The Re-Recording of Wax Cylinders

Abstract

Since Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, late Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, first, in 1889, realized the possibilities of the then newly invented phonograph for making collections of the songs of American Indians, his example has been followed in scores of field expeditions. As the years went by, the quaint and clumsy old phonograph, which was run with a treadle and had a fly wheel for regulating the speed, was superseded by other improved models, until the later Dictaphones and the Edison phonographs represented the ultimate development of non-electrical machines using wax cylinders for re- cording sound. Electrically operated machines using wax cylinders, though still employed in business offices for recording correspondence, are not as satisfactory in several respects for field use and for re- cording music as were some of the old style gramophones.