In 1885 Chichester A. Bell (cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, of telephone fame) and Charles Sumner Tainter invented the “graphophone.” This was the first practical and commercially usable talking machine. The experiments and discoveries resulting in the production of the Bell and Tainter graphophone were made in the laboratories of Alexander Graham Bell, near Washington, D. C., and the latter assisted and advised with the inventors, and on his own behalf conducted experiments which were productive of highly important results in the art of recording and reproducing sound. The Bell and Tainter patent was granted in 1886, and although the subject of much controversy, it has been repeatedly sustained by the United States courts, and in one case (87 F. R. 873) Judge Shipman had to consider all that other inventors had done or attempted to do, and he there decided that Bell and Tainter were the first to make “an actual living invention which the public was able to use.” [Illustration: OSCAR SEAGLE, THE WELL-KNOWN SOLOIST, RECORDING The artist stands before the horn and his every note is recorded with a fidelity startling in the extreme.] This method covered “a method of engraving records of sound, producing records of sound by engraving in a wax-like material which would permit of the handling, using and transporting of the record.” Another United States patent, covering a method of duplicating or copying sound records, was granted to Charles Sumner Tainter in 1886. [Illustration: THE MACDONALD GRAPHOPHONE GRAND] Of course the talking machine of to-day is a long way removed from the early Edison and the early Bell and Tainter machines, because many master minds have been working on the problem of developing and maturing the art of sound recording and reproducing, and in perfecting machines to be used in reproducing the sound records after they have been made. Disk records have taken the place of the old-style cylinder records, the latter being confined for the most part to dictating machines for office use, as the Dictaphone, which has largely displaced the shorthand writer in many business houses. [Illustration: IN BAND AND ORCHESTRA RECORDING EACH INSTRUMENT IS AT A DIFFERENT ELEVATION] [Illustration: LEOPOLD GODOWSKY, ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST PIANISTS, MAKING A RECORD The bell at the left is rung to advise the artist that the recorder is ready and the flashing of the light at the right is the signal to begin playing.] Since the original Thomas A. Edison patents and the Bell and Tainter patent there have been many thousands granted, but only a few need be referred to as constituting the milestones in the evolution and development of the art and industry.