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Phonograph cylinder

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   The earliest method of recording and reproducing sound was on
   phonograph cylinders. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era
   of greatest popularity (c. 1888 - 1915), these cylinder shaped objects
   had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be
   reproduced when the cylinder was played on a mechanical phonograph. The
   competing disc-shaped gramophone record system triumphed in the market
   place to become the dominant commercial audio medium in the 1910s, and
   commercial mass production of phonograph cylinders ended in 1929.
   Two Edison cylinder records (on either end) and their cardboard storage
   cartons (center).
   Enlarge
   Two Edison cylinder records (on either end) and their cardboard storage
   cartons (centre).

Early development of the phonograph cylinder

                                                   Making a home recording
                                                                   Enlarge
                                                   Making a home recording

                             Listening to a cylinder with rubber ear-tubes
                                                                   Enlarge
                             Listening to a cylinder with rubber ear-tubes

          Dancing to music on a cylinder played through an amplifying horn
                                                                   Enlarge
          Dancing to music on a cylinder played through an amplifying horn

                                             Paper slip from 1902 cylinder
                                                                   Enlarge
                                             Paper slip from 1902 cylinder

        Portion of the label on the outside of a Columbia Records cylinder
     package, before 1901. Note the title of the recording is hand written
                                                             on the label.
                                                                   Enlarge
        Portion of the label on the outside of a Columbia Records cylinder
     package, before 1901. Note the title of the recording is hand written
                                                             on the label.

                Edison Gold Moulded Cylinder made from black wax, ca. 1904
                                                                   Enlarge
                Edison Gold Moulded Cylinder made from black wax, ca. 1904

                                              Amberol cylinder package lid
                                                                   Enlarge
                                              Amberol cylinder package lid

                                     Rim of Edison "Blue Amberol" cylinder
                                                                   Enlarge
                                     Rim of Edison "Blue Amberol" cylinder

   Proper way to hold a cylinder record: put fingers on the inside; do not
                          touch the outer surface which has the recording.
                                                                   Enlarge
   Proper way to hold a cylinder record: put fingers on the inside; do not
                          touch the outer surface which has the recording.

   The phonograph was conceived by Thomas Edison on 18 July 1877 for
   recording telephone messages, his first test using waxed paper. In
   early production versions the recordings were done on the outside
   surface of a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a rotating metal cylinder.
   By the 1880s wax cylinders were mass marketed. These had sound
   recordings in the grooves on the outside of hollow cylinders of
   slightly soft wax. These cylinders could easily be removed and replaced
   on the mandrel of the machine which played them. Early cylinder records
   would commonly wear out after they were played a few dozen times; the
   buyer could then either bring the worn cylinders back to the dealer to
   be traded in as partial credit for purchase of new recordings, or have
   their surface shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them. In
   1890 Charles Tainter patented the use of hard carnauba wax as a
   replacement for the common mixture of paraffin and beeswax used on
   phonograph cylinders.

   Early cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were often sold
   with recording attachments. The ability to record as well as play back
   sound was an advantage to cylinder phonographs over the competition
   from cheaper disc record phonographs which began to be mass marketed at
   the end of the 1890s, as the disc system machines could be used only to
   play back pre-recorded sound.

   In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing various competing
   incompatible types of cylinder recordings were made, but in the late
   1880s a standard system was decided upon by Edison Records, Columbia
   Phonograph, and other companies; these were about 4 inches (10 cm)
   long, 2¼ inches in diameter, and played about two minutes of music or
   other sound.

Commercial packaging

   Cylinders were sold in cardboard tubes, with cardboard lids at each
   end. These containers helped protect the recordings. These containers
   and the shape of the cylinders (together with the "tinny" sound of
   early records compared to live music) prompted bandleader John Philip
   Sousa to deride the records as canned music. Record companies usually
   had a generic printed label on the outside of the cylinder package,
   with no indication of the identity of the individual recording inside.
   Early on such information would be written on the labels by hand, one
   at a time. Slightly later, the record number would be stamped on the
   top lid, then a bit later the title and artist of the recording would
   be printed on to labels on the lid. Shortly after the start of the 20th
   century, an abbreviated version of this information (together with the
   name of the record company) would be printed or impressed on to one
   edge of the cylinder itself. Previously the actual cylinders had no
   such visual identification. However they would have a spoken
   announcement of the song or performance title, recording artist, and
   record company recorded on to the beginning of the recording.

   Small paper inserts were with the recording information and placed
   inside the package with the cylinders. At first this was hand written
   or typed on each slip, but printed versions became more common once
   cylinders of certain songs were sold in large enough quantities to make
   this economically practical. Note that in the example in the image
   above, from Edison Records, 1902, the consumer is invited to cut out
   the circle with printed information. This paper circle could then be
   pasted either to the lid of the cylinder container, or (as this example
   prompts) to a spindle for this cylinder in specially built cabinets for
   holding cylinder records which were marketed by record companies. Only
   a minority of cylinder record customers purchased such cabinets,
   however.

Further improvements of commercial cylinders

   Over the years the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and
   hardened so that cylinders could be played over 100 times. In 1902
   Edison Records launched a line of improved hard wax cylinders marketed
   as "Edison Gold Moulded Records".

Hard plastic replaces wax

   In 1906 the Indestructible Record Company began mass marketing cylinder
   records made of celluloid, an early hard plastic, that would not break
   if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out.
   This hard inflexible material could not be shaved and recorded over
   like wax cylinders, but had the advantage of being a nearly permanent
   record. (Such "Indestructible" style cylinders are arguably the most
   durable form of sound recording produced in the entire era of analogue
   audio before the introduction of digital audio; they can withstand a
   great number more playbacks before wearing out than such later media as
   the vinyl record or audio tape.) This superior technology was purchased
   by the Columbia Phonograph Company. The Edison company then developed
   their own type of long lasting cylinder, consisting of a type of
   plastic called Amberol around a plaster core, these were called Amberol
   cylinders. Around the same time Edison introduced 4 minute cylinders,
   having twice the playing time of the old standard cylinder, achieved
   simply by shrinking the groove size and spacing them twice as close
   together in the spiral around the cylinder. Most (but not all) Amberol
   cylinders are of the four-minute variety. Edison phonographs for
   playing these improved cylinder records were called Amberolas. See
   also: Blue Amberol Records.

Cylinders versus discs

   In the era before World War I phonograph cylinders and disc records
   competed with each other for public favour.

   The audio fidelity of a sound groove is not inherently better if it is
   engraved on either a disc or a cylinder, and the competition was due to
   other factors.

Advantages of cylinders

   The cylinder system had certain advantages. As noted, wax cylinders
   could be used for home recordings, and "indestructible" types could be
   played over and over many more times than the disc. Cylinders usually
   rotated at a greater speed than discs, creating a greater linear
   velocity of the stylus in the groove, which in theory would give an
   advantage of better audio fidelity, furthermore, since constant angular
   velocity translates into constant linear velocity (the radius of the
   spiral track is constant), cylinders were also free from inner groove
   problems suffered by disc recordings. Around 1900 cylinders on average
   were indeed of notably higher audio quality than contemporary discs,
   but as disc makers improved their technology by 1910 the fidelity
   differences between better discs and cylinders became minimal.

   Cylinder phonographs also usually used a worm gear to move the stylus
   in synchronization with the grooves of the recording, whereas most disc
   machines relied on the grooves to pull the stylus along. This resulted
   in cylinder records played a number of times having less degradation
   than discs, but this added mechanism made cylinder machines more
   expensive.

Advantages of discs

   Both the disc records and the machines to play them on were cheaper to
   mass-produce than the products of the cylinder system. Disc records
   were also easier and cheaper to store in bulk, as they could be
   stacked, or when in paper sleeves put in rows on shelves like books.

   Many cylinder phonographs used a belt to turn the mandrel; slight
   slippage of this belt could make the mandrel not turn evenly, thus
   resulting in pitch fluctuations. Disc phonographs using a direct system
   of gears could not really turn unevenly; the heavy metal turntable of
   disc machines acted as a flywheel, helping to minimize speed wobble.

   In 1908 Columbia Records introduced mass production of disc records
   with recordings pressed on both sides, which soon became the industry
   standard. Patrons of disc records could now get two recordings for less
   than the price of one on cylinder.

   Mention should also be made of the superior advertising and promotion
   done by the disc companies, most notably by the Victor Talking Machine
   Company in the United States and the Gramophone Company/ HMV in the
   Commonwealth. Great singers like Enrico Caruso were hired to record
   exclusively, helping put the idea in the public mind that that
   company's product were superior.

The end of cylinders

   Cylinder recordings continued to compete with the growing disc record
   market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In that
   decade Columbia (which had been making both discs and cylinders)
   switched exclusively to discs, and Edison started marketing their own
   disc records. However Edison continued to sell new cylinder records to
   consumers with cylinder phonograph machines through 1929. The latest of
   the new cylinders were simply dubs of disc records, and as such are of
   lower fidelity than the disc versions.

Later application of phonograph cylinder technology

   Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for dictaphone
   recordings for office use into the early 1950s.

   In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their DictaBelt
   technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead
   of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by magnetic tape
   recording.

   In 1996, the band They Might Be Giants recorded "I Can Hear You,"
   performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio
   phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New
   Jersey. This song was released on Factory Showroom in 1996 and
   re-released on the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might
   Be Giants. The band also performed and recorded a song about Edison, a
   studio recording of which appeared on their 1999 internet-only release
   Long Tall Weekend and subsequently on their first album aimed towards a
   younger audience, No!

Preservation of cylinder recordings

   Due to the nature of the recording medium, playback of cylinders can
   cause degradation of the recording. Presently, the only professional
   machine manufactured for the playback of cylinder recordings is the
   Archeophone Series I player, designed by Henri Chamoux. The Archeophone
   is presently used by the Edison National Historic Site, Bowling Green
   State University (Chapel Hill, NC) and The Department of Special
   Collections, Donald C Davidson Library at The University of California,
   Santa Barbara. Further information on this player may be sighted on the
   external links below.

   Other modern so-called 'plug-in' mounts, each incorporating the use of
   a Stanton 500AL MK II magnetic cartridge, have been manufactured from
   time to time. Information on each may be sighted on the Phonograph
   Makers Pages link. It is possible to use these on the Edison cylinder
   players.

   In an attempt to preserve the historic content of the recordings,
   cylinders can be read with a confocal microscope and converted to a
   digital recording format. The resulting sound clip in most cases sounds
   better than stylus playback from the original cylinder. Having an
   electronic version of the original recordings enables archivists to
   open access to the recordings to a wider audience. This technique also
   has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken
   cylinders. (Fadeyev & Haber, 2003)

   Modern reproductions of cylinder and disc recordings usually give the
   impression that the introduction of discs was a quantum leap in audio
   fidelity, but this is on modern playback equipment; played on equipment
   from around 1900, the cylinders do not have noticeably more rumble and
   poorer bass reproduction than the discs. Another factor is that many
   cylinders are amateur recordings, while disc recording equipment was
   simply too expensive for anyone but professional engineers - this means
   that many extremely poor recordings have been made on cylinder, while
   the vast majority of disc recordings have been competently recorded,
   but it does not mean that a professional engineer is necessarily going
   to get worse results on cylinder than on disc.

   Also important is the quality of the material: The earliest tinfoil
   recordings wore out fast. Once the tinfoil was removed from the
   cylinder it was nearly impossible to re-align in playable condition.
   None of the earliest tinfoil recordings has been played back since the
   19th century. (Hypothetically in the future some sound might some day
   be salvaged from few surviving flattened out early tinfoil records.)
   The earliest soft wax recordings also wore out quite fast, though they
   have better fidelity than the early rubber discs.

   In addition to poor states of preservation, the poor impression modern
   listeners can get of wax cylinders is from their early date, which can
   compare unfavorably to recordings made even a dozen years later. Other
   than a single playable example from 1878 (from an experimental
   phonograph-clock), the oldest playable preserved cylinders are from the
   year 1888. These include a severely degraded recording of Johannes
   Brahms and a short speech by Sir Arthur Sullivan which was fortunately
   dubbed in moderately listenable condition. Somewhat later are the
   almost unlistenable 1889 amateur recordings of Nina Grieg. The earliest
   preserved rubber disc recordings are childrens' records, featuring
   animal noises and nursery rhymes. This means that the earliest disc
   recordings most music lovers will hear are shellac discs made after
   1900, after more than ten years of development.

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