A Short History of the Cylinder Phonograph [Part 1]

Abstract

As originally developed by Thomas Edison in 1877 the phonograph was a very crude apparatus indeed. A sheet of tinfoil was wrapped around a drum which was rotated by hand. The tinfoil was acted upon by rigidly fixed cutting and playback styli attached to a diaphram. Although this machine stirred up considerable interest it had little practical value since the reproduction was extremely poor and the speed inconstant. After several years of experimentation Chicester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter ap- plied in 1885 for a patent on the graphaphone, an improved version of Edison's phonograph, in which the tinfoil was replaced by wax coated cardboard cylinders . The loosely mounted styli, in later development called the "floating" styli, permitted a higher degree of fidelity in reproduction. As commercial exploitation of the graphaphone began Edison devised an improved phonograph following the lead of Bell and Tainter. His principal improvement was the solid wax cylinder which could be shaved and re-used.