EARLY HISTORY
Edison cylinder phonograph ca. 1899
A 10-inch gramophone blank for self recording with 78 rpm, 1948,
brand as material "Decelith" with special surface
for hardeningA device utilizing a vibrating pen to graphically
represent sound on discs of paper, without the idea of playing
it back in any manner, was described by Charles Cros of France
in 1877, but never built.
In 1877, Thomas Edison independently built the first working
phonograph, a tinfoil cylinder machine, intending to use it
as a voice recording medium, typically for office dictation.
The phonograph cylinder dominated the recorded sound market
beginning in the 1880s. Lateral-cut disc records were invented
by Emile Berliner in 1888 and were used exclusively in toys
until 1894, when Berliner began marketing disc records under
the Berliner Gramophone label. The Edison "Blue Amberol"
cylinder was introduced in 1912, with a longer playing time
of around 4 minutes (at 160 rpm) and a more resilient playing
surface than its wax predecessor, but the format was doomed
due to the difficulty of reproducing recordings. By November
1918 the patents for the manufacture of lateral-cut disc records
expired, opening the field for countless companies to produce
them, causing disc records to overtake cylinders in popularity.
Disc records would dominate the market until they were supplanted
by the Compact Disc, starting from the 1980s. Production of
Amberol cylinders ceased in the late 1920s.
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