Essays 1 of 3 – How It Works
With the creation of the world came the creation of sound. With the emergence of humans came speech, language, communication and music. As humankind itself developed, as well as individual societies, there came many ways to record thoughts and to communicate ideas. There, however, was no real way to record speech, or sound. Music could be written down and performed, but there was no guarantee it would sound the same every time. Quotations and dictations lost a great deal of their power and force without the sound of the actual speaker’s voice bringing the words to life. It wasn’t until the end of the 1800’s that the recording of sound began to become a possibility.
At this time, the telephone had already been invented and patented, though there was no way for the sound to be permanently recorded. That was until one inventor began working on the problem. Thomas Alva Edison, a renowned inventor of this time period, was the first to discover a way in which sound could be recorded. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape, which could later be sent over the telegraph repeatedly. This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kreusi, to build, which Kreusi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, “Mary had a little lamb.” To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him.[1]
At the same time as Edison, inventor Emile Berliner invented the “gramophone”. The gramophone was flat record player utilizing similar means of recording and playback as that of the phonograph, and in present day would be considered a primitive version of the record player. Berliner’s invention quickly gained more popularity than Edison’s, and eventually replaced it as the standard sound player. However, though both inventions accomplished the same task – recording and playing back sound, their construction was not very sturdy. The machines’ playing styluses were so heavy they would destroy the recordings after only a few plays. Public consumption began to die down quickly, and more focus seemed to shift towards radio broadcasting. A more reliable medium, aided with the invention of the microphone (compliments of Berliner), radio broadcasting began to advance more quickly than sound recording.[2]
At the time, radio broadcasting was very localized. This means that a radio station could only broadcast a certain distance, generally within a certain mile radius. One of the first examples of this is from inventor Charles “Doc” Herrald. Herrald and his assistant Ray Newby transmitted live “voice and music” broadcasts in 1912 in San Jose, California from his “wireless telegraph college”. His broadcast, referred to as the “Herrald Station”, was only capable of reaching San Jose and the nearby San Francisco, and was only able to be heard by those who had created their own receptors (namely Herrald’s students). However, Herrald had created the first step towards public radio broadcasting.
Over ten years later (in 1926), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was formed, becoming the first radio broadcasting company. A year later, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) would join NBC as a broadcasting conglomerate, and fight for their listeners. NBC itself would later divide into two companies – NBC “Red” and NBC “Blue”, with NBC “Red” eventually becoming the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).
During the 1930’s, German company AEG/Telefunken worked on, and later completed, the first magnetic tape recorder. After many attempts, inventor Eduard Schuller invented a ring-shaped magnetic head that created a concentrated magnetic field without toughing the tape surface. By adding a carbonyl iron power to the tough cellulose acetate-base material, it allowed for the tape recording to be easily edited while remaining strong enough to withstand the torque of the transport motors. In August 1935, the Magnetophon K1 was unveiled at the Berlin Radio Fair. The first serious recording using this portable, self-contained recorder was in November 1936, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the London Philharmonic at BASF’s concert hall near its manufacturing plant in Ludwigshaven. Other improvements followed, such as BASF’s ferric-oxide tape in 1939 and Walter Weber’s rediscovery and application of high-frequency AC biasing, which had been known since the 1920s, giving the 1941 Magnetophons a bandwidth of 10 kHz.[3]
This technology was a huge advance, as it improved the sound quality dramatically, as well as was much less costly to produce. In 1946, a German tape recorder was captured and copied by US agents, to be used for commercial use in the United States. With this invention now in American hands, the progression of music technology began to once again pick up speed. Within ten years, the first pre-recorded tape was put on the market. Within twenty years, multi-track analog recording were starting to be used in recording studios, allowing songs to now be separated rather than set to continuous play. [4]
During this same time, the 1960’s, another huge advance occurred. The first compact tape player was developed by Philips Electronics. This was such an advancement because, not only was the tape player made a great deal smaller, but it was also now portable. This meant that users were now able to move about while listening to their music, rather than remain stationary next to a radio or a large, bulky sound system. The tape recorder, and cassette tape, also revolutionized other aspects of life. Vehicles of this time were now being manufactured featuring cassette players, and later (1964) 8-track players.[5]
For over twenty years, radio and cassette tapes remained the standard as technology slowly advanced out of the public eye. That was until the early 80’s, when the Japanese introduced digital compact discs to the world. These discs were encoded with digital information (a series of bits) that could be played by the use of laser beams. The laser beams out read the encoded information as they traveled around the disc’s spiral shape, and transmit the information through the electric speakers/headphones to the listener. This truly was a revolutionary technology because it was the first step away from analog forms of recording, and dealt solely with digital information.[6]
The compact disc (known more commonly as CDs) took over the music industry by 1985 and remained the standard for nearly twenty years, becoming integrated into everything from the automobile to the personal computer. During this time, a new software was developed by CEDAR in 1988, which created a way in which formally analog recordings could be fixed (if they were cracked, worn, etc) and be remastered into digital recordings. Two years later, Philips (the creator of the tape cassette) introduced a new digital cassette tape that allowed recordings to be digitally recorded onto the cassette. By 1999, not only did digital cassettes exist, but empty CDs were now being sold to the general public, allowing users to select and upload the songs of their choice onto these blank discs. Duplicates of a CD could now be made without needing to purchase the original.[7]
As the millennium came to an end, a new technology arose. With CDs holding data in strictly digital forms, and being integrated into personal computers equipped with the newly-public internet, digital file sharing was now possible. Napster (a music sharing program) sprang to popularity in 2000 – causing CD sales to drop dramatically, as individuals now began to share music via their computers instead of purchasing the music themselves. This new development would dramatically change the music industry and how society interacted with music as a whole. Apple Computers quickly followed this shift from analog to digital media by introducing an audio file player (mp3 player) known as the iPod. This player allowed users to upload their digital audio files from their computers onto this portable player. In a matter of only a few short years, the iPod became the new standard of digital media players. Apple’s music software program used to upload onto the iPod, iTunes, began offering a “store” option in 2003. This allowed users to purchase music off the internet via the “store” option, and download it directly to their players. By 2006, iTunes had sold its 1 billionth song, establishing that the music industry had now shifted primarily, almost permanently, to the digital. [8]
[1] “The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph.” About.com:Inventors. 2009. About.com. 18 Nov 2009. <http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledisondiscphpgraph.htm>
[2] “Timeline of Music and Media Technology.” Classictimes.com. 2009. The Media Management Group. 18 Nov 2009 <http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html>
[3] “1935 AEG Magnetophon Tape Recorder.” TECnology Hall of Fame. 2006. Mixonline.com. 19 Nov 2009<http://mixonline.com/TECnology-Hall-of-Fame/aeg-magnetophone-recorder-090106/>
[4] “Timeline of Music and Media Technology.” Classictimes.com. 2009. The Media Management Group. 18 Nov 2009 <http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html>
[5] “Timeline of Music and Media Technology.” Classictimes.com. 2009. The Media Management Group. 18 Nov 2009 <http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html>
[6] “Introduction.” The Compact Disc: How It Works. 2009. Library.Thinkquest.org. 19 Nov 2009 <http://library.thinkquest.org/26171/gforce.html>
[7] “Timeline of Music and Media Technology.” Classictimes.com. 2009. The Media Management Group. 18 Nov 2009 <http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html>
[8] “Timeline of Music and Media Technology.” Classictimes.com. 2009. The Media Management Group. 18 Nov 2009 <http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html>
