For the Record

Back in the 1970’s, the only form of entertainment available to The Doc and me were a rather small collection of records (almost exclusively hers) and our stereo.  We spent long hours listening to the Beatles, Cat Stevens, Rick Wakeman, Simon and Garfunkle, and The Mamas and the Poppas.  We loved those records and still have most of them.

By the end of the eighties, though we still had those old records, we seldom listened to anything but our newer, and better sounding compact discs.  Today, another few decades later, just as compact discs are inevitably going the way of 8-track tapes and cassette players, The Doc refuses to give up her CD player.  And even more strange, What’s-His-Name, our son, has become convinced that the best music comes from those age-old vinyl records.

By the end of the eighties, CD sales had passed those of records.  Twenty years later, the few records still being produced were almost a novelty item.  Then, suddenly, in 2007, the demand for vinyl records began increasing.  Misguided enthusiasts, like my son, became convinced that vinyl records with analog recordings were far superior to any digital recording method.  (I’m not going to argue the matter:  these days if I’m listening to something, it is going to be an audible book.  My iPhone has almost 300 books on it and about a dozen songs—half of which are songs from the Civil War.)

Record production is now close to 200 million platters a year, and that is just for the American market.  According to the manufacturers, the present demand is easily twice what can be produced, and the producers of such records are ramping up production as fast as they can. 

That music records are having an unexpected revival is surprising.  Almost as surprising as the fact that such records ever existed at all, since the inventor of the phonograph was absolutely certain that there was absolutely no market for such recordings.

There is some confusion as to the exact date that Thomas Edison completed the invention due to conflicting entries the inventor made in his notebooks.  Depending on which entry you want to believe, sometime late in November 1877, Edison gave the plans for a working model to John Kruesi, one of his machinists at his Menlo Park laboratory. 

“What’s this supposed to be,” asked Kruesi, as he delivered the finished brass and steel model.  Powered by a hand crank, It had a grooved cylinder, three and a half inches wide, onto which a tinfoil cylinder could be attached.

Edison replied, “The machine must talk.”

Edison recorded that Kruesi thought the idea was absurd and bet a cigar that the experiment would not work.  The inventor carefully wrapped a sheet of thin tinfoil around the cylinder, moved the needle into place, and then began cranking the machine while speaking loudly into the diaphragm:

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

Edison then moved the needle back to the starting point and began cranking the machine again.  To the amazement of everyone, the high-pitched voice of Edison was easily recognized as he repeated the Mother Goose rhyme.  Edison himself was surprised that the first attempt had worked, and called the machine a phonograph, the Greek words for “sound” and “writing”.

For a full year, the phonograph was a technical novelty, frequently displayed at fairs and exhibitions, but was never used for any practical purpose due to the machine’s limitations.  The tin foil was incredibly delicate, wore out quickly, and could hold at most about sixty seconds of recorded sound.  The machine was fragile, required constant adjustment, and had to be cranked at a steady speed.  Positioning the needle was such a tedious task that even Edison admitted that only an expert could do it properly.  Edison simply abandoned the project for a year while he worked on his light bulb.

For the newspapers, Edison compiled a list of ten possible uses for his new invention:  Letter writing, audible books for the blind, the teaching of elocution, talking clocks and statues were the prominent items on the list.  While music made the list, it was fourth, behind the teaching of elocution.  Privately, Edison doubted that the machine would prove useful for any of the uses listed.  For the inventor, his newly invented device was just an offshoot of experiments to improve the telephone.

A year later, Edison admitted to a newspaper reporter that the phonograph was “a mere toy, that has no commercial value.”  The inventor believed that rival inventors wouldn’t even bother to pirate his invention, since it was little more than a scientific curiosity.  Edison abandoned work on the phonograph for a full decade while he began work on the incandescent lightbulb.

Note.  In a coincidence too wild to be believable, while writing this blog, my eight-year-old granddaughter, Bailey, called me to tell me that today was the anniversary of Edison’s light bulb.  She had no idea I even have a blog, much less that I was writing about Edison tonight.  Weird.

A decade later, Chichester Bell, the brother of Alexander Graham Bell, came to Edison a decade later with an offer to partner with Edison’s company to produce phonographs commercially did the inventor decide to devote himself once again to improving the phonograph.  Over the next few weeks, the machine was completely redesigned.  A clockwork mechanism was developed to turn the cylinder, which in turn had been improved by replacing the delicate tinfoil with a cardboard tube coated with a specially hardened wax that could hold two minutes of recorded sound.

And though Edison invited several famous musicians to come to Menlo Park to demonstrate the phonograph, he was convinced that the phonograph’s future lay in the business world, not in entertainment.  Even as Edison hired thousands of employees to manufacture and market the phonograph, the inventor was determined that it be used as a dictation device for producing letters.

Secretaries, then almost exclusively male, were so concerned that the new phonograph would cause mass unemployment in their ranks that a boycott was organized, and protests were held.  As with most protests against new technology that increases productivity (usually referred to as  creative destruction), the protests failed to prevent the machine from selling.  

Edison was adamant against marketing the phonograph for the purposes of entertainment.  “I don’t want the phonograph sold for amusement purposes.  It is not a toy.  I want it sold for business purposes only,” said the inventor.  When told that a company was selling cylinders in Germany with recordings of orchestral music, Edison refused to believe it.  

Edison was nearly deaf and had some particularly strange ideas about music.  He hated Italian and German music and he did not care for most of the music popular at the time.  Nor did he have much respect for musicians, refusing to put their name on the few entertainment recordings he allowed up until 1910.  After recording a famous pianist, Edison unflinchingly told the artist that he had played a note incorrectly.  When the musician insisted that he had not, Edison offered to play back the recording and point out the errors.  The now indignant pianist left the studio without replying.

It was only after the competing Bell Gramophone Company was sold and reorganized as the Columbia Phonographic Company (since reorganized as the Columbia Broadcasting System or simply CBS) and it began focusing on producing cylinders for entertainment that Edison changed his mind and began to produce large numbers of recording cylinders with music..  The decision to focus on entertainment came too late, allowing his competitors to capture a large share of the market.  By the end of the 1920’s, the Edison Phonographic Company had closed its doors, moving the employees to Edison’s radio production company.

I have no idea how long the current craze for phonograph records will last.  If it ends tomorrow, it will have lasted about 140 years longer than Edison thought.

I can’t resist one last story about Edison.  When the famous African explorer Henry Stanley visited Edison to see the newly invented phonograph, Stanley impulsively asked which person throughout history the inventor would most like to have a recording of.

“Napoleon,” Edison answered immediately.

“No, no, no,” replied Stanley.  “I would prefer the voice of our savior.”

“Well,” said Edison.  “I prefer a hustler.”