Earliest *Phonograph recorder?

[Elidor]

Inspired by this, what is the earliest a voice recorder (--not a music recorder, mind you, so it can be of very low fidelity) could have been invented? What would be the consequence of an early modern or a renaissance voice recorder have been? What other discoveries will the quest to improve such a device have led to? Earlier discovery of electricity and faster advances in mathematics?

Consider a society where voice recording precedes the movable type, would the butterflies from this turn communications into a multimedia-wank?

 

[MacCaulay]

Inspired by this, what is the earliest a voice recorder (--not a music recorder, mind you, so it can be of very low fidelity) could have been invented? What would be the consequence of an early modern or a renaissance voice recorder have been? What other discoveries will the quest to improve such a device have led to? Earlier discovery of electricity and faster advances in mathematics?

Consider a society where voice recording precedes the movable type, would the butterflies from this turn communications into a multimedia-wank?

Well, Edison was using an acoustic system with no electricity required. He felt that if you electrically modulated the signal through the use of microphones or wires you were basically not reproducing the true sound.

What he had was a huge horn-looking thing that the people would stand in front of at varying distances and play towards. The force would basically imprint the music onto a rotating wax cylinder.

That in itself could've been invented by anyone in within a hundred years before that, it was just the fact that Edison was a genius inventor who did that sort of thing.

 

[Alberto Knox]

Well, Edison was using an acoustic system with no electricity required. He felt that if you electrically modulated the signal through the use of microphones or wires you were basically not reproducing the true sound.

What he had was a huge horn-looking thing that the people would stand in front of at varying distances and play towards. The force would basically imprint the music onto a rotating wax cylinder.

That in itself could've been invented by anyone in within a hundred years before that, it was just the fact that Edison was a genius inventor who did that sort of thing.

No. Just no. Everything else you said was fine but please don't encourage that myth.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Weren't there hopes that you could 'play' Egyptian pots and hear the potters at work ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

 

[Deleted member 5719]

it was just the fact that Edison was a genius inventor who did that sort of thing.

How is it that people still think that? He was a conniving cash-rich thief with a god eye for other people's inventions.

 

[Elidor]

What he had was a huge horn-looking thing that the people would stand in front of at varying distances and play towards. The force would basically imprint the music onto a rotating wax cylinder.

That in itself could've been invented by anyone in within a hundred years before that, ....

Here's an interesting WI: The Phonograph Recorder is invented by Ben Franklin, and a spoken version of the US Declaration of independence is the first phonograph recording ever, and the voice of Jefferson is broadcast across America every fourth of July when radio gets invented.


What butterflies could result from a Phonograph being invented, let's say, c. 1775?

 

[Elidor]

Weren't there hopes that you could 'play' Egyptian pots and hear the potters at work ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Yeah, but as the wiki explains, that was more or less wishful thinking.

 

[Doraemon]

Weren't there hopes that you could 'play' Egyptian pots and hear the potters at work ?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

The Mythbusters actually tried that, but it obviously didn't work. Edit: Nevermind, I read the article and saw that Mythbusters was mentioned there.

How is it that people still think that? He was a conniving cash-rich thief with a god eye for other people's inventions.

Sure, he wasn't what people thought he was, but it's hard to argue that he wasn't still a genius.

 

[Lyly]

Here's an interesting WI: The Phonograph Recorder is invented by Ben Franklin, and a spoken version of the US Declaration of independence is the first phonograph recording ever, and the voice of Jefferson is broadcast across America every fourth of July when radio gets invented.


What butterflies could result from a Phonograph being invented, let's say, c. 1775?

That would be absolutely incredible.

 

[MacCaulay]

How is it that people still think that? He was a conniving cash-rich thief with a god eye for other people's inventions.

In regards to Edison, you're correct. But that's why he was a genius. He was a guy who was able to take the emotion out of creation, and that was what made him so good at what he did.

You know the internal combustion engine was patented in 1824 by Samuel Morey? He used it to power a skiff that went back and forth across a small river in New England, and had an upgraded 2-stroke version but ended up sinking it in a bout of depression after his wife and mother both died in rapid succession.
Had he been a more cold-hearted bastard, like Edison, we might've seen cars and flight long before we did. But we didn't. Because he wasn't.

Here's an interesting WI: The Phonograph Recorder is invented by Ben Franklin, and a spoken version of the US Declaration of independence is the first phonograph recording ever, and the voice of Jefferson is broadcast across America every fourth of July when radio gets invented.


What butterflies could result from a Phonograph being invented, let's say, c. 1775?

That's actually a very interesting idea. If we're going with what was possible at the time, it'd be the Wax Cylinder Recorder, since that was an entirely acoustic device and required no electricity to run.

You could possibly have war hymns being recorded, the British King also giving addresses to the nation and things like that...the French Revolution could be changed as well.

I don't know if the speed at which news travels would be changed, but the people who spread it might become more known. Proto-newscasters, as it were. Whoever can get out to the middle of nowhere with a Wax Cylinder Recorder and speak to someone, then get it back to somewhere else to get it copied and sent out to other places.

 

[Bill Cameron]

The date of any earlier phonograph will depend on the ability to cut screws repeatedly, accurately, and on an industrial scale. That puts the earliest date, baring any PODs, at 1800 when Maudslay combined all the elements we consider are part of the "modern" screw lathe; slide rest, feed screw, diamond tipped cutters, gear changing, and the rest.

The screw is important due to the need for speed control. In order to accurately play back any recording, you need to revolve the cylinder at or near the same speed it was revolving during the act of recording. You also need to revolve the cylinder at the same speed for the duration of the recording and the playback. Any changes in screw pitch will distort the sounds being recorded and played back as will any changes in screw pitch between machines will have the same effect.

When you are able to repeatedly cut screws, both accurately and in industrial numbers, and there is no reason why the phonograph can't be invented immediately afterward. All of the other components have been around since the Classical Era if not before.


Bill

 

[Doraemon]

I don't think speed control would factor in that much. As long as there is a hand crank, it shouldn't be hard for a person to keep the cylinder turning at a steady pace. And when playing back, one can easily adjust their spinning by just listening to the recording. And if one can't hear a particular part well, a person can just try again to get things right. So I think the materials for a phonograph was there long before the 1800s.

What I think is more important is the concept that sound could be made from vibrations. Without that concept, I think it would be hard for a person to create the phonograph. I mean, it's going to be really hard for a person to "accidentally" put a needle in a cone onto a cylinder and figure out that turning the cylinder would create sound, without the knowledge that sound are waves.

 

[Bill Cameron]

I don't think speed control would factor in that much. As long as there is a hand crank, it shouldn't be hard for a person to keep the cylinder turning at a steady pace.

Akahito,

I'm sorry, but you don't understand the engineering involved.

Keeping the cylinder revolving at steady pace presumes a fixed pitch for the screw's threads. Also, seeing as there will be no indication that any given screw's thread pitch has changed until the sound changes, any "adjustment" by the person cranking will occur after the fact.

Without machined screws, each screw will be different and the cranking "style" or "rhythm" required will vary from machine to machine making comprehensible play back of a recording made on one machine very difficult on another.


Bill

 

[tormsen]

Akahito,

Without machined screws, each screw will be different and the cranking "style" or "rhythm" required will vary from machine to machine making comprehensible play back of a recording made on one machine very difficult on another.

Could this mean that before the development of accurate screws, we could see the development of phonographs but have them very individualised devices. Which means that the basic idea could be floating around early, and various inventors having their own phonographs that cannot play recordings made on other machines, until the screw technology catches up and it can be standardised? That allows for a single Ben Franklin machine to exist to record parts of the 18th century.

 

[MacCaulay]

I don't think speed control would factor in that much. As long as there is a hand crank, it shouldn't be hard for a person to keep the cylinder turning at a steady pace. And when playing back, one can easily adjust their spinning by just listening to the recording. And if one can't hear a particular part well, a person can just try again to get things right. So I think the materials for a phonograph was there long before the 1800s.

I think you're missing what he's talking about. Screws require a machining process called threading, and that can't be done by hand accurately and repeatedly. It's something I should've thought about, seeing as how I'm a freaking set-up guy on lathes at a machine shop. They've just had me on verticals and horizontals too long and I've gotten rusty.

Basically, the insert that you'd be using (if it would be anything like today) would have to be the same, as well as the angle that you're travelling at. That makes the the thread smooth and stable. That's also what we would call "thread pitch."

It's something that can be measured and adjusted by gauging the "thread minor," which is the smallest point in the thread from one side of the thread to the other, often measured with thread micrometers, or with calipers if you're in a cheapass machine shop like mine.
This means that you can have metric or standard threads.

EDIT: Shit, Bill already said that...crap. Sorry to steal your thunder, there, Bill, but I never get to talk about the job I've got now. It's kind of fun when it comes up.

What I think is more important is the concept that sound could be made from vibrations. Without that concept, I think it would be hard for a person to create the phonograph. I mean, it's going to be really hard for a person to "accidentally" put a needle in a cone onto a cylinder and figure out that turning the cylinder would create sound, without the knowledge that sound are waves.

That's a good point. But you can't rule out the possibility of epiphany (patent pending). Perhaps they just see ripples in the water after a fish comes to the surface and make some leaps of logic.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

I'm still trying to figure out how phonographs worked. They never taught this subject in school.

Could the technology be accidentally discovered and refined by potters? Perhaps it can be used by kings and religious leaders, maybe built into those giant clocks in cathedrals. Doesn't have to produce quality speech recordings right away. Just a short tune would be sufficiently amusing.

 

[Fardell]

The date of any earlier phonograph will depend on the ability to cut screws repeatedly, accurately, and on an industrial scale. That puts the earliest date, baring any PODs, at 1800 when Maudslay combined all the elements we consider are part of the "modern" screw lathe; slide rest, feed screw, diamond tipped cutters, gear changing, and the rest.

The screw is important due to the need for speed control. In order to accurately play back any recording, you need to revolve the cylinder at or near the same speed it was revolving during the act of recording. You also need to revolve the cylinder at the same speed for the duration of the recording and the playback. Any changes in screw pitch will distort the sounds being recorded and played back as will any changes in screw pitch between machines will have the same effect.

When you are able to repeatedly cut screws, both accurately and in industrial numbers, and there is no reason why the phonograph can't be invented immediately afterward. All of the other components have been around since the Classical Era if not before.


Bill

So maybe if we have the ability to make the threaded screws earlier, the phonograph would also be possible within the same period?

 

[Bill Cameron]

Could this mean that before the development of accurate screws, we could see the development of phonographs but have them very individualised devices.

Tormsen,

Possibly, but I believe it to be very unlikely.

MacCaulay in Post #15 neatly explained how standard screws with fixed thread pitches are made to today and have been made since ~1800 when Maudslay put together all the disparate pieces that make up a modern screw lathe. Before that screws were made by hand and not only did thread pitch very from screw to screw but thread pitch varied with the same screw. (Great descriptions in that post, Mac!)

Having a varied thread pitch in a screw really doesn't matter if you're simply using it as a fastener, having a varied thread pitch matters a great deal if you're using the screw as a drive shaft however. You could revolve the screw at a steady speed but the component being driven by the screw would move at an irregular speed because of the variations in the pitch. It would next to impossible to recreate the "rhythm" of those variations by varying the speed at which you crank.

There could be one-off machines as you suggest, a record can only be played on the machine that recorded it, but almost obviates the reason for having such a machine in the first place.

So, yes, Ben Franklin could have built such a machine. However, if he ever needed to replace the drives screws or gearing in that machine, it would be unlikely that he or anyone else would be able to play back recordings made before the replacement of those parts.

This question of "recording speed" and the existence of variations in "recording speed" is one of the major reasons why no useful data was returned from those pots mentioned earlier. We don't know the speed at which the pots were thrown and we don't how that speed varied as they were thrown. Imagine a record whose RPM requirement repeatedly jumps between 33 1/3, 45, 78, and a wide range of other numbers with no warning and no pattern. How could you "play" that record?


Bill

 

[Tomac]

Well, Edison was using an acoustic system with no electricity required. He felt that if you electrically modulated the signal through the use of microphones or wires you were basically not reproducing the true sound.
What he had was a huge horn-looking thing that the people would stand in front of at varying distances and play towards. The force would basically imprint the music onto a rotating wax cylinder.
That in itself could've been invented by anyone in within a hundred years before that, it was just the fact that Edison was a genius inventor who did that sort of thing.

The process didn't require any real super technology; just a simple idea. If he had thought about it, perhaps even Heron of Alexandria might have come up with it.
Imagine, going to a temple and hearing the voices of the gods, not just some priests.....

 

[Tomac]

Here's an interesting WI: The Phonograph Recorder is invented by Ben Franklin, and a spoken version of the US Declaration of independence is the first phonograph recording ever, and the voice of Jefferson is broadcast across America every fourth of July when radio gets invented.


What butterflies could result from a Phonograph being invented, let's say, c. 1775?

Ben Franklin expands his publishing business and starts a recording label, Poor Richard Records.....