1800-1879

Vibrations to Phonographs  

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 (b 1817). 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 was recorded on a rotating cylinder but it is unable to replay sound. Leon Scott also used flat disks to trace lateral motions the pig's hair. Emile Berliner would later use flat disks for his Gramophone.  

1874 Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the inventor of the telephone experimented with a Phonautograph in 1874, shortly before Edison's invention. Attempting to discover how the ear detected sound, he used a human ear (including the internal parts) from a cadaver, attaching a stylus to the eardrum and using it to make a recording. When he learned of the invention of the phonograph, Bell wondered why he didn't think of it himself. Bell was the inventor of the first wax recording cylinder in 1886. The cylinder together with the flat disc form the basis of the modern phonograph.

1877 In April of this year another Frenchman, Charles Cros, submitted a paper to the Academy of Sciences in Paris suggesting that the vibrations of sound waves could be traced with a pen attached to a vibrating membrane and then the waves could be engraved into metal. A stylus attached to a membrane could then trace over the engraving reproducing the sound. Cros, best known as a poet and writer, did not have the chance to turn his idea into reality before Thomas Edison introduced his forst working phonograph in the US.

1877 A 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.