How Did That Happen?

Before we get into the history, it might be interesting to understand what type of vinyl is used to make records Most records created today are made using what’s called PVC or Poly Vinyl Chloride. Its supposed to provided a richer sound than. Originally sound was recorded on disks made of shellac which were sometimes called grooved gramophone disks, but shellac is much shorter.  The shellac is a type of wax that was heated and hardened before they would create the sound by adding grooves. I found a video on YouTube that shows the process. I will post it on the twitter page.  Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville patented the phonautograph in 1857. Martinville was a printer and a bookseller. He was said to have been inspired to make this after reading about the anatomy of the human ear. The phonautograph is supposed to be an analog of the ear canal.  It had a funnel like horn or a small open ended barrel with a parchment or some other suitable material stretched over the small end.  A pig bristle traced a line through a thin coating of lampblack on a moving surface of paper or glass. So the air vibrations would be recorded by the moving bristle on the lampblack. It is this technology that became the fundamental principle of vinyl recording. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. With tin foil wrapped around a metal roll it could be turned with a hand crank. Using an acoustic horn the sound vibrations would then become pressed against a membrane that would start to vibrate. This membrane was fitted to a steel needle that could carve the vibrations into the tin foil as it turned. Initially, one could only record for about a minute at a time before having to change out the tin foil. When Edison exhibited the phonograph, he referred to it as a “speaking machine.” The first thing he said into the phonograph was “Mary had a little lamb, his fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.” It went into commercial production in 1887, but it was not a super hit due to the small amount of recording time as well as its lacking sound quality.  What followed the phonograph was the gramophone which was created by Emile Berliner.  Berliner was a German American inventor who went toe to toe with Edison during those days. He even created one of the first microphones called a carbon button microphone and sold it to the Bell phone company. This is all documented in a group of U.S. Supreme Court trials called “The Telephone Cases” which sounds like a good podcast title. But it details the creation of the telephone and who actually gets credit for its invention. In 1887 Berliner patented a device called the gramophone that would record sound on disks.   The markings made by the needle were recorded in soot and then after recording they were varnished and used to photoengrave the grooves onto a metal disk. Initially they used 5 inch disks with a hand crank and were sold as a children’s toy in Europe. They could not be sold in the U.S. due to issues with the patents being pending. Eventually he is allowed to sell them in America but the hand crank as well as the technology did not make them a top seller. He gets help from Eldridge Johnson to get rid of the hand crank but  Berliner had other troubles in the form of competition in his own company. The people he licensed to sell his products were selling their own knockoffs as well. Eventually Berliner gives up on this line of business and leaves the country.  Berliner sold the rights of this invention to Eldridge Johnson who founded the Viktor talking machine company. They sold the disks that Berliner had been trying to perfect. The victor talking machine company created the Victor Victrola which was the first internal horn machine.  Because up until then the horn used for listening was always out and visible. Up until this point all music that was recorded was done acoustically.