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In 1887, Thomas Edison designed the tinfoil phonograph. This device consisted of a cylinder-shaped drum. A mouthpiece attached to a diaphrgm was connected to a stylus that etched vibrational patterns from a sound source on the rotating foil. For playback, the mouthpiece was replaced by a "reproducer" that used a more sensitive diaphragm. Even though Edison expected success, he was startled to hear the tinny version of his own voice echo his performance. | |
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The first to build a phonograph was Kruesi. The first to conceive of a workable design was most likely the Parisian, Charles Cros, who delivered viable plans for a machine that would use discs to the French Academie des Sciences in April of 1877. This occurred several months before Edison thought up his idea working on a telegraphy device designed to record readable traces of a Morse code signal onto a disk. In January of 1878, investors created the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company to oversee the manufacture and exhibition of the talking machines. Edison received $10,000. He continued to refine the tin-foil phonograph through mid-1878, feeding a popular enthusiasm for stage demonstrations of the "magic" machine which could imitate any language, cough, or animal sound. By October, Edison was coaxed away from the phonograph by an offer of a substantial backing to pursue the invention of an electric light. As the novelety of the phonograph exhibitions waned, the audiences died off and the invention went through a period in which the phonograph was no longer popular, nearly a decade long before it would be of use of its status as a curiosity. |
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