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88-564: Before the rise of the record industry in America, the cost of phonographs prevented most African Americans from listening to recorded music. At the turn of the twentieth century, the cost of listening to music went down, providing a majority of Americans with the ability to afford records. The primary purpose of records was to spur on the sale of phonographs, which were most commonly distributed in furniture stores. The stores white and black people shopped at were separate due to segregation , and

176-410: A turntable , is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound . The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a helical or spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a record . To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and

264-419: A "cue lever", a device that mechanically lowers the tonearm on to the record. It enables the user to locate an individual track more easily, to pause a record, and to avoid the risk of scratching the record, which may require practice to avoid when lowering the tonearm manually. Early developments in linear turntables were from Rek-O-Kut (portable lathe/phonograph) and Ortho-Sonic in the 1950s, and Acoustical in

352-474: A Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables. One interesting exception

440-484: A definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the French Academy of Sciences , a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish priority of conception of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute. An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised

528-400: A device that could replicate the function of the human ear. Scott coated a plate of glass with a thin layer of lampblack . He then took an acoustic trumpet, and at its tapered end affixed a thin membrane that served as the analog to the eardrum . At the center of that membrane, he attached a rigid boar's bristle approximately a centimetre long, placed so that it just grazed the lampblack. As

616-541: A different machine that played nonrecordable discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs. ) In Australian English , "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in British English . The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June 1878 to

704-400: A famous black composer, sparked a transition that displayed the potential for African American artists. Bradford persuaded the white executive of Okeh Records , Fred Hager , to record Mamie Smith , a black artist who did not fit the mold of popular white music. In 1920, Smith created her "Crazy Blues"/"It's Right Here for You" recording, which sold 75,000 copies to a majority-black audience in

792-410: A few tangential references." Though not studied comprehensively, race records have been preserved. Publications like Dixon and Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records 1902-1943 list the names of race records that were commercially recorded and recorded in the field. Billboard published a Race Records chart between 1945 and 1949, initially covering juke box plays and from 1948 also covering sales. This

880-492: A high quality cartridge and that the surfaces are clean. An alternative approach is to take a high-resolution photograph or scan of each side of the record and interpret the image of the grooves using computer software . An amateur attempt using a flatbed scanner lacked satisfactory fidelity. A professional system employed by the Library of Congress produces excellent quality. Black Swan Records Black Swan Records

968-660: A human voice was conducted on April 9, 1860, when Scott recorded someone singing the song " Au Clair de la Lune " ("By the Light of the Moon") on the device. However, the device was not designed to play back sounds, as Scott intended for people to read back the tracings, which he called phonautograms. This was not the first time someone had used a device to create direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects, as tuning forks had been used in this way by English physicist Thomas Young in 1807. By late 1857, with support from

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1056-709: A meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria by the Society's Honorary Secretary, Alex Sutherland who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year. On 8 August 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione , along with a range of other new inventions, including the microphone . The phonautograph

1144-522: A more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a phonographe , but Cros himself favored the word paleophone , sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of

1232-399: A role in the development of the gramophone , whose inventor, Emile Berliner, worked with the phonautograph in the course of developing his own device. Charles Cros , a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising

1320-437: A similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he wrote in retrospect: "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, although there was little of the scratching that later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine

1408-402: A slightly earlier one that is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes , but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned. These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb , not preserved, has been called

1496-422: A small, simple machine about which few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: 'Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?' The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..." The music critic Herman Klein attended an early demonstration (1881–82) of

1584-480: A stylus with a small diamond or sapphire tip that runs in the record groove. The stylus eventually becomes worn by contact with the groove, and it is usually replaceable. Styli are classified as spherical or elliptical, although the tip is actually shaped as a half-sphere or a half- ellipsoid . Spherical styli are generally more robust than other types, but do not follow the groove as accurately, giving diminished high frequency response. Elliptical styli usually track

1672-409: Is especially important for playback of quadraphonic recordings. A few specialist laser turntables read the groove optically using a laser pickup. Since there is no physical contact with the record, no wear is incurred. However, this "no wear" advantage is debatable, since vinyl records have been tested to withstand even 1200 plays with no significant audio degradation, provided that it is played with

1760-588: Is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording, although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial. Wax phonograph cylinder recordings of Handel 's choral music made on June 29, 1888, at The Crystal Palace in London were thought to be the oldest-known surviving musical recordings, until the recent playback by a group of American historians of a phonautograph recording of Au clair de la lune recorded on April 9, 1860. The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it

1848-433: Is predominantly used in many languages. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, stylus, pickup system, and the sound and equalization systems. The disc phonograph record was the dominant commercial audio distribution format throughout most of the 20th century, and phonographs became the first example of home audio that people owned and used at their residences. In

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1936-457: Is therefore vibrated by it, faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm that produced sound waves coupled to the open air through a flaring horn , or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope -type earphones. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison ; its use would rise the following year. Alexander Graham Bell 's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in

2024-426: The Royal Society of Victoria , writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. 'Rule Britannia' was distinctly repeated, but great laughter

2112-762: The Talented Tenth . As recognized by Thomas Brothers, "luminaries like Jack Nail and James Weldon Johnson served on the Black Swan board of directors", and The Crisis , the journal then edited by W.E.B. Du Bois , and published by the NAACP, invested its profits in the company. Bert Williams was an early investor in Pace Phonograph. Williams also promised to record for the company once his exclusive contract with Columbia Records ended, but he died before that could occur. Pace Phonograph Corporation

2200-491: The radio brought competition to the record industry. To maximize exposure, record labels advertised in catalogs, brochures, and newspapers popular among African Americans, like the Chicago Defender . They carefully implemented words and images that would draw in their targeted audience. Race records ads frequently reminded readers of their shared experience, claiming the music could help African Americans who moved to

2288-410: The 1880s and introduced the graphophone , including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the centre, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, which

2376-461: The 1940s as record players or turntables, the movements of the stylus are transformed into an electrical signal by a transducer . This signal is then converted back into sound through an amplifier and one or more loudspeakers . The term "phonograph", meaning "sound writing", originates from the Greek words φωνή (phonē, meaning 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, meaning 'writing'). Similarly,

2464-422: The 1956 season had ended, Philco decided to discontinue both models, for transistors were too expensive compared to vacuum tubes, but by 1961 a $ 49.95 ($ 509.29 in 2023) portable, battery-powered radio-phonograph with seven transistors was available. There are presently three main phonograph designs: belt-drive , direct-drive , and idler-wheel . In a belt-drive turntable the motor is located off-center from

2552-697: The 1960s, the use of 8-track cartridges and cassette tapes were introduced as alternatives. By 1987, phonograph use had declined sharply due to the popularity of cassettes and the rise of the compact disc . However, records have undergone a revival since the late 2000s . This resurgence has much to do with vinyl records' sparing use of audio processing, resulting in a more natural sound on high-quality replay equipment, compared to many digital releases that are highly processed for portable players in high-noise environmental conditions. However, unlike "plug-and-play" digital audio, vinyl record players have user-serviceable parts, which require attention to tonearm alignment and

2640-520: The 78-rpm format was completely phased out. (Shellac records were heavier and more brittle.) 33s and 45s were, however, made exclusively of vinyl, with the exception of some 45s manufactured out of polystyrene . In 1955, Philco developed and produced the world's first all- transistor phonograph models TPA-1 and TPA-2, which were announced in the June 28, 1955 edition of The Wall Street Journal . Philco started to sell these all-transistor phonographs in

2728-543: The African American artists that major record companies hired before the 1920s were not properly compensated or acknowledged. This was because contracts were given to black artists on the basis of a single record, so their future opportunities were not guaranteed. African-American culture greatly influenced the popular media that white Americans consumed in the 1900s. Still, there were not any primarily black genres of music sold in early records. Perry Bradford ,

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2816-446: The African American community. However some white companies in the music industry were strongly against Black Swan and threatened the company on multiple occasions. Pace not only issued jazz, blues, and gospel records, but he put out race records that deviated from popular African American categories. These genres included classical, opera, and spirituals, chosen by Pace to encourage the advancement of African American culture. He intended

2904-535: The Black Swan label a short time later. The Black Swan label was revived in the 1990s for a series of CD reissues of historic jazz and blues recordings originally issued on Black Swan and Paramount. These CDs were issued by George H. Buck Jr's Jazzology and GHB labels under the control of the George H. Buck Jr. Jazz Foundation , which gained rights to the Paramount back-catalogue but not the Paramount name. Rights to

2992-553: The Black Swan label. The Chicago Defender reported the event by detailing important accomplishments of Black Swan in a short career span, including: pointed out—to the major, all white-owned, record companies—the significant market demand for black artists; prompted several major companies to begin publishing music by these performers. In addition, the Defender credited Pace with showing the majors how to target black audiences and to advertise in black newspapers. Paramount discontinued

3080-516: The French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception. Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at

3168-606: The Graphophone, U.S. patent 506,348 , was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph U.S. patent 428,750 demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company. The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of dictating machines in business, because their wax recording process

3256-497: The North stay connected with their Southern roots. Companies like Okeh and Paramount enforced their objectives in the 1920s by sending field scouts to Southern states to record black artists in a one-time deal. Scouts neglected the aspirations of many singers to continue working with their companies. Field recordings were presented to the public as chance encounters to seem more genuine, yet they typically were arranged. Perspectives on

3344-579: The Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, Scott's phonautograph was recording sounds with sufficient precision to be adopted by the scientific community, paving the way for the nascent science of acoustics. The device's true significance in the history of recorded sound was not fully realized prior to March 2008, when it was discovered and resurrected in a Paris patent office by First Sounds, an informal collaborative of American audio historians, recording engineers, and sound archivists founded to make

3432-423: 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

3520-566: The age of 45. Thomas Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded telegraph messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by telephone . His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph , a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in Scientific American and several newspapers in

3608-541: The beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a "talking-machine" can be found in the Chicago Daily Tribune on May 9 ), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was patented on February 19, 1878, as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American , and placed before the editors

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3696-412: The claim that white-owned companies aimed to maintain the racial divisions in society through race records. Media companies even implemented racial stereotypes in advertising to invoke black sentiments and sell more records. Others regard the investments as being motivated simply by profit, namely by the low cost of production resulting from the easy exploitation of black writers and musicians, combined with

3784-400: The company to provide an economic ideal for African Americans to strive towards, proving that they could overcome social barriers and be successful. Hence, Black Swan paid fair wages and allowed artists to showcase their race records using their real names. Pace urged record companies owned by white individuals to recognize the demands of African Americans and increase the flow of race records in

3872-469: The company's list of songs popular among African Americans was created: Harlem Hit Parade . It listed the “most popular records in Harlem" and began to replace the term "race music" in the industry. The Harlem concept was replaced by R&B chart listings in June 1949. The term "rhythm and blues" fully replaced the term "race music". Marketing race records was especially important in the late 1920s, when

3960-426: The cylinder was rotated and slowly progressed along its axis , the airborne sound vibrated a diaphragm connected to a stylus that indented the foil into the cylinder's groove, thereby recording the vibrations as "hill-and-dale" variations of the depth of the indentation. By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded

4048-581: The earliest sound recordings available to the public. The phonautograms were then digitally converted by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who were able to play back the recorded sounds, something Scott had never conceived of. Prior to this point, the earliest known record of a human voice was thought to be an 1877 phonograph recording by Thomas Edison . The phonautograph would play

4136-508: The earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present. Alexander Graham Bell and his two associates took Edison's tinfoil phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bell's Volta Laboratory in Washington, D. C., in 1879, and continued until they were granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax. Although Edison had invented

4224-485: The early 1960s. These were eclipsed by more successful implementations of the concept from the late 1960s through the early 1980s. The pickup or cartridge is a transducer that converts mechanical vibrations from a stylus into an electrical signal. The electrical signal is amplified and converted into sound by one or more loudspeakers . Crystal and ceramic pickups that use the piezoelectric effect have largely been replaced by magnetic cartridges . The pickup includes

4312-512: The ease of distribution to a highly targeted class of consumers who have little access to a fully competitive marketplace. The control of white owned music companies was tested in the 1920s, when Black Swan Records was founded in 1921 by the African American businessman Harry Pace . Black Swan was formed to integrate the black community into a primarily white music industry, issuing around five hundred race records per year. The creation of this company brought widespread support for race records from

4400-494: The fall of 1955, for the price of $ 59.95. The October 1955 issue of Radio & Television News magazine (page 41), had a full page detailed article on Philco's new consumer product. The all-transistor portable phonograph TPA-1 and TPA-2 models played only 45rpm records and used four 1.5 volt "D" batteries for their power supply. The "TPA" stands for "Transistor Phonograph Amplifier". Their circuitry used three Philco germanium PNP alloy-fused junction audio frequency transistors. After

4488-571: 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. The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone, which itself later evolved into Columbia Records . A coin-operated version of

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4576-549: The first instance of recorded verse . On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early sound-on-film newsreel camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording. Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th-century media legends such as P. T. Barnum and Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth are amongst

4664-418: The first month. Okeh did not anticipate these sales and attempted to recreate their success by recruiting more black blues singers. Other big companies sought to profit from this new trend of race records. Columbia Records was the first to follow Okeh into the race records industry in 1921, while Paramount Records began selling race records in 1922 and Vocalion entered in the mid-1920s. The term "race records"

4752-417: The future. Black Swan was eventually purchased by Paramount Records in 1924. The Great Depression destroyed the race record market, leaving most African American musicians jobless. Almost every major music company removed race records from their catalogs as the country turned to the radio. Black listenership for the radio consistently stayed below ten percent of the total black population during this time, as

4840-407: The glass plate was slid horizontally in a well formed groove at a speed of one meter per second, a person would speak into the trumpet, causing the membrane to vibrate and the stylus to trace figures that were scratched into the lampblack. On March 25, 1857, Scott received the French patent #17,897/31,470 for his device, which he called a phonautograph. The earliest known surviving recorded sound of

4928-410: The groove more accurately, with increased high frequency response and less distortion. For DJ use, the relative robustness of spherical styli make them generally preferred for back-cuing and scratching. There are a number of derivations of the basic elliptical type, including the shibata or fine line stylus, which can more accurately reproduce high frequency information contained in the record groove. This

5016-476: The hard rubber used to make the discs with a shellac compound. Berliner's early records had poor sound quality, however. Work by Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved the sound fidelity to a point where it was as good as the cylinder. In the 1930s, vinyl (originally known as vinylite) was introduced as a record material for radio transcription discs , and for radio commercials. At that time, virtually no discs for home use were made from this material. Vinyl

5104-400: The master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced pantograph -based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly,

5192-566: The matrixes to stamp disc can be shipped to other printing plants for a global distribution of recordings; cylinders could not be stamped until 1901–1902, when the gold moulding process was introduced by Edison. Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records and "gramophones". His " phonograph record " was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (13 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. Also in 1895 Berliner replaced

5280-492: The medium's first major African-American star George Washington Johnson was obliged to perform his " The Laughing Song " (or the separate "The Whistling Coon") up to thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.) Lambert 's lead cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock

5368-570: The mid-1920s to the 1940s. In hindsight, the term race record may seem derogatory; in the early 20th century, however, the African-American press routinely used the term the Race to refer to African Americans as a whole and race man or race woman to refer to an African-American individual who showed pride in and support for African-American people and culture. Billboard began publishing charts of hit songs in 1940. Two years later,

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5456-458: The music they enjoyed did not get airtime. The exclusion of black artists on the radio was further cemented when commercial networks like NBC and CBS started to hire white singers to cover black music. It was not until after World War II that rhythm and blues, a term spanning most sub-genres of race records, gained prevalence on the radio. It has been noted that "whole areas of black vocal tradition have been overlooked, or at best have received

5544-626: The music well – 'rhythm and blues.'... [It was] a label more appropriate to more enlightened times." The chart has since undergone further name changes, becoming the Soul chart in August 1969, and the Black chart in June 1982. Phonograph A phonograph , later called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910), and since the 1940s a record player , or more recently

5632-458: The name by competing disc record manufacturers was rigorously challenged in court. However, in 1910, an English court decision ruled that the term had become generic; In American English , "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to Emile Berliner 's Gramophone,

5720-464: The next five years developing the New York City electric light and power system. Meanwhile, Bell, a scientist and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after having patented 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

5808-527: The past'). Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the public domain free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of

5896-496: The phonograph in 1877, the fame bestowed on him for this invention was not due to its efficiency. Recording with his tinfoil phonograph was too difficult to be practical, as the tinfoil tore easily, and even when the stylus was properly adjusted, its reproduction of sound was distorted, and good for only a few playbacks; nevertheless Edison had discovered the idea of sound recording . However immediately after his discovery he did not improve it, allegedly because of an agreement to spend

5984-483: The platter, either underneath it or entirely outside of it, and is connected to the platter or counter-platter by a drive belt made from elastomeric material. The direct-drive turntable was invented by Shuichi Obata, an engineer at Matsushita (now Panasonic). In 1969, Matsushita released it as the Technics SP-10, the first direct-drive turntable on the market. The most influential direct-drive turntable

6072-467: The reason white record companies invested in marketing race records vary, with some claiming it was "for the purpose of exploiting markets and expanding the capital of producers." Advocates of this philosophy emphasize the control that the companies had on the type and form of songs that artists could create. Another perspective points to evidence such as the fact that "race records were distinguished by numerical series… in effect, segregated lists", to support

6160-543: The stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch. 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. In 1885, when

6248-531: The terms "gramophone" and "graphophone" have roots in the Greek words γράμμα (gramma, meaning 'letter') and φωνή (phōnē, meaning 'voice'). In British English , "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine that utilizes disc records . These were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company . Initially, "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of the company, and any use of

6336-547: The type of music available to white and black people varied. Mainstream records during the 1890s and the first two decades of the 1900s were mainly made by and targeted towards white, middle class, and urban Americans. There were some exceptions, including George W. Johnson , a whistler who is widely believed to be the first black artist ever to record commercially, in 1890. Broadway stars Bert Williams and George Walker recorded for Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901, followed by black artists employed by other companies. Yet,

6424-585: The wear and choice of stylus, the most critical component affecting turntable sound. The terminology used to describe record-playing devices is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In modern contexts, the playback device is often referred to as a "turntable", "record player", or " record changer ". Each of these terms denotes distinct items. When integrated into a DJ setup with a mixer , turntables are colloquially known as "decks". In later versions of electric phonographs, commonly known since

6512-548: Was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct." The Argus newspaper from Melbourne, Australia, reported on an 1878 demonstration at

6600-441: 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 U.S. patent 385,886 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

6688-482: Was a revised version of the Harlem Hit Parade chart, which it had introduced in 1942. In June 1949, at the suggestion of Billboard journalist Jerry Wexler , the magazine changed the name of the chart to Rhythm & Blues Records. Wexler wrote, " ' Race' was a common term then, a self-referral used by blacks...On the other hand, 'Race Records' didn't sit well...I came up with a handle I thought suited

6776-798: Was an American jazz and blues record label founded in 1921 in Harlem , New York. It was the first widely distributed label to be owned, operated, and marketed to African Americans . Founded by Harry Pace with W.C. Handy , Black Swan Records was established to give African Americans more creative liberties. Eighteen months earlier, in 1919, the Broome Special Phonograph Records was the earliest label owned and operated by African American George W. Broome in Medford, Massachusetts , featuring Black classical musicians including Harry T. Burleigh and Edward Boatner . Black Swan

6864-413: Was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of 'He's a jolly good fellow,' which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a cracked voice." Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally tinfoil , which was temporarily wrapped around a helically grooved cylinder mounted on a correspondingly threaded rod supported by plain and threaded bearings . While

6952-514: Was coined in 1922 by Okeh Records. Such records were labeled "race records" in reference to their marketing to African Americans, but white Americans gradually began to purchase such records as well. In the 16 October 1920 issue of the Chicago Defender , an African-American newspaper , an advertisement for Okeh Records identified Mamie Smith as "Our Race Artist". Most of the major recording companies issued "race" series of records from

7040-605: Was invented on March 25, 1857, by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville , an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris. One day while editing Professor Longet's Traité de Physiologie , he happened upon that customer's engraved illustration of the anatomy of the human ear, and conceived of "the imprudent idea of photographing the word." In 1853 or 1854 (Scott cited both years) he began working on "le problème de la parole s'écrivant elle-même" ("the problem of speech writing itself"), aiming to build

7128-757: Was named arranger and later musical director. Ads for Black Swan often ran in The Crisis . Black Swan proved moderately successful. It recorded African American musicians, but as the label grew in popularity, Pace believed competing white-owned labels such as Columbia Records sought to "obstruct the progress and curtail the popularity of Black Swan Records". Although advertising for Black Swan Records claimed all its musicians and employees were African American, it sometimes used white musicians to back some of its singers. The production company declared bankruptcy in December 1923, and in March 1924 Paramount Records bought

7216-592: Was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact. A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri, has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including

7304-443: 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 . Discs are not inherently better than cylinders at providing audio fidelity. Rather, the advantages of the format are seen in the manufacturing process: discs can be stamped, and

7392-601: 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 that seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate. The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax that 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

7480-440: Was renamed Black Swan Phonograph Company in the fall of 1922. Both the record label and production company were named after 19th century opera star Elizabeth Greenfield , who was known as the Black Swan. Former employees of Pace & Handy staffed the new company: Fletcher Henderson , who functioned as the recording manager, provided piano accompaniment for singers and led a small band for recording sessions. William Grant Still

7568-453: Was revived in the 1990s for CD reissues of its historic jazz and blues recordings. Black Swan's parent company, Pace Phonograph Corporation, was founded in March 1921 by Harry Pace and was based in Harlem. The new production company was formed after Pace's music publishing partnership with W. C. Handy , Pace & Handy, had dissolved. Black Swan, which sought to specialize in classical recordings, served as an investment opportunity for

7656-669: Was the Technics SL-1200 , which, following the spread of turntablism in hip hop culture, became the most widely-used turntable in DJ culture for several decades. In some high quality equipment the arm carrying the pickup, known as a tonearm, is manufactured separately from the motor and turntable unit. Companies specialising in the manufacture of tonearms include the English company SME . More sophisticated turntables were (and still are) frequently manufactured so as to incorporate

7744-399: Was used for the popular 78-rpm V-discs issued to US soldiers during World War II . This significantly reduced breakage during transport. The first commercial vinylite record was the set of five 12" discs " Prince Igor " (Asch Records album S-800, dubbed from Soviet masters in 1945). Victor began selling some home-use vinyl 78s in late 1945; but most 78s were made of a shellac compound until

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