Introduction
The world changed in 1877 when Thomas Edison created a machine that allowed people to listen to music in their own living room. Over the years people had listen to music using different devices, from Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders to Apple’s iPod Touch. The people who make these devices look at the blueprints of the old devices and learn off of them to make a better gadget to improve the way that we listen to music.
Who was Thomas Edison ?
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. His parents were Samuel and Nancy Elliot Edison. Thomas was the youngest of seven children. Tom was a very curious child, and was accident-prone. When he was six, he set fire to his father’s barn.
Thomas was not a very good student in school, and he did not start school until he was seven. That’s because he was always too sick to start. Only after three months of school, he dropped out, and his mother taught him.
When he was nine his mother bought him a science book and he fell in love with chemistry. He set up his own lab down in his basement. He tried the experiments with his book. He bought chemicals and marked the bottles POISON. He thought that no one would touch his chemicals .
When Tom was sixteen, he was working as a railroad telegrapher. In his time, telephones weren’t invented yet, so people used telegraph. Operators tapped out messages that traveled through electrical wires. Edison had a job to tap out a message every half hour to show that he was awake. Edison found it hard to stay awake all night. So he hooked up a clock to the telegraph. Messages went out automatically every half hour without anyone touching the telegraph. This was Edison’s first invention .
In 1868, Edison was living in Boston. Here he invented the electric vote-counting machine. It was one of the first of 1,093 patents that he would get. A patent is a document issued by a government that says that only the inventor can make, use, or sell the invention. Unfortunately no one needed the machine.
In the winter of 1870, Edison became a full-time inventor. He used the money from the telegraph patent sale to start his own company in Newark, New Jersey .
The Very First Phonograph
In 1887, Thomas Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape. He experimented with a diaphragm, which had an embossing point, which was held against rapidly moving paraffin paper. His speaking vibrations made indentions in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder wrapped in tin foil. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kruesi, to build, which Kruesi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, "Mary had a little lamb." To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him.
Edison took his new invention to the offices of Scientific American in New York City and showed it to staff there. As the December 22, 1877, issue reported, "Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a warm good night." Interest was great, and the invention was reported in several New York newspapers, and later in other American newspapers and magazines.
The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established on January 24, 1878, to make use of the new machine by exhibiting it. Edison received $10,000 for the manufacturing and sales rights and 20% of the profits. As a novelty, the machine was an instant success, but was difficult to operate except by experts, and the tin foil would last for only a few times playing it .
The Gramophone
Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders where quite popular in the 1880’s, but the sound quality on the phonograph was bad and each recording lasted for one play. In 1894 a German immigrant to the U.S. named Emile Berliner introduced a commercial more improved version of the record player he had been developing since 1887. The player used a disc instead of a cylinder. The record was made on a zinc disc coated with wax. Once a recording was carved into the wax, the disc was dipped in acid, which ate away the disc under the groove and etched the recording into the surface of the zinc. He called it the "gramophone." Beside the advantages of mass production, gramophone records could produce a higher volume than the phonograph records. For a few years at least, before the phonograph was improved, the Berliner disc could produce a loud, room-filling sound. He set up a small recording studio in 1896 and by 1897 had developed an improved phonograph. The disc business was off and running. The early records were made of glass, then plastic, and then plastic.
Emile Berliner founded The Gramophone Company to mass manufacture his records and the gramophone that played them. To help promote his gramophone system Berliner did two things, he convinced popular artists to record their music using his system. Two famous artists who signed early on with Berliner's company were Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. The second smart marketing move Berliner made came in 1908, when he used Francis Barraud's painting of 'His Master's Voice' as his company's official trademark. The painting showed a dog listening to his “masters” voice being played on a gramophone. The mascot dog was called Nipper.
The Radio
Alexander Pope was the first person that attempted to build a device that would transmit wireless messages through radio signals. His machine seemed to attract lightning. Instead of inventing a radio, he invented what we call today a lightning rod. Many people had attempted to make a wireless transmitter, but all had failed.
In 1902, Julio Cervera Baviera successfully created the radio in Spain. He made it a blessing of the Spanish army. For the next few decades the radio was used for communications in both of the World Wars, people used the radio to broadcast radio messages to other radios for news, and the radio was a great way to listen to music. Today people listen to the radio for some good music.
The Modern Phonograph
In 1958, record sales boomed when rock and roll came around. During the next few years, the U.K. became the source of popular recorded music with the advent of British “beat” groups. This was a golden era for the 45. Although 45s got more and more popular by the year, buyers eventually transferred to the 12” record. During the early years of the Beatles, one record would sell 750,000 per year.
The vinyl record is made by transmitting sound vibrations to a sensitive stylus (or needle), which cuts grooves into a wax record. The vibrations of the stylus cause various depths and widths to be carved into the wax record, creating a groove.
You play the record when you place a record onto a record player; the needle on the stylus retraces the groove that has been cut into the record. As it retraces the groove, it recreates the sounds, which caused the groove to bend and form in the first place by transferring the vibrations to a diaphragm in a speaker, which picks up the sound and amplifies it to a sound level.
Reel to Reel
The first audiotape machines were opens and reel to reel, and evolved into a wide number of tape widths and tracks.
The first was the Ampex Model 200 released in 1948. ABC bought the Ampex 200 for the recording of delayed broadcasts. In 1954 Ampex began marketing the first multi-track machines. This one used magnetic tape. The tape was about 1/4 to 2 inches long.
As leader of the recording industry, Bing Crosby helped to market the reel-to-reel machines as a popular means to create quality recordings of popular bands. The need for reel-to-reel arose because of movies and their sound quality of the sound being produced. Every day, many people enjoy the sound quality of the reel-to-reel machine. During the first few years when it was popular, a reel-to-reel machine could cost consumers between $200-400 and they can still be purchased for about that amount today because they are very collectible.
The 8-Track
The eight-track tape is basically an endless loop of standard ¼ -inch magnetic tape, housed in a plastic cartridge. On the tape are eight parallel soundtracks, corresponding to four stereo programs. It was associated with the automobile and in-car listening. Ironically, however, it was first developed not by the auto industry, but by an aircraft manufacturer: Bill Lear and the Lear Jet Corporation. Unhappy with the current technology installed in his aircraft to listen to music, Lear and his company developed new “stereo 8” players. He then convinced RCA Victor to put their catalog on their cartridges and the Ford motor company, to put the players in their cars .
The popularity continued through the 1960’s and 70’s, but in the 80’s, due to the popularity of cassettes, major labels decided not to support the 8-track format and it soon died not too long after.
Cassettes
In 1962, Phillips invented the compact audio cassette player for recording and playing back music. The cassette player consists of two small spools between which a magnetically coated plastic tape is passed a wound. Two stereo pairs of tracks are on the tape. In the early years, the sound quality was mediocre, but improved in the 1970’s when it caught up with the quality of the 8–track. The cassette allowed music to be recorded onto it very easily, which added to its popularity.
One of the most popular cassette players produced, was the Sony Walkman. The Walkman is a low cost portable cassette player. Over 200 million units were sold throughout the 30-year career of the Sony Walkman. Sony ceased production of the Walkman in April 2010, due to the popularity of CD’s and portable digital music players .
Compact Discs
In 1979, Phillips and Sony had the idea that there was an easier way to listen to music, rather than tapes. They started a group that was making a successful audio disc. About a year later they had finished it. No single person can be said to have invented it, a large group collectively invented the compact disc.
The new concept was an immediate hit in the market. People were enthusiastic about the quality of the audio on the CDs. The price of CD players sank really fast, as a result. A Compact Disc is a 1.2 mm thick polycarbonate plastic disc weighing around 16 grams . To make the surface protected a very thin layer of aluminum is applied on one side of the disc. A film of lacquer is also applied to act as a protective shield. The label is printed on the other side using normal printing methods like offset or screen-printing.
In August, 1982, the first CD for commercial purposes was manufactured in a Phillips factory in Germany. The first music that was released on a CD was `The Visitors by ABBA`. Soon after, in October of the same year, the CD players from Sony also reached the markets. The event is often called as `the Big Bang` in the field of digital audio .
Mp3
The MP3 player is a portable digital music player. The Mp3 could also allow the user to store songs and music .
The German company Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft developed the Mp3. The main inventor behind the Mp3 player was Karlheinz Brandenburg; also know as the "father of the MP3". He was trying to make a digital music player without having to use any discs or cartridges. During 1991, during one of the modification tests his prototype did not work. But in 1993 he modified his machine, using the first version of the MPEG-1 standard (Buzzle.com). The way that the Mp3 works is to digitally eliminate parts of the audio that the human ear can’t hear, and save the parts that the human ear can hear. The Mp3 also allows for variations in the size and quality of the file making it the most widely used audio file format today .
IPod
In 2000, digital music players were very big and poor in quality. Apple saw the opportunity and announced the release of the iPod, their first portable music player on October 23, 2001.
At first, the reactions of users were confused because of the big $400 price tag. But every one loved the way that you could listen to over 1000 songs anywhere. The first ipod could hold 1250 to 2250 songs. Over the years, the iPod had improved, and new models had been produced, such as the iPod mini in 2004 later replaced by iPod nano. The iPod shuffle was cheaper, but had no screen; you play it by uploading songs from your computer and press play and I play the songs that you uploaded. The IPod touch was the first iPod that used Wi-Fi. On the IPod touch, you can play games, watch videos, and more. The IPod store allowed people to buy music, games, and videos in a very simple way .
Conclusion
As you see, music has been listened in many different ways over the past years. It all started with Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders 130 years ago, and as time has passed by people had looked backed at his device making new ways to make it easier and more enjoyable to listen to. Who knows, maybe you might invent a better playback device. The writer concludes that there are going to be more ways to listen to music.
The world changed in 1877 when Thomas Edison created a machine that allowed people to listen to music in their own living room. Over the years people had listen to music using different devices, from Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders to Apple’s iPod Touch. The people who make these devices look at the blueprints of the old devices and learn off of them to make a better gadget to improve the way that we listen to music.
Who was Thomas Edison ?
Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. His parents were Samuel and Nancy Elliot Edison. Thomas was the youngest of seven children. Tom was a very curious child, and was accident-prone. When he was six, he set fire to his father’s barn.
Thomas was not a very good student in school, and he did not start school until he was seven. That’s because he was always too sick to start. Only after three months of school, he dropped out, and his mother taught him.
When he was nine his mother bought him a science book and he fell in love with chemistry. He set up his own lab down in his basement. He tried the experiments with his book. He bought chemicals and marked the bottles POISON. He thought that no one would touch his chemicals .
When Tom was sixteen, he was working as a railroad telegrapher. In his time, telephones weren’t invented yet, so people used telegraph. Operators tapped out messages that traveled through electrical wires. Edison had a job to tap out a message every half hour to show that he was awake. Edison found it hard to stay awake all night. So he hooked up a clock to the telegraph. Messages went out automatically every half hour without anyone touching the telegraph. This was Edison’s first invention .
In 1868, Edison was living in Boston. Here he invented the electric vote-counting machine. It was one of the first of 1,093 patents that he would get. A patent is a document issued by a government that says that only the inventor can make, use, or sell the invention. Unfortunately no one needed the machine.
In the winter of 1870, Edison became a full-time inventor. He used the money from the telegraph patent sale to start his own company in Newark, New Jersey .
The Very First Phonograph
In 1887, Thomas Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape. He experimented with a diaphragm, which had an embossing point, which was held against rapidly moving paraffin paper. His speaking vibrations made indentions in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder wrapped in tin foil. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kruesi, to build, which Kruesi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, "Mary had a little lamb." To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him.
Edison took his new invention to the offices of Scientific American in New York City and showed it to staff there. As the December 22, 1877, issue reported, "Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a warm good night." Interest was great, and the invention was reported in several New York newspapers, and later in other American newspapers and magazines.
The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established on January 24, 1878, to make use of the new machine by exhibiting it. Edison received $10,000 for the manufacturing and sales rights and 20% of the profits. As a novelty, the machine was an instant success, but was difficult to operate except by experts, and the tin foil would last for only a few times playing it .
The Gramophone
Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders where quite popular in the 1880’s, but the sound quality on the phonograph was bad and each recording lasted for one play. In 1894 a German immigrant to the U.S. named Emile Berliner introduced a commercial more improved version of the record player he had been developing since 1887. The player used a disc instead of a cylinder. The record was made on a zinc disc coated with wax. Once a recording was carved into the wax, the disc was dipped in acid, which ate away the disc under the groove and etched the recording into the surface of the zinc. He called it the "gramophone." Beside the advantages of mass production, gramophone records could produce a higher volume than the phonograph records. For a few years at least, before the phonograph was improved, the Berliner disc could produce a loud, room-filling sound. He set up a small recording studio in 1896 and by 1897 had developed an improved phonograph. The disc business was off and running. The early records were made of glass, then plastic, and then plastic.
Emile Berliner founded The Gramophone Company to mass manufacture his records and the gramophone that played them. To help promote his gramophone system Berliner did two things, he convinced popular artists to record their music using his system. Two famous artists who signed early on with Berliner's company were Enrico Caruso and Dame Nellie Melba. The second smart marketing move Berliner made came in 1908, when he used Francis Barraud's painting of 'His Master's Voice' as his company's official trademark. The painting showed a dog listening to his “masters” voice being played on a gramophone. The mascot dog was called Nipper.
The Radio
Alexander Pope was the first person that attempted to build a device that would transmit wireless messages through radio signals. His machine seemed to attract lightning. Instead of inventing a radio, he invented what we call today a lightning rod. Many people had attempted to make a wireless transmitter, but all had failed.
In 1902, Julio Cervera Baviera successfully created the radio in Spain. He made it a blessing of the Spanish army. For the next few decades the radio was used for communications in both of the World Wars, people used the radio to broadcast radio messages to other radios for news, and the radio was a great way to listen to music. Today people listen to the radio for some good music.
The Modern Phonograph
In 1958, record sales boomed when rock and roll came around. During the next few years, the U.K. became the source of popular recorded music with the advent of British “beat” groups. This was a golden era for the 45. Although 45s got more and more popular by the year, buyers eventually transferred to the 12” record. During the early years of the Beatles, one record would sell 750,000 per year.
The vinyl record is made by transmitting sound vibrations to a sensitive stylus (or needle), which cuts grooves into a wax record. The vibrations of the stylus cause various depths and widths to be carved into the wax record, creating a groove.
You play the record when you place a record onto a record player; the needle on the stylus retraces the groove that has been cut into the record. As it retraces the groove, it recreates the sounds, which caused the groove to bend and form in the first place by transferring the vibrations to a diaphragm in a speaker, which picks up the sound and amplifies it to a sound level.
Reel to Reel
The first audiotape machines were opens and reel to reel, and evolved into a wide number of tape widths and tracks.
The first was the Ampex Model 200 released in 1948. ABC bought the Ampex 200 for the recording of delayed broadcasts. In 1954 Ampex began marketing the first multi-track machines. This one used magnetic tape. The tape was about 1/4 to 2 inches long.
As leader of the recording industry, Bing Crosby helped to market the reel-to-reel machines as a popular means to create quality recordings of popular bands. The need for reel-to-reel arose because of movies and their sound quality of the sound being produced. Every day, many people enjoy the sound quality of the reel-to-reel machine. During the first few years when it was popular, a reel-to-reel machine could cost consumers between $200-400 and they can still be purchased for about that amount today because they are very collectible.
The 8-Track
The eight-track tape is basically an endless loop of standard ¼ -inch magnetic tape, housed in a plastic cartridge. On the tape are eight parallel soundtracks, corresponding to four stereo programs. It was associated with the automobile and in-car listening. Ironically, however, it was first developed not by the auto industry, but by an aircraft manufacturer: Bill Lear and the Lear Jet Corporation. Unhappy with the current technology installed in his aircraft to listen to music, Lear and his company developed new “stereo 8” players. He then convinced RCA Victor to put their catalog on their cartridges and the Ford motor company, to put the players in their cars .
The popularity continued through the 1960’s and 70’s, but in the 80’s, due to the popularity of cassettes, major labels decided not to support the 8-track format and it soon died not too long after.
Cassettes
In 1962, Phillips invented the compact audio cassette player for recording and playing back music. The cassette player consists of two small spools between which a magnetically coated plastic tape is passed a wound. Two stereo pairs of tracks are on the tape. In the early years, the sound quality was mediocre, but improved in the 1970’s when it caught up with the quality of the 8–track. The cassette allowed music to be recorded onto it very easily, which added to its popularity.
One of the most popular cassette players produced, was the Sony Walkman. The Walkman is a low cost portable cassette player. Over 200 million units were sold throughout the 30-year career of the Sony Walkman. Sony ceased production of the Walkman in April 2010, due to the popularity of CD’s and portable digital music players .
Compact Discs
In 1979, Phillips and Sony had the idea that there was an easier way to listen to music, rather than tapes. They started a group that was making a successful audio disc. About a year later they had finished it. No single person can be said to have invented it, a large group collectively invented the compact disc.
The new concept was an immediate hit in the market. People were enthusiastic about the quality of the audio on the CDs. The price of CD players sank really fast, as a result. A Compact Disc is a 1.2 mm thick polycarbonate plastic disc weighing around 16 grams . To make the surface protected a very thin layer of aluminum is applied on one side of the disc. A film of lacquer is also applied to act as a protective shield. The label is printed on the other side using normal printing methods like offset or screen-printing.
In August, 1982, the first CD for commercial purposes was manufactured in a Phillips factory in Germany. The first music that was released on a CD was `The Visitors by ABBA`. Soon after, in October of the same year, the CD players from Sony also reached the markets. The event is often called as `the Big Bang` in the field of digital audio .
Mp3
The MP3 player is a portable digital music player. The Mp3 could also allow the user to store songs and music .
The German company Fraunhofer-Gesellshaft developed the Mp3. The main inventor behind the Mp3 player was Karlheinz Brandenburg; also know as the "father of the MP3". He was trying to make a digital music player without having to use any discs or cartridges. During 1991, during one of the modification tests his prototype did not work. But in 1993 he modified his machine, using the first version of the MPEG-1 standard (Buzzle.com). The way that the Mp3 works is to digitally eliminate parts of the audio that the human ear can’t hear, and save the parts that the human ear can hear. The Mp3 also allows for variations in the size and quality of the file making it the most widely used audio file format today .
IPod
In 2000, digital music players were very big and poor in quality. Apple saw the opportunity and announced the release of the iPod, their first portable music player on October 23, 2001.
At first, the reactions of users were confused because of the big $400 price tag. But every one loved the way that you could listen to over 1000 songs anywhere. The first ipod could hold 1250 to 2250 songs. Over the years, the iPod had improved, and new models had been produced, such as the iPod mini in 2004 later replaced by iPod nano. The iPod shuffle was cheaper, but had no screen; you play it by uploading songs from your computer and press play and I play the songs that you uploaded. The IPod touch was the first iPod that used Wi-Fi. On the IPod touch, you can play games, watch videos, and more. The IPod store allowed people to buy music, games, and videos in a very simple way .
Conclusion
As you see, music has been listened in many different ways over the past years. It all started with Thomas Edison’s wax cylinders 130 years ago, and as time has passed by people had looked backed at his device making new ways to make it easier and more enjoyable to listen to. Who knows, maybe you might invent a better playback device. The writer concludes that there are going to be more ways to listen to music.
