Record Player-Gramophone

Record Player-Gramophone

Patent document - Phonograph- Thomas Alva Edison

Early attempts were made all over Europe and USA by several scientists to invent a better machine to record and play the sounds & music.

Phonograph: 

In the year 1877 Thomas Alva Edison successfully invented his tin-foil machine to record and reproduce sounds.Thomas Edison’s product was marketed under the trade mark “Phonograph”.  The sound was recorded in a round cylinder and then reproduced using the Phonograph.

Graphophone:

Alexander Graham Bell invented another machine to record and reproduce sounds. He named it as “Graphophone” and used wax cylinders which helped him to play the same for so many times. But mass reproduction of the music or sound is impossible because of each cylinder had to be recorded separately.

Gramophone: 

Emile Berliner, a German immigrant working in USA patented a successful machine for sound recording and played the same. Emile Berlin recorded on flat disks or records and stopped to record on Cylinders.The sound/music was etched into the flat disks/records in the form of spiral groove. 

GRAMOPHONE 

The record was rotated on the gramophone. The turntable revolved at an even speed with the help of a spring motor. The Spring Motor was patented by Elridge Johnson for the Berliner gramophone. A needle in the tip of the arm was used to read the grooves in the record by vibration. The Gramophone speaker played back the sound/music information recorded in the disk/record.

Hence the name record player got its name from Berliner's disks (records). These records were the first sound recordings which were produced at mass for commercial exploitation.