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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 12 hours
    Level: Introductory

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • This unit looks at the ways in which technology has influenced the music industry and how this has changed the way we listen to music and buy records. It is a brief history of the recording industry from...
 

1 Capturing sound

 

2 Cylinders or plates?

  • 2.1 Edison starts with cylinders Resource
  • I had a little gramophone; I'd wind it round and round, and with a sharpish needle it made a cheerful sound.
  • 2.2 Bell and Tainter improve the phonograph Resource
  • If Edison was not willing to continue development of the phonograph then others were. Alexander Graham Bell, who had risen to prominence through his invention of the telephone, took a great interest in...
  • 2.3 Berliner experiments with plates Resource
  • Emile Berliner was a young German immigrant to the USA with an interest in science. Whilst working in several menial jobs he educated himself in basic physics and chemistry, eventually building a small...
  • 2.4 Cutting the groove Resource
  • The vertical (up-and-down) cutting method, which was nicknamed ‘hill-and-dale’, shown in Figure 9(a) was invented by Edison. The lateral (side-to-side) motion developed by Berliner is shown in Figure 9(b)....
  • 2.5 Making multiple copies Resource
  • Berliner was aware that Edison had problems duplicating cylinders. Initially copies were made from a master cylinder using a mechanical engraving process. Unfortunately this method caused the master cylinder...
  • 2.6 Turning the handle Resource
  • The owners of the original hand-cranked gramophones were instructed that the standard velocity for ‘seven-inch plates’ was about 70 revolutions per minute. The owner was also warned that failure to turn...
  • 2.7 Music matters Resource
  • There was little difference in sound quality between the phonograph cylinder and the gramophone disc. The limited frequency response of the acoustic recording and playback process restricted the sounds...
  • 2.8 Good times and bad Resource
  • The music industry, like any other large industrial business, had good times and bad times. By 1924 the burgeoning of radio broadcasting in the United States caused a severe downturn in record and equipment...
 

3 Sounds from magnets

  • 3.1 Introduction Resource
  • I've an opera here you shan't escape – on miles and miles of recording tape.
  • 3.2 Recording on the wire Resource
  • A paper published by Oberlin Smith in an 1888 issue of Electrical World discussed the possibilities for recording sound using the property of magnetism. He envisaged a cotton thread impregnated with steel...
  • 3.3 Magnetic tape recorders Resource
  • Experiments showed that the use of paper tape coated with iron oxide particles significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio and enabled a lower tape speed to be used. A plastic-based version of this...
  • 3.4 Compact cassettes Resource
  • The use of magnetic tape for home use has always been somewhat problematic. Whilst it offers several advantages over discs, being capable of high-quality sound, substantially free from surface noise and...
  • 3.5 Studio tape recorders Resource
  • The importance of tape recording to record production cannot be overemphasised. From its development until the coming of digital tape recorders in the late 1970s, the analogue tape recorder was at the...
 

4 Unit summary

  • 4 Unit summary Resource
  • Sound recording really took off once the public's demand for recorded music had been acknowledged. The choice of technology, cylinder or disc, was determined more by the selection of the artist and material...
 

References and Acknowledgements

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