Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory: Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, United States National Museum Bulletin 218, Paper 5, (pages 69-79)Newville, Leslie J.
History
Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory: Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, United States National Museum Bulletin 218, Paper 5, (pages 69-79)
Newville, Leslie J.
Phonograph
[Illustration: Figure 8.--ANOTHER PAGE OF THE PLANS SHOWN IN FIGURE 7.
The experimental Graphophone built from these plans is in the U. S.
National Museum (_cat. no. 287665_).]
An interesting exception has a horizontal 7-inch turntable (see figs. 7
and 8). This machine, although made in 1886, is a duplicate of one made
earlier but taken to Europe by Chichester Bell. Tainter was granted U.
S. patent 385886 for it on July 10, 1888.
The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90
degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position.
While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved
laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150
grooves to the inch.
The Bell and Tainter records, preserved at the Smithsonian, are both of
the lateral cut and "hill-and-dale" types. Edison for many years used
the "hill-and-dale" method with both cylinder and disc records, and
Emile Berliner is credited with the invention of the lateral cut
Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been
experimenting with both types, as early as 1881, as is shown by the
following quotation from Tainter:[9]
The record on the electro-type in the Smithsonian package is of the
other form, where the vibrations are impressed _parallel_ to the
surface of the recording material, as was done in the old Scott
Phonautograph of 1857, thus forming a groove of uniform depth, but
of wavy character, in which the _sides_ of the groove act upon the
tracing point instead of the bottom, as is the case in the vertical
type. This form we named the zig-zag form, and referred to it in
that way in our notes. Its important advantage in guiding the
reproducing needle I first called attention to in the note on p.
9-Vol 1-Home Notes on March 29-1881, and endeavored to use it in my
early work, but encountered so much difficulty in getting a form of
reproducer that would work with the soft wax records without
tearing the groove, we used the hill and valley type of record more
often than the other.
In 1885, when the Volta associates were sure that they had a number of
practical inventions, they filed applications for patents. They also
began to look around for investors. After giving several demonstrations
in Washington, they gained the necessary support, and the American
Graphophone Co. was organized to manufacture and sell the machines. The
Volta Graphophone Co. was formed to control the patents.
The Howe sewing machine factory at Bridgeport, Connecticut, became the
American Graphophone plant; Tainter went there to supervise the
manufacturing, and continued his inventive work for many years. This
Bridgeport plant is still in use today by a successor firm, the
Dictaphone Corporation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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