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Edison's Phonographs
His Favorite Invention:
In 1877, inspired by his work on the telephone and a recording telegraph, Edison thought he could make a device that recorded and reproduced the human voice. Using a hand-cranked cylinder wrapped with heavy tinfoil, Edison bellowed the nursery rhyme "Mary Had A Little Lamb" into his new device. When his own voice crackled back, he heard the beginning of an industry. He wasn't certain what the market or the uses would be, but he did know it was his favorite invention. He called it the phonograph.
Edison attempted to improve the tinfoil phonograph at Menlo Park but failed to produce a commercial machine and turned his attention to the electric light. In the 1880s, inventors at Alexander Graham Bell's Washington DC laboratory developed their own cylinder recording machine called the graphophone. The threat of competition prompted Edison to resume work on the phonograph shortly before he built the West Orange Laboratory.
Its Evolution:
As Edison and his experimenters labored to improve the new machine, they also puzzled over how to make money with it. In 1887, shortly before coming to West Orange, Edison abandoned the fragile tinfoil record for the wax cylinder, a more permanent and practical recording medium. The phonograph was marketed to businessmen to record letters. Edison's early dictating phonographs were not profitable, but the phonograph was later used to provide entertainment. The "coin-in-slot" phonograph -- similar to a jukebox -- was a moneymaker. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, people flocked to public arcades, where they dropped a nickel per song.
By the late 1890s, many families were buying home phonographs -- not to make their own recordings, but to play prerecorded music and comedy. The phonograph business was growing and it became a primary focus of Edison's research.
The Competition:
Emile Berliner invented the disc-playing gramophone in 1888. His seven-inch discs were cheaper and easier to produce. In the late 1890s, Eldridge R Johnson, a Camden, NJ machinist, introduced some technical improvements. By 1901, he obtained control over Berliner's patents and started the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1906, the Victor Company introduced the disc-playing Victor Victrola. With its horn curled up instead of beautiful wooden cabinet, it looked more like furniture than a machine. Edison believed cylinders sounded better and would win in the marketplace. But people bought so many disc machines and records that in 1912 he introduced his own brand, the Diamond Disc. Sales faltered as radio became popular during the 1920s. Edison ceased manufacturing an entertainment phonograph in 1929. |