Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for
recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1916), these hollow
cylindrical
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infini ...
objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface, which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
.
In the 1910s, the competing
disc record system
triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.
[
]
Early development
![Brownwaxcylinders](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Brownwaxcylinders.jpg)
In December 1877,
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...
and his team invented the
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
using a thin sheet of
tin foil
Tin foil, also spelled tinfoil, is a thin foil made of tin. Tin foil was superseded after World War II by cheaper and more durable aluminium foil, which is still referred to as "tin foil" in many regions (an example of a misnomer).
History
...
wrapped around a hand-cranked, grooved metal cylinder. Tin foil was not a practical recording medium for either commercial or artistic purposes, and the crude hand-cranked phonograph was only marketed as a novelty, to little or no profit. Edison moved on to developing a practical
incandescent electric light, and the next improvements to
sound recording technology
In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.
In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
were made by others.
Following seven years of research and experimentation at their
Volta Laboratory
The Volta Laboratory (also known as the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, the Bell Carriage House and the Bell Laboratory) and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.(19/20th-century scientist an ...
,
Charles Sumner Tainter
Charles Sumner Tainter (April 25, 1854 – April 20, 1940) was an American scientific instrument maker, engineer and inventor, best known for his collaborations with Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, Alexander's father-in-law Gardiner Hubb ...
,
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (, born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He also co-founded the American Telephone and Te ...
, and
Chichester Bell
Chichester Alexander Bell (1848–1924) was an American chemist and inventor. He was a first cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, and instrumental in developing improved versions of the phonograph.American History MuseumCharles Sumner Tainter Papers, ...
introduced
wax
Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to giv ...
as the recording medium, and engraving, rather than indenting, as the recording method. In 1887, their "
Graphophone
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States.
Its trademark usage was acquired successively ...
" system was being put to the test of practical use by official reporters of the
US Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washingto ...
, with commercial units later being produced by the
Dictaphone Corporation.
After this system was demonstrated to Edison's representatives, Edison quickly resumed work on the phonograph. He settled on a thicker all-wax cylinder, the surface of which could be repeatedly shaved down for reuse. Both the Graphophone and Edison's "
Perfected Phonograph" were commercialized in 1888. Eventually, a patent-sharing agreement was signed and the wax-coated cardboard tubes were abandoned in favor of Edison's all-wax cylinders as an interchangeable standard format.
Beginning in 1889, prerecorded wax cylinders were marketed. These have professionally made recordings of songs, instrumental music or humorous monologues in their grooves. At first, the only customers for them were proprietors of
nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...
s—the first
jukebox
A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to selec ...
es—installed in arcades and taverns, but within a few years, private owners of phonographs were increasingly buying them for home use.
Unlike later, shorter-playing high-speed cylinders, early cylinder recordings were usually cut at a speed of about 120 rpm and can play for as long as three minutes.
They were made of a relatively soft wax formulation and would wear out after they were played a few dozen times.
The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surfaces shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them.
![EdisonSlip1903backside](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/EdisonSlip1903backside.JPG)
Cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were usually sold with recording attachments. The ability to record as well as play back sound was an advantage of 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 prerecorded sound.
In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing, various incompatible, competing types of cylinder recordings were made. A standard system was decided upon by
Edison Records
Edison Records was one of the early record labels that pioneered sound recording and reproduction, and was an important player in the early recording industry.
The first phonograph cylinders were manufactured in 1888, followed by Edison's founda ...
,
Columbia Phonograph
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...
, and other companies in the late 1880s. The standard cylinders are about long, in diameter, and play about two minutes of recorded material.
Over the years, the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened, so that cylinders could be played with good quality over 100 times. In 1902, Edison Records launched a line of improved, hard wax cylinders marketed as "Edison Gold Moulded Records". The major development of this line of cylinders is that Edison had developed a process that allowed a
mold
A mold () or mould () is one of the structures certain fungus, fungi can form. The dust-like, colored appearance of molds is due to the formation of Spore#Fungi, spores containing Secondary metabolite#Fungal secondary metabolites, fungal seco ...
to be made from a master cylinder, which then permitted the production of several hundred cylinders to be made from the mold. The process was labeled "Gold Moulded" because of the
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
vapor
In physics, a vapor (American English) or vapour (British English and Canadian English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is a substance in the gas phase at a temperature lower than its critic ...
that was given off by gold
electrode
An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or air). Electrodes are essential parts of batteries that can consist of a variety of materials de ...
s used in the process.
Originally, all cylinders sold needed to be recorded live on the softer brown wax, which wore out after as few as 20 plays. Later cylinders were reproduced either mechanically or by linking phonographs together with rubber tubes.
Commercial packaging
![Edisongoldmoulded](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Edisongoldmoulded.jpg)
The earliest soft wax cylinders were sold wrapped in thick cotton
batting Batting may refer to:
* Batting (baseball), the act of attempting to hit a ball thrown by the pitcher with a baseball bat, in order to score runs
* Batting (cricket), the act of defending one's wicket with the cricket bat while attempting to score ...
. Later, molded hard-wax cylinders were sold in boxes with a cotton lining.
Celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporar ...
cylinders were sold in unlined boxes. These protective boxes were normally kept and used to house the cylinders after purchase. Their general appearance allowed bandleader
John Philip Sousa
John Philip Sousa ( ; November 6, 1854 – March 6, 1932) was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. He is known as "The March King" or the "American March King", to dist ...
to deride their contents as "canned music", an epithet he borrowed from
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
.
Hard plastic cylinders
![AmberolLid](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/AmberolLid.jpg)
On March 20, 1900, Thomas B. Lambert was granted a US patent (645,920) that described a process for mass-producing cylinders made from
celluloid
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporar ...
, an early hard plastic. ( of France was producing celluloid cylinders as early as 1893, but they were individually recorded rather than molded.) That same year, the Lambert Company of Chicago began selling cylinder records made of the material. They would not break if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out. The color was changed to black in 1903, but brown and blue cylinders were also produced. The coloring was purportedly because the dyes reduced
surface noise
In sound and music production, sonic artifact, or simply artifact, refers to sonic material that is accidental or unwanted, resulting from the editing or manipulation of a sound.
Types
Because there are always technical restrictions in the way a ...
. Unlike wax, the hard, inflexible material could not be shaved and recorded over, but it had the advantage of being nearly permanent.
This superior technology was licensed by the Indestructible Record Company in 1906 and
Columbia Phonograph Company
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the Ame ...
in 1908. The
Edison Bell
Edison Bell was an English company that was the first distributor and an early manufacturer of Phonograph, gramophones and gramophone records. The company survived through several incarnations, becoming a top producer of budget records in Englan ...
company in Europe had separately licensed the technology and were able to market Edison's titles in both wax (popular series) and celluloid (indestructible series).
In late 1908, Edison had introduced wax cylinders that played for nominally 4 minutes (instead of the usual 2) under the ''Amberol'' brand. They were made from a harder (and more fragile) form of wax to withstand the smaller stylus used to play them. The longer playing time was achieved by reducing the groove size and placing them half as far apart. In 1912, the Edison company eventually acquired Lambert's patents to the celluloid technology, and almost immediately started production under a variation of their existing ''Amberol'' brand as ''Edison Blue Amberol Records''.
Edison designed several phonograph types, both with internal and external horns for playing these improved cylinder records. The internal horn models were called ''Amberolas''. Edison marketed its "Fireside" model phonograph with a gearshift and a 'model K' reproducer with two different styli, which allowed it to play both two-minute and four-minute cylinders.
Decline
![PhonographCylinders](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/PhonographCylinders.JPG)
Cylinder records continued to compete with the growing disc record market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In 1912,
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
, which had been selling both discs and cylinders, dropped the cylinder format, while Edison introduced his
Diamond Disc
The Edison Diamond Disc Record is a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a permanent ...
format, played with a
diamond
Diamond is a Allotropes of carbon, solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the Chemical stability, chemically stable form of car ...
stylus. Beginning in 1915, new Edison cylinder issues consisted of re-recordings from Edison discs; they therefore had lower audio quality than the disc originals. Although his cylinders continued to be sold in steadily dwindling and eventually minuscule quantities, Edison continued to support the owners of cylinder phonographs by making new titles available in that format until the company ceased manufacturing all records and phonographs in November 1929.
Later applications
![Wax cylinder in Dictaphone](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Wax_cylinder_in_Dictaphone.jpg)
Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for
Dictaphone
Dictaphone was an American company founded by Alexander Graham Bell
that produced dictation machines. It is now a division of Nuance Communications, based in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Although the name "Dictaphone" is a trademark, it has bec ...
and Ediphone recordings for office use for decades.
In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their
Dictabelt
The Dictabelt, in early years and much less commonly also called a Memobelt, is an analog audio recording medium commercially introduced by the American Dictaphone company in 1947. Having been intended for recording dictation and other speech fo ...
technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
recording. However, cylinders for older style dictating machines continued to be available for some years, and it was not unusual to encounter cylinder dictating machines into the 1950s.
In the late 20th and early 21st century, new recordings have been made on cylinders for the
novelty effect
The novelty effect, in the context of human performance, is the tendency for performance to initially improve when new technology is instituted, not because of any actual improvement in learning or achievement, but in response to increased interes ...
of using obsolete technology. Probably the most famous of these are by
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants (often abbreviated as TMBG) is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years, Flansburgh and Linnell frequently performed as a duo, often accompanied by a d ...
, who in 1996 recorded "I Can Hear You" and three other songs, performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the
Edison National Historic Site
Thomas Edison National Historical Park preserves Thomas Edison's laboratory and residence, ''Glenmont'', in West Orange, New Jersey, United States. These were designed, in 1887, by architect Henry Hudson Holly. The Edison laboratories operat ...
in
West Orange, New Jersey
West Orange is a suburban township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 48,843, an increase of 2,636 (+5.7%) from the 46,207 counted in the 2010 Census. . This song was released on ''
Factory Showroom
''Factory Showroom'' is the sixth studio album by the American rock band They Might Be Giants. It was released in 1996 by Elektra Records.
The album reclaims the more diverse and electronic sound of their early work, but differed from previous ...
'' in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation ''
Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants''. The other songs recorded were "James K. Polk", "Maybe I Know", and "The Edison Museum", the last a song about the site of the recording. These recordings were officially released online as MP3 files in 2001.
Small numbers of cylinders have been manufactured in the 21st century out of modern long-lasting materials. Two companies engaged in such enterprise are the Vulcan Cylinder Record Company of
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...
, England, and the Wizard Cylinder Records Company in
Baldwin, New York.
In 2010 the British
steampunk
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or ...
band
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing released the track "Sewer", from their debut album, ''
Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1'' on a wax cylinder in a limited edition of 40, of which only 30 were put on sale. The box set came with instructions on how to make your own cylinder player for less than £20. The
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
.
In June 2017 the Cthulhu Breakfast Club podcast released a special limited wax cylinder edition of a show.
In April 2019, the podcast ''
'' released ten limited edition wax cylinder recordings.