Recording history

[Ingvar Loco Nordin <loco.nordin@mbox200.swipnet.se>]

Since we're all nuts about recordings, I thought it fitting to cite a few
lines from Arthur Koestler's book "The Act Of Creation" (1964):

"As a young man Edison worked as a telegraphist. His main job was the
taking of messages from the Morse-ticker by ear; if the line was bad, the
ticking became blurred, and he had to rely on guessing. So the young
telegraphist invented a simple Morse-signal-recording apparatus. It
consisted mainly of a paper disc, which was made to rotate. On the disc the
incoming dots and dashes were recorded as indentations.

Eleven years later, in the first laboratory of his own, he was working on
about fifty inventions simultaneously - among them the typewriter and an
improved telegraph-recorder, on which the incoming dots and dashes were
embossed by a needle. When the message was to be sent on to another
station, the paper disc was placed on a transmitting machine with a contact
lever which moved up and down according to the indentations on the disc. It
was a gadget with the sole purpose of recording and transmitting electrical
impulses, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of sound.
Yet it did produce purely accidental sounds - because the lever, while
tracing the embossed dots and dashes, was apt to rattle; and when the disc
was rotated very quickly this rattle became a hum, then something like a
musical sound. A sudden reversal of logic, and the phonograph was born.

The rest was a matter of elaboration. Instead of a paper disc, Edison
proposed to use a cylinder covered with soft tin-foil; instead of attaching
the needle to a Morse-telegraph, he attached it to a membrane set into
vibration by the waves of sound. He made a sketch of the machine, and gave
it to one of his workmen, a certain John Kruesi. It cost altogether $18 to
build it. When it was finished Edison shouted at it: _Mary had a little
lamb_ Then he turned the handle of the recording cylinder: The machine
reproduced perfectly. Everybody was astonished... And that was that!"

Loco

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