The first device for recording and reproducing sound. Edison's invention of the phonograph

Inventor Story by: Emil Berliner
Country: USA
Time of invention: 1887

Among the remarkable technical achievements of the 19th century, far from last place takes the invention of sound recording. The first sound recording device was created in 1857 by Leon Scott.

The principle of operation of his phonoautograph was very simple: a needle, which transmitted the vibrations of a sound diaphragm, drew a curve on the surface of a rotating cylinder covered with a layer of soot. Sound waves in this device received, as it were, a visible image, but nothing more - it is clear that it was impossible to reproduce the sound recorded on soot.

Next important step along this path was made by the famous American inventor Edison. In 1877, Edison created the first "talking machine" - the phonograph, which made it possible not only to record, but also to reproduce sound.

Edison spoke of his invention as follows: “Once, when I was still working on improving the telephone, I somehow sang over the diaphragm, to which a steel needle was soldered. Thanks to the trembling of the records, the needle pricked my finger, and this made me think. If one could record these vibrations of the needle, and then pass the needle over such a record again, why shouldn't the record speak?

I tried first to pass an ordinary telegraph tape under the tip of the telephone diaphragm and noticed that some kind of alphabet was obtained, and then, when I forced the tape with the record to pass under the needle again, I heard, however, very weakly: "Hello, hello." Then I decided to build a device that would work distinctly, and instructed my assistants, telling what I had come up with. They laughed at me."

The principle of the phonograph was in general the same as that of the telephone. Sound waves were brought to a plate of very thin glass or mica and a chisel attached to it were recorded on a rapidly rotating shaft covered with tin foil. Traces were obtained on the foil, the shape of which corresponded to the vibrations of the plate and, consequently, to the sound waves incident on it. This strip of sheet tin could be used to produce the same sounds on the same instrument.

With uniform rotation of the strip, the cutter attached to the plate passed along the groove made by him earlier. As a result, the plate was driven by the chisel into the same vibrations that it had previously transmitted to it under the influence of the voice and sound instrument, and began to sound like the membrane of a telephone. Thus, the phonograph reproduced every conversation, singing and whistling.

The first Edison devices, created in 1877, were still very imperfect. They wheezed, nasalized, exaggerated some sounds, did not reproduce others at all, and in general, more resembled parrots than loudspeakers of human speech. Their other drawback was that the sound could be distinguished only by putting the ear to the diaphragm. This was largely due to the fact that the roller did not move smoothly enough on the surface, which could not be made completely smooth. The needle, moving from one recess to another, experienced its own oscillations, transmitted in the form of strong noises.

Edison worked hard to improve the phonograph. He encountered especially many problems with reproduction sound "s", which did not want to be recorded. He himself later recalled: “For seven months I worked almost 18-20 hours a day on one word“ spice ”. No matter how many times I repeated into the phonograph: spice, spice, spice - the device stubbornly repeated the same thing to me: spice, spice, spice. You could go crazy! But I did not lose heart and persistently continued my work until I overcame the difficulties. How difficult my task was, you will understand if I say that the traces obtained on the cylinder at the beginning of a word were not more than one millionth of an inch deep! It is easy to make amazing discoveries, but the difficulty lies in perfecting them so that they are of practical value.

After many experiments, a more or less suitable material for the rollers was found - an alloy of wax and some vegetable resins (Edison kept this recipe a secret). In 1878 he founded a special firm for the production of phonographs. At the same time, all the newspapers were widely advertised for his invention. It was assured that the phonograph could be used for dictating letters, publishing sound books, playing music, studying foreign languages, recording telephone messages and many other purposes.

But, alas, none of these promises was fulfilled even in 1889, when a new phonograph was constructed, which did not have many of the shortcomings of the former. However, the new improved phonograph did not receive wide practical application. In addition to the high price, practical imperfections prevented its distribution. The roller could not contain much information and filled up in a few minutes.

More or less significant correspondence required a large number of rollers. After several listenings, the copy was destroyed. The transfer of the apparatus itself was far from perfect. In addition, it was impossible to get copies from the wax roller. Each record was unique and with damage to the roller was lost forever.

All these shortcomings were successfully overcome by Emil Berliner, who in 1887 took out a patent for another sound recording device - the gramophone. Although the principle of the gramophone and phonograph was the same and the same gramophone had a number of significant differences, which provided him with the widest distribution. First of all, the needle in Berliner's recording apparatus was parallel to the plane of the diaphragm and drew winding lines (rather than furrows, like Edison's). In addition, instead of a bulky and uncomfortable roller, Berliner chose a round plate.

The recording took place as follows. A polished zinc disk intended for sound recording was mounted on a large-diameter disk with a rim. A solution of wax in gasoline was poured on top of it. The disc-bath received rotation from the handle through a friction gear, and a system of gears and a lead screw connected the rotation of the disc with the radial movement of the recording membrane mounted on the stand.

This achieved the movement of the recording device along a spiral line. When the gasoline evaporated, a very thin layer of wax was left on the disc, and the disc was ready to be recorded. Berliner produced a sound groove in almost the same way as Edison, using a recording membrane equipped with a tube with a small horn and transmitting its vibrations to an iridium tip.

The main advantage of recording according to the Berliner method was that it was easy to get copies. To do this, the recorded disc was first of all immersed in an aqueous solution of chromic acid. Where the surface of the disk was covered with wax, the acid had no effect on it. Only in the sound grooves, because the recording point cut the wax all the way to the surface of the disc, did the zinc dissolve under the action of the acid. In this case, the sound groove was etched to a depth of about 0.1 mm. The disk was then washed and the wax removed. In this form, it could already serve to reproduce sound, but in fact it was only the original for the manufacture of copper galvanic copies.

The principle of electroforming was discovered in 1838 by the Russian electrical engineer Jacobi. In the process electrolytes were used - liquids that conduct electricity through themselves. A feature of electrolytes is that in solutions (or melts) their molecules decompose into positive and negative ions. Thanks to this, electrolysis becomes possible - a chemical reaction that proceeds under the influence of an electric current.

For electrolysis, metal or carbon rods are placed in the bath, which are connected to constant source current. (The electrode connected to the negative pole of the battery is called the cathode, and the electrode connected to the positive pole is called the anode.) The electric current in the electrolyte represents the process of movement of ions to the electrodes. Positively charged ions move towards the cathode, while negatively charged ions move towards the anode.

On the electrodes, a neutralization reaction of ions takes place, which, giving up extra electrons or receiving the missing ones, turn into atoms and molecules. For example, each copper ion receives two missing electrons on the cathode and is deposited on it in the form of a metal copper. In this case, the deposit gives an accurate relief image of the cathode. This last property is precisely used in electroforming.

A copy (matrix) is taken from the copied objects, representing their reverse negative image. The copy is then suspended as a cathode (negative pole) in a plating bath. The metal from which the copy was made is taken as the anode (positive pole). The bath solution must contain ions of the same metal.

Berliner acted in exactly the same way - he immersed a zinc disk in a bath with a solution of copper salt and connected the negative pole of the battery to it. In the process of electrolysis, a copper layer 3-4 mm thick was deposited on the disk, exactly repeating all the details of the disk, but with a reverse relief (that is, tubercles were obtained in place of the grooves, but exactly repeating all their twists).

Then the resulting copper copy was separated from the zinc disc. It served as a matrix with which it was possible to press disks-plates from some plastic material. In the beginning, celluloid, ebonite, all kinds of wax masses, and the like were used for this purpose. The very first gramophone record in history was made by Berliner in 1888 from celluloid.

Gramophone records, which went on sale in the early 90s, were made of ebonite. Both of these materials were not suitable for the intended purpose, as they were poorly fed to the pressing and therefore did not accurately reproduce the relief of the matrix. Having done many experiments, Berliner in 1896 created a special shellac mass (it included shellac - a resin of organic origin, heavy spar, ash and some other substances), which then remained for many decades the main material for making records.

The records were played on a special device - a gramophone. The main part of the sound-picking device here was a mica plate, linked by a lever with a clamp into which interchangeable steel needles were inserted. Rubber gaskets were placed between the clamp and the membrane body. Initially, the gramophone was driven by hand, and then began to be installed on a box with a mechanism.

Both the recorder and Berliner's first gramophones were very imperfect. Hiss, crackle and distortion were their constant companions. Nevertheless, this invention was a huge commercial success - in just ten years, gramophones spread throughout the world and penetrated into all sectors of society. By 1901, about four million records had already been released. Phonographs could not compete with the creation of Berliner, and Edison had to curtail their production.

December 1877. Thomas Alva Edison recites a short nursery rhyme about Mary and her little sheep through the mouthpiece of an outlandish machine. And in a minute, the astonished assistants hear how the apparatus repeats a simple story in the voice of the inventor. Miracle? None of Edison's contemporaries doubted this.

To look and listen to the “talking machine”, as soon as the evening newspapers reported about it, so many people poured in that on the line leading to Menle Park, where the inventor lived and worked, additional trains had to be launched. Somewhat later, the phonograph was shown in circuses, passing it off as "an inexplicable riddle of nature."

When the phonograph was demonstrated in March 1878 at the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the apparatus obediently reproduced the phrase recorded on the roller. And suddenly, Academician Buyo, who was present at the meeting, rushed at the representative of Edison and grabbed him by the throat, shouting loudly: “Scoundrel, we will not allow some ventriloquist to fool us!”

After listening to the explanations of a physicist who proved that the sound in a phonograph is obtained due to the vibration of a metal membrane, Buyo angrily replied: "I will never admit that the noble sound of a person's voice can be replaced by a piece of iron!"

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Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) - an outstanding American inventor and businessman who received over four thousand patents in different countries planets. The most famous among them were the incandescent lamp and the phonograph. His merits were noted at the highest level - in 1928 the inventor was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, and two years later Edison became an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Thomas Alva Edison

"Faith is a comforting rattle for those who cannot think."

“Our big disadvantage is that we give up too quickly. The surest way to success is to keep trying one more time.”

“Most people are ready to work endlessly, just to get rid of the need to think a little.”

As a child, Edison was considered mentally retarded.

Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the small town of Mylen, located in Ohio. His ancestors moved overseas in the 18th century from Holland. The great-grandfather of the inventor participated in the War of Independence on the side of the metropolis. For this, he was condemned by the revolutionaries who won the war and sent to Canada. There his son Samuel was born, who became the grandfather of Thomas. The inventor's father, Samuel Jr., married Nancy Eliot, who later became his mother. After an unsuccessful uprising, in which Samuel Jr. participated, the family fled to the United States, where Thomas was born.

In childhood, Thomas was inferior in height to many of his peers, looking a little sickly and frail. He was severely ill with scarlet fever and almost lost his hearing. This influenced his studies at school - there the future inventor studied for only three months, after which he was sent to home schooling with an insulting verdict of the teacher "limited". As a result, the mother was engaged in the education of her son, who managed to instill in him an interest in life.

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

businessman by nature

Despite the harsh imprisonment of teachers, the boy grew up inquisitive and often visited the Port Huron People's Library. Among the many books he read, he especially remembered R. Green's Natural and Experimental Philosophy. In the future, Edison will repeat all the experiments that were described in the source. He was also interested in the work of steamships and barges, as well as carpenters at the shipyard, for which the boy could watch for hours.

Edison in his youth

From a young age, Thomas helped his mother earn money by selling vegetables and fruits with her. He set aside the funds received for experiments, but the money was sorely lacking, which forced Edison to get a job as a newspaperman on a railway line with a salary of 8-10 dollars. At the same time, an enterprising young man began to publish his newspaper Grand Trunk Herald and successfully implemented it.

When Thomas was 19 years old, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky and got a job at the news agency Western Union. His appearance in this company was the result of the human feat of the inventor, who saved the three-year-old son of the head of one of the railway stations from certain death under the wheels of a train. As a thank you, he helped teach him the telegraph business. Edison managed to get a job on the night shift, as he devoted himself to reading books and experiments during the day. During one of them, the young man spilled sulfuric acid, which leaked through the cracks in the floor to the floor below, where his boss worked.

First inventions

The first experience of inventive activity did not bring fame to Thomas. Nobody needed his first apparatus for counting votes during the elections - American parliamentarians considered him completely useless. After the first failures, Edison began to adhere to his golden rule - do not invent something that is not in demand.

In 1870, luck finally came to the inventor. He was paid $40,000 for a stock ticker (a device for recording stock prices in automatic mode). With this money, Thomas created his workshop in Newark and began to produce tickers. In 1873, he invented a diplex telegraph model, which he soon improved, turning it into a quadruplex model with the possibility of simultaneously transmitting four messages.

Creation of a phonograph

The device for recording and reproducing sound, which the author called the phonograph, glorified Edison for centuries. It was created as a result of the inventor's work on the telegraph and telephone. In 1877, Thomas worked on an apparatus capable of recording messages in the form of deep impressions on paper, which could subsequently be sent repeatedly by telegraph.

The active work of the brain led Edison to the idea that a telephone conversation could be recorded in the same way. The inventor continued experimenting with a membrane and a small press held over a moving paraffin-coated paper. The sound waves emitted by the voice created vibration, leaving marks on the surface of the paper. Later, instead of this material, a metal cylinder appeared, wrapped in foil.

Edison with phonograph

While testing the phonograph in August 1877, Thomas recited a line from a nursery rhyme, "Mary had a lamb," and the device successfully repeated the phrase. A few months later, he founded the Edison Talking Phonograph business, earning income from demonstrating his device to people. Soon the inventor sold the rights to make a phonograph for $10,000.

Other Notable Inventions

Edison's fertility as an inventor is amazing. In the list of his know-how, there are many useful and bold decisions for their time, which in their own way changed the world around us. Among them:

• Mimeograph- a device for printing and reproducing written sources in small print runs, which Russian revolutionaries liked to use.
• The method of storing organic food in a glass container was patented in 1881 and involved the creation of a vacuum environment in the dishes.
• Kinetoscope- a device for viewing a movie by one person. It was a massive box with an eyepiece through which it was possible to see a recording lasting up to 30 seconds. It was in good demand before the advent of film projectors, which seriously lost in mass viewing.
• telephone membrane- a device for sound reproduction, which laid the foundations of modern telephony.
• Electric chair- apparatus for carrying out death penalty. Edison convinced the public that this was one of the most humane methods of execution and obtained permission for use in a number of states. The first "client" of the deadly invention was a certain W. Kemmer, who was executed in 1896 for the murder of his wife.
• Stencil pen- a pneumatic device for perforating printed paper, patented in 1876. For its time, it was the most efficient device capable of copying documents. After 15 years, S. O'Reilly created a tattoo machine based on this pen.
• Fluoroscope- an apparatus for fluoroscopy, which was developed by Edison's assistant K. Delly. In those days, X-rays were not considered particularly dangerous, so he tested the operation of the device on his own hands. As a result, both limbs were amputated successively, and he himself died of cancer.
• electric car- Edison was obsessed with electricity in a good way and believed that he had a real future. In 1899, he developed an alkaline battery and intended to improve it in the direction of increasing the resource. Despite the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century more than a quarter of cars in the United States were electric, Thomas soon abandoned this idea due to the mass distribution of gasoline engines.

Most of these inventions were made in West Orange, where Edison moved in 1887. In the series of Edison's achievements, there are also purely scientific discoveries, for example, in 1883 he described thermionic emission, which later found application for detecting radio waves.

Industrial lighting

In 1878, Thomas began to commercialize the incandescent lamp. He was not involved in her birth, since 70 years before that, the British H. Devi had already invented a prototype of a light bulb. Edison glorified one of the options for its improvement - he came up with a standard size base and optimized the spiral, making the lighting fixture more durable.

To the left of Edison is a huge incandescent lamp, in the hands is a compact version

Edison went even further and built a power plant, developed a transformer and other equipment, eventually creating an electrical distribution system. It became a real competitor to the then widespread gas lighting. The practical application of electricity turned out to be much more important than the idea of ​​​​its creation. At first, the system illuminated only two quarters, while immediately proving its performance and acquiring a finished presentation.

Edison had a long conflict with another king of American electrification, George Westinghouse, over the type of current, since Thomas worked with DC, and his opponent with AC. The war went on according to the principle “all means are good”, but time put everything in its place - as a result, alternating current turned out to be much more in demand.

Inventor's Success Secrets

Edison was able to combine inventive activity and entrepreneurship in an amazing way. Developing the next project, he had a clear idea of ​​what its commercial benefits are and whether it will be in demand. Thomas was never embarrassed by the chosen means, and if it was necessary to borrow the technical solutions of competitors, he used them without a twinge of conscience. He selected young employees for himself, demanding devotion and loyalty from them. The inventor worked all his life, never ceasing to do it, even when he became a rich man. He was never stopped by difficulties, which only tempered and directed him to new achievements.

In addition, Edison was notable for his uncontrollable capacity for work, determination, creativity of thought and excellent erudition, although he never received a serious education. By the end of his life, the fortune of the entrepreneur-inventor was $15 billion, which allowed him to be considered one of the richest people of his era. The lion's share of the money he earned went to business development, so Thomas spent very little on himself.

Edison's creative heritage was the basis of the world famous brand General Electric.

Personal life

Thomas was married twice and had three children from each wife. The first time he married at the age of 24 was Mary Stilwell, who was 8 years younger than her husband. Interestingly, before marriage, they had known each other for only two months. After Mary's death, Thomas married Mine Miller, whom he taught Morse code. With her help, they often communicated with each other in the presence of other people, tapping their palms.

Passion for the occult

In his old age, the inventor became seriously interested in the afterlife and conducted very exotic experiments. One of them was associated with an attempt to record the voices of dead people using a special necrophone device. According to the author's intention, the device was supposed to record the last words of a person who had just died. He even entered into an “electric pact” with his assistant, according to which the first person who died should send a message to a colleague. The device has not reached our days, and its drawings have not remained, so the results of the experiment remained unknown.

• Edison was a great workaholic, ready to go to great lengths to achieve results. During the First World War, he worked 168 hours without rest, trying to create an enterprise for the production of synthetic carbolic acid, and in the process of developing an alkaline battery, Thomas conducted 59 thousand experiments.
• Thomas had a rather original tattoo in the form of 5 dots on his left forearm. According to some reports, it was made by the O'Reilly tattoo machine, created on the basis of Edison's engraving device.
• As a child, Edison dreamed of becoming an actor, but due to his great shyness and deafness, he abandoned this idea.
• Thomas was interested in many areas of life, including the sphere of everyday life. The inventor created a special electrical appliance, destroying cockroaches with the help of current.
• Edison left a rich creative legacy, which found expression in 2.5 thousand written books.

For a long time, Thomas Edison's acquaintances wondered why his gate was so hard to open. Finally one of his friends said to him:
- A genius like you could design a better gate.
- It seems to me, - answered Edison, - the gate is designed ingeniously. It is connected to the domestic water supply pump. Everyone who enters pumps twenty liters of water into my cistern.

Thomas Edison passed away on October 18, 1931 own house in West Orange and was buried in his backyard.

This year marks the 135th anniversary of the phonograph, the invention of Thomas Edison. The inventor himself was so amazed by his own discovery that he said: “Never have I been so stunned in my life. I've always been afraid of things that work the first time." They tell about the history of the founder of the music industry.

A box that speaks with a human voice 135 years ago was perceived only as an "inexplicable miracle of nature." Its inventor, Thomas Edison, was considered a magician capable of placing a ventriloquist in an iron chest. The fact that sound fixation finally became possible, and that this miracle of technology was the beginning of the era of audio recording, was realized a little later.

“There are many legends,” says Vladimir Kolyada, director of the Russian State Records Archive. - Actually, the ancient Greeks knew how to record a sound track - to pierce a thin gold foil with a thin needle. If you bring it to your mouth - speak loudly, then a needle will scratch something on the smoked glass. But it was impossible to fix and pronounce it.

Like all great discoveries, the invention of the phonograph happened by accident. While working on improving the telephone, Edison sang over the membrane to which the needle was soldered. Due to the shaking of the record, the needle pricked the inventor's finger, thus playing the role of Newton's apple - giving the idea. This was in 1877. A year later, the device was demonstrated in Edison's homeland in America, and a year later the phonograph ended up in Russia. One of the first to try it was Leo Tolstoy.

The writer often used a phonograph - he recorded on rollers, like a dictaphone, answers to letters. But this is not the only way to use the device. Edison, not only an inventor, but also a good entrepreneur, offered ten options for using the new super-machine. Among them - a record of the last words of the dying. But, despite all the efforts of the master, the invention was not ideal. Fedor Nekrasov, who in our time prolongs the life of these devices, knows about this like no one else.

“Why did these mechanisms die quickly? These rollers are very tender, - Fedor Nekrasov explains. - Wax was specially prepared, it was melted for a long time so that it hardened. It still faded quickly. Despite the fact that the membrane with the needle touches very easily, nevertheless, erasing occurred.

Another - the main - drawback of the phonograph - the record cannot be replicated. What can not be said about the gramophone. In 1887, Emil Berliner proposed recording sound on a gramophone record - a flat disc. The first version was made of zinc - it creaked terribly, but reproduced the sound. Only ten years later, the gramophone record acquired its familiar form. A fierce competition between the two devices began. Design features helped the gramophone to win.

“On the phonograph, the needle records the sound, piercing the track deep into the depths,” says collector Mikhail Kunitsyn. - And on a gramophone record - a transverse track. Each recording method has its own name. Berliner font - for gramophone record - horizontal notation and Edison's font - vertical notation for phonograph.

The exception to the rule is Edison type plates. They were produced by the Pathé company, which gave the name to another device - the gramophone - a portable gramophone, with a bell hidden in the case. And now it is already difficult to imagine that one prick of a finger turned all ideas about sound recording upside down.

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