industry became a major factor in home entertainment.
Disc versus cylinder as a recording medium
Disc recording is inherently neither better nor worse than cylinder recording in potential audio fidelity.
Recordings made on a cylinder remain at a constant linear velocity for the entirety of the recording, while those made on a disc have a higher linear velocity at the outer portion of the groove compared to the inner portion.
Edison's patented recording method recorded with vertical modulations in a groove. Berliner utilized a laterally modulated groove.
Though Edison's recording technology was better than Berliner's, there were commercial advantages to a disc system since the disc could be easily mass produced by molding and stamping and it required less storage space for a collection of recordings.
Berliner successfully argued that his technology was different enough from Edison's that he did not need to pay royalties on it, which reduced his business expenses.
Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records, and "gramophones" or "talking-machines". His "gramophone record" was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (12.7 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. Berliner's early records had poor sound quality, however. Work by Eldridge R. Johnson improved the sound fidelity to a point where it was as good as the cylinder.
It is important to point out that most of those stylus profiles are still being manufactured and sold, together with the more common spherical and elliptical profiles, despite the CD4 quadraphonic system being a marketing flop.
Equalization
Early "mechanical" gramophones used the stylus to vibrate a
diaphragm radiating through a
horn. Several serious problems resulted from this:
The maximum sound level achievable was quite limited, being limited to the physical amplification effects of the horn,
The energy needed to generate such sound levels as were obtainable had to come directly from the stylus tracing the groove. This required very high tracking forces that rapidly wore out both the stylus and the record on lateral cut 78 rpm records.
Because bass sounds have a higher amplitude than high frequency sounds (for the same perceived loudness), the space taken in the groove by low frequency sounds needed to be large (limiting playback time per side of the record) to accommodate the bass notes, yet the high frequencies required only tiny variations in the groove, which were easily affected by noise from irregularities (wear, contaminates, etc.) in the disk itself.
The introduction of electronic amplification allowed these issues to be addressed. Records are made with boosted high frequencies and/or reduced low frequencies. This reduces the effect of background noise, including clicks or pops, and also conserves the amount of physical space needed for each groove, by reducing the size of the low-frequency undulations.
During playback, the high frequencies must be rescaled to their original, flat frequency response—known as "equalization"—as well as being amplified. A phono input of an amplifier incorporates such equalization as well as amplification to suit the very low level output from a modern cartridge. Most hi-fi amplifiers made between the 1950s and the 1990s and virtually all DJ mixers are so equipped.
The widespread adoption of digital music formats, such as CD or satellite radio, has displaced phonograph records and resulted in phono inputs being omitted in most modern amplifiers. Some newer turntables include built-in preamplifiers to produce line-level outputs. Inexpensive and moderate performance discrete phono preamplifiers with RIAA equalization are available, while high-end audiophile units costing thousands of dollars continue to be available in very small numbers.
Since the late 1950s, almost all phono input stages have used the RIAA equalization standard. Before settling on that standard, there were many different equalizations in use, including EMI, HMV, Columbia, Decca FFRR, NAB, Ortho, BBC transcription, etc. Recordings made using these other equalization schemes will typically sound odd if they are played through a RIAA-equalized preamplifier. High-performance (so-called "multicurve disc") preamps, which include multiple, selectable equalizations, are no longer commonly available. However, some vintage preamps, such as the LEAK varislope series, are still obtainable and can be refurbished. Newer preamplifiers like the Esoteric Sound Re-Equalizer or the K-A-B MK2 Vintage Signal Processor are also available. These kinds of adjustable phono equalizers are used by consumers wishing to play vintage record collections (often the only available recordings of musicians of the time) with the equalization used to make them.
Arm systems
The tone arm (or tonearm) holds the pickup cartridge over the groove, the stylus tracking the groove with the desired force to give the optimal compromise between good tracking and minimizing wear of the stylus and record groove. At its simplest, a tone arm is a pivoted lever, free to move in two axes (vertical and horizontal) with a counterbalance to maintain tracking pressure.
However, the requirements of high-fidelity reproduction place more demands upon the arm design:
The tone arm must track the groove without distorting the stylus assembly, so an ideal arm would have no mass, with bearings requiring zero force to move it.
The arm should not oscillate following a displacement, so it should either be both light and very stiff, or suitably damped.
The arm must not resonate with vibrations induced by the stylus or from the turntable motor or plinth, so it must likewise be heavy enough not to resonate at those frequencies, or it must be damped to absorb vibrations.
The arm should maintain a perfect alignment of the cartridge to the tangent of the record groove at any radius from the center and this tangent line should intersect the pivot point of the tone arm.
These demands are contradictory and impossible to realize (massless arms and zero-friction bearings do not exist in the real world), and consequently all tone arm designs are engineering compromises. Solutions vary, but all modern tonearms are at least relatively lightweight and stiff constructions with precision, very low friction pivot bearings in both vertical and horizontal axes. Most arms are made from some kind of alloy (the cheapest being aluminium), but some manufacturers use balsa wood, others use carbon fibers. The latter materials favour a straight arm design, while alloy is easier for producing S-type arms.
Prices vary largely: the well known and extremely popular high-end S-type SME-arm of the 1970-1980 era not only possessed a complicated design, but was also very costly. On the other hand a very cheap arm was made by the now defunct Dutch Jobo/Acoustical firm. This "All balance" arm was only €30,- equivalent. It was used in that period by all official radio stations using the Dutch Broadcast studio facilities of the NOS, as well as by the pirate radio station Veronica. Live disk jockeys lived on this radioship, meaning that the arm had to withstand sudden ship movements. Anecdotal information tells us, that this cheap arm was the only one capable of keeping the needle firmly in the groove, even during heavy storms at sea.
Basic arm design has changed relatively little. S-type tonearms can be found on even the early 1925 Victor Orthophonic Victrola. Though early electrical pickup tonearms were light, their full weight rested on the record. Through to the crystal pickup, this was required to create sufficient tracking force to follow the grooves adequately with relatively stiff styli. Record wear was high. With better technologies (magnetic cartridge), far-smaller tracking forces became possible, and the balanced arm came into use. Most use a counterweight to offset the weight of the arm, cartridge included. A separate spring or small weight provided for finetuning in tracking force. Often, a calibrated dial on the weight provides quick adjustment of stylus force. Stylus forces of 10 to 20 mN (1 to 2 "grams-force", frequently mis-labeled by manufacturers as simply "grams") are typical for modern high-fidelity turntables, while forces of up to 50 mN (5 "grams-force") are common for DJ use. Stanton cartridges of the 681EE(E) series had a small brush attached to it, the weight of which required compensation of both stylus force (1 gram-force extra needed) and anti-skating adjustment values (see next paragraph for its description).
Tonearms are prone to two types of tracking errors that affect the sound. As the tonearm tracks the groove, the stylus exerts a frictional force tangent to the arc of the groove and since this force does not intersect the tone arm pivot, a clockwise rotational force (moment) occurs and a reaction skating force is exerted on the stylus by the record groove wall away from center of the disc. Modern arms provide an anti-skating mechanism, using springs, hanging weights, or magnets to produce an offsetting counter-clockwise force at the pivot, making the net horizontal force on the groove walls near zero. The second error occurs as the arm sweeps in an arc across the disc, causing the angle between the cartridge head and groove to change slightly. A change in angle, albeit small, will have a detrimental effect (especially in stereo) by creating different forces on the two groove walls. Making the arm longer to reduce this angle is a partial solution, but less than ideal, because longer arms weigh more, and because even a long arm won't be long enough since only an infinitely long arm would reduce this error to zero. Some arms (such as the Garrard "Zero" series) have been manufactured with a parallelogram arrangement which pivots the cartridge head on the arm to maintain a constant angle.
If the arm is not pivoted, but instead travels horizontally along a radius of the disc, there is no skating force and no cartridge angle error. Such arms are driven along a linear track using an electronic servomechanism, or a precise mechanical adjustment (the Rabco arm) to position it properly. Rabco developed the first zero tracking error tonearm, followed by Bang & Olufsen with its Beogram 4000 model in 1972. A later development was made by Revox, a Swiss company more widely known for his high end reel to reel tape recorders: they designed a parallel movement using a very short arm moving sideways across the disk under the influence of a special drive motor. The mechanism had to be turned over the disk after its placement and turned back after playing the disk. This was contrary to the Bang & Olufsen design which automatically returned its parallel arm after playing and even detected whether a smaller (and therefore 45 rpm) or a larger (and therefore 33⅓ rpm) disk was present. Only the smaller 33 rpm disks needed a manual speed override.
Early Edison phonographs had used similarly horizontal spring-powered drives to carry the stylus across the record at a pre-determined rate. In practice, the linear tracking system is not widely used today because of its complexity and related expense. However, some of the most sophisticated and expensive systems still employ this technique. It is nearly ideal, as the stylus replicates the motion of the recording lathe when the master recording was cut.
Phonograph in the 21st century
Turntables continue to be manufactured and sold into the 21st century, although in small numbers. While there are many
audiophiles who still prefer vinyl records over digital music sources (primarily
compact disc) for what they consider superior sound quality, they represent an enthusiastic minority of listeners. The quality of the available record players, tonearms, and cartridges has continued to improve, despite a diminishing market, allowing turntables to remain competitive on the high end audio systems market. Together with these high-end modern devices, vinyl enthusiasts are also often committed to the
refurbishment and sometimes
tweaking of
vintage systems. The chart on the right illustrates that users of the forum
www.vinylengine.com post pictures of disappeared or superseded makes as much as of modern makes.
Updated versions of the 1970s era Technics SL-1200 have remained an industry standard for DJs to the present day. Turntables and vinyl records remain popular in mixing (mostly dance-oriented) forms of electronic music, where they allow great latitude for physical manipulation of the music by the DJ.
In hip hop music, the turntable is used as a musical instrument. Manipulation of a record as part of the music rather than for normal playback or mixing, is called turntablism. The basis of turntablism and its best known technique is scratching, pioneered by Grand Wizard Theodore. It was not until Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" in 1983 that the turntablism movement was recognized in popular music outside of a hip hop context.
The laser turntable uses a laser as the pickup instead of a stylus in physical contact with the disk. It was conceived of in the late 1980s, although early prototypes were not of usable audio quality. Practical laser turntables are now being manufactured by ELPJ. They are favoured by record libraries and some audiophiles since they eliminate physical wear completely.
Experimentation is in progress in retrieving the audio from old records by scanning the disc and analysing the scanned image, rather than using any sort of turntable.
Although largely replaced since the introduction of the compact disc in 1982, record albums still sell in small numbers and are available through numerous sources. In 2008, LP sales grew by 90% over 2007, with 1.9 million records sold. Many audiophiles believe that all-analogue recordings made using a traditional tape recorder, simple microphone arrays and few overdubs have a more natural sound than digital recordings.
USB turntables have a built-in audio interface, which transfers the sound directly to your computer. There are also many turntables on the market designed to be plugged into a computer via a USB port for needle dropping purposes.
See also
Analog sound vs. digital sound
Audio signal processing
Compact Disc player
Gramophone record
Graphophone
Phonograph manufacturers
Radiogram (furniture)
Record changer
RIAA equalization
Sound reproduction
Laser turntable
Turntable anti-skating
Notes
References
Brady, Erika. A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999.
Koenigsberg, Allen, The Patent History of the Phonograph, 1877–1912, APM Press, 1991.
External links
The 1888 Crystal Palace Recordings
The Birth of the Recording Industry
The Cylinder Archive
Cylinder Preservation & Digitization Project – Over 6,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections, University of California, Santa Barbara, free for download or streamed online.
Cylinder players held at the British Library - information and high-quality images.
History of Recorded Sound: Phonographs and Records
EnjoytheMusic.com – Excerpts from the book Hi-Fi All-New 1958 Edition
Listen to early recordings on the Edison Phonograph
Mario Frazzetto's Phonograph and Gramophone Gallery.
The Phonograph vs. the Gramophone
Record scanning - Ofer Springer
San Francisco State University Museum of Anthropology
Say What? – Essay on phonograph technology and intellectual property law
Vinyl Engine – Information, images, articles and reviews from around the world
The Analogue Dept - Information, images and tutorials; strongly focused on Thorens brand
45 rpm player and changer at work on You Tube
Historic video footage of Edison operating his original tinfoil phonograph
Category:Thomas Edison
Category:Alexander Graham Bell
Category:Audio players
Category:1877 introductions
Category:Greek loanwords
![Her Space Holiday - The Phonograph [HD]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110406004116im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mnQX_KLYh9k/0.jpg "Her Space Holiday - The Phonograph [HD]")
