Existing comment:
Quality Sound
"A visitor to this upper floor of the laboratory building... hears from all sides the sounds of vocal and instrumental music constantly varying in volume and timbre, due to changes in the experimental devices under trial."
-- Frank Dyer and TC Martin, "Edison, His Life and Inventions," 1910
Edison's staff experimented with these horns in the music room to see what size and shape worked best. In the early days of the phonograph, horns were used for both recording and playback. During recording, the horn literally funneled the sound waves to the recording stylus. When playing back a recording, the horn acted as an amplifier, making the sound louder.
Theo Wangemann:
Theo Wangemann could be called the world's first music recording engineer. While working for Edison from 1888 to 1893, he experimented with phonograph recordings to improve both vocal and instrumental musical records. The German immigrant was an accomplished pianist who had studied with Hermann Helmholtz, a physicist known for his research on musical sound waves. He rejoined the Music Room staff in 1902, conducting experimental work with these and other phonograph horns. |