Zoom on grooves

[stepping razor]

THE HISTORY OF VINYL PT. 1:

1806# English physician and naturalist Thomas Young, records vibrations of a tuning fork on a rotating drum covered with wax. There was no way at the time to play this recording back.

1857# The phonoautograph is developed by French Researcher Leon Scott de Martinville. The device translates air pressure fluctuations caused by sound into a wavy line on a sooty surface by means of a large horn, a diaphragm and a pig`s hair. This transcript, recorded on a rotating cylinder, is, however, unable to replay sound.

1877# Another Frenchman, Charles Cros, draws up plans for a machine that not only has the ability to record sound but also to reproduce it. Cros, an artist and a poet could not be taken seriously enough by financiers and struggled to gain the capital to turn his ideas into reality. The plans were left on the shelf.

1877# Self taught success story Thomas Edison is experimenting with a new telegraph devise when he accidentally runs indented tin foil under a stylus. The resulting speech like noise encourages him to develop an instrument that can both record and reproduce sound. By the end of the year Edison has produced the first working phonograph able to `store` and playback sound,

Peace

[6anbatte]

No one seems to have mentioned that recording onto tape made the most difference in sound quality.

Doing my own research I came up with the following;
BASF was making tape in 1933.
Les Paul was multitracking in 1947.
Hank Williams 1947 to 1953. Mastered From Original Mono Tapes
Amazing Bud Powell Volume One on Blue Note May 1951 - Transfer from original lacquer dics
The Eminent JJ Johnson Vol 1 on Blue Note From analogue tapes - 1953

On all of these recordings the sound is still really thin. Even if it was recorded onto tape.

I gradually worked up to an epiphany moment when playing Blue Trane by John Coltrane from 1957. Absolutely gorgeous full sound.

Funnily enough Jimmy Smith's "The Sermon" from just a couple of months earlier in 1957 didn't sound anywhere near as good.

And yes, I did have a good reason to look into this!

[stepping razor]

THE HISTORY OF VINYL PT.2:

1881# Charles Tainter at the Volta Lab makes the first lateral-cut records, but without any apparatus to play them back.

1885# An improved rival phonograph is invented by Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter at the Volta Laboratories they call the machine the `Graphophone`and utilise a wax coated cylinder incised with vertical-cut grooves.

1887# Edison updates the phonograph by using a solid wax cylinder and a battery-driven motor as opposed the original hand crank giving a constant pitch.

1888# Emile Berliner a German immigrant to the States invents the `gramophone` which use 7 inch disc which was manually turned at around 30 rpm and had about a 2 minute record capability. The discs are made by a process that involves and engraving onto a zinc master, the Groove is a laterally cut spiral on one side only. The advantage that the disc has over the cylinder is that it is possible to mass-produce a hard rubber record from the original press.

1889# The Columbia Phonograph Co. is set up as one of the thirty three franchises to lease graphophones to businesses. With little success they decide to record music and lease them to fairgrounds, where they became immensely popular as the first nickel juke boxes.

Peace

[6anbatte]

Good stuff Stepping Razor. Apologies for my lack of patience and interrupting your flow.

[stepping razor]

THE HISTORY OF VINYL PT.3:

1890# The cylinders of the`phonograph`have the capability to record 2-4 minutes of audio.

1890# The first nickel `juke boxes` help keep the recorded music industry alive during the depression years, Some cylinders have multiple listening tubes coming out of them and were so popular they took huge amounts of money.

1894# Emile Berliner`s new `US Gramophone Company` make and sell 1000 machines electric-powered and hand-powered and sold 25,000 records.

1894# Guglielmo Marconi invents the spark transmitter with antenna (radio) in his hometown of Bologna,Italy.

1895# Edison begins mass production of the phonograph and its cylinders, and updates the original design by adding an amplifying horn to increase the sound output.

1896# Eldridge Johnson a machinist from New Jersey improves the gramophone by adding a spring motor designed by Levi Montross.

1897# Shellac Discs, made from the Lac beetle, replace vulcanite as the playback medium.

Peace

[stepping razor]

Good stuff Stepping Razor. Apologies for my lack of patience and interrupting your flow.

Hi,thats all right.That was intresting about the history of the magnetic tape and will put some info up on that as well, at some point.
Peace

[6anbatte]

Very, very interested in all of this. Please keep posting.

[stepping razor]

THE HISTORY OF MAGNETIC RECORDING:

One of the foundations of human civilisation is its ability to codify and store knowledge for subsequent generations. Art, written language and music have enabled people to pass ideas and experiences to their descendents.
For thousands of years, the media and methods for creating durable knowledge have evolved along with civilisation itself. Stone, papyrus,paper,paint and ink worked for hundreds of generations.The moveable type printing press began the mass production of written information.
Photography made objective and subjective recording of visual information possible.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, research was first carried out on the nature of sound and speech, and the possibility of creating mechanical devices to reproduce them. Pioneers such as De Kempelein (1791) and Leon Scott (1857) led to Thomas Edison`s invention of a working phonograph (1877) that recorde sound and speech on foil or wax for playback at a later time.Other inventions of the era such as the telephone showed thet electricity could be used to reproduce sound.

PROGRESS:

Two developments rekindled the practical use of magnetic recording. The first was electronic amplification using vacuum tubes. This gave magnetic recorders the sensitivity and power for loudspeaker playback. The second development was AC biasing. Carlson and Carpenter at the US Naval Research Laboratory eventually patented AC biasing in 1927. AC biasing yields more permanent recordings and lower noise with a variety of magnetic media.

Steel wire as the media for recording was further improved with the introduction of changeable reels containing the wire. The wire was wound `reel to reel` to record and playback. Improvements and the use of wire recorders continued through the 1940`s.

In 1928, Fritz Pfleumer was granted a patent in Gremany for the application of magnetic powders to a strip of paper or film. Thus `tape-recording` was born.

Substantial development and commercial competition emerged in the 1930`s.Allgemeine Elektrizitatsgesellschaft (AEG) in Berlin began development of a tape-based recorder. BASF was contracted to produce magnetic tape based on Pfleumer`s ideas. The tape was a cellulose acetate base with iron oxide bound to one surface. In 1935, AEG`s 1Megnticophone! and BASF`s tape were demonstrated at the Berlin Radio Fair. In 1936, BASF made a recording of the London Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham on tour in Germany. The recording was played on German radio and audiences were surprised to learn that the concert was not 1live1. The magnetophone was the first modern reel-to-reel tape recorder.

In 1937, Dr Clarence Hickman of the Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated new materials technology that recorded more signal on less media. This reduced the speed with which the tape had to move over the recording heads. During World War II, military use of magnetic recording - mostly stainless steel wire - further perfected the technology. Magnetic tape and wire was still mostly used for telephone and dictation recording. The recording times were too short for pratical entertainment uses.

MODERN SOUND:

After World War II, commercial development of tape-recording took off. AEG Magnetophone captured during the war became the model for tape-based recorders by Ampex (1948), Magnecord (1948) and other American manufacturers. Magnetic recording became the standard for mastering music phonograph recordings and in radio broadcasting. Prices came down and home tape-recording began in the early 1950`s. Development of multiple channel tape-recording led to the `stereo`revolution in the late 1950`s. Multi-track tape also revolutionised music by allowing instruments and performances to be recorded individually for later mixing into a final cut. Also, small performance flaws could be easily corrected without re-recording the entire session.

In 1965, both the 8-track cartridge by Lear and the compact cassette by Philips created smaller and more convenient media for audio recording. Dolby noise reduction in the early 1970`s gave cassette recording the quality and low cost that made it the most popular recording medium for the nexy decade. Further developments in high biasing allowed the use chromium dioxide and metal particle tape to further improve dynamic range and frequency response.

Peace

[leggo rocker]

Without the Magnetophone, or another technology like it, we simply wouldn't have recordings of the standard we've come to enjoy.

[stepping razor]

HISTORY OF VINYL PT.4:

1900# Mass production for the disc and the cylinder has been developed and both formats are producing hit records that could be played on the new spring motor players.

1901# The Victor Talking Machine Company of New Jersey is formed by Berliner and Eldridge Johnson,. Discs of the day could record and playback the human voice but could not record the high or low-end frequencies of strings or bass.

1902# "Red Seal" 10-inch discs with 4-minute play time are introduced by the Gramophone Co, they feature European artists such as tenor Enrico Caruso and help change the perception of the record.

1904# The first `double-sided discs became available to the public.

1906# The "Victrola" is bought onto the market and becomes the best selling and most influential record player of its time.

1909# The "Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky is recorded on 4 double-sided discs and sold as a complete package. This becomes known as an `album` because of its resemblance to a photographic album.

By 1910 the disc was available in 7,10,12,14,16 and 21 inch formats playing at around 78rpm and containing up to 8 minutes of sound...

1912# Edison introduces celluloid blue `Amberol` cylinders with a playing time of 4 minutes. The new cylinders had a low surface noise that resulted in an improvement in acoustic quality over that of the disc.

1912# The `Audio` Vacuum-tube amplifier is invented by Lee de Forest.

1913# Edison releases his `Diamond-Disc` players and recordings.

1916# Theodore Case starts to develop a sound-on-film recording system for `motion pictures`.

1917# The first "Jazz" record "Livery Stable Blues" is recorded by the ODJB `Original Dixieland Jazz Band` from New Orleans.

1918# First wartime sound recording of gas shell bombardment.

1919# Invention of the `Theremin` by Leon Theremin.


Peace