The phonograph record player, or gramophone (letter + sound) is a device introduced in 1877 that continued common use until the 1980s for reproducing (playing) sound recordings,although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds. The recordings played on such a device generally consist of wavy lines that are either scratched, engraved, or grooved onto a rotating cylinder or disc. As the cylinder or disc rotates, a needle or other similar object on the device traces the wavy lines and vibrates, reproducing sound waves.
The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, USA.[1][2][3][4] On February 19, 1878, Edison was issued the first patent (U.S. patent #200,521) for the phonograph.[5] While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. (In announcing the demonstration, Scientific American noted that the non-reproducing devices that preceded Edison's had been built by Marey and Rosapelly, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinvilleand Barlow.)[6] Although Edison began experimenting on the Phonograph using wax coated paper as a recording medium, this first Phonograph recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheetphonograph cylinder. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders, and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a "zig zag" pattern across the record. Then at the turn of the century, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to gramophone records: flat, double-sided discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Other improvements were made throughout the years, including modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the needle and stylus, and the sound and equalization systems.
The gramophone record was one of the dominant audio recording formats throughout much of the 20th Century. However, that status was eventually replaced by the compact disc and otherdigital recording formats.
Terminology
Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, this device is often called aturntable, record player, or record changer. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ set up, they are often called decks.
The term phonograph ("sound writer") is derived from the Greek words φωνή (meaning "sound" or "voice" and transliterated as phonē) andγραφή (meaning "writing" and transliterated as graphē). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the -graph root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.
F. B. Fenby was the original author of the word. An inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph".[7] His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper forplayer piano rolls (1880s), as well as Herman Hollerith's punch card tabulator (used in the 1890 United States census), a distant precursor of the modern computer[citation needed].
Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone" and the like were still brand names specific to different makers of sometimes very different (i.e., cylinder and disc) machines, so considerable use was made of the generic termtalking machine, especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech by simulating the workings of the vocal cords, tongue and lips, a potential source of confusion both then and now.
United Kingdom
In British English, gramophone referred to any sound reproducing machine using 78 rpm gramophone records, as disc records were popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. The term phonograph was usually restricted to devices playing cylinder records.
Gramophone generally referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3 rpm LPs and 45 rpm EPs, the common name became record player or turntable initially as part of a system that included radio (radiogram) and, later, might also play cassettes. From about 1960 such a system began to be described as a hi-fi or stereo (most systems being stereophonic by the mid-1960s).
United States
In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others, but it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to the upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played discs. "Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but in the early 20th Century the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played.
By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrolas (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were however still called "phonograph records" or simply "records", almost never "victrola records".
After electronic disc-playing machines started appearing on the market during the second half of the 1920s, usually sharing the same cabinet with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by users when referring to the device. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs".
In the years following the Second World War, as component "Hi-Fi" (high-fidelity) and, later, "stereo" (stereophonic) sound systems slowly evolved from an exotic specialty item into a common feature of American homes, the literal description of the record-spinning component as a "record changer" (which could automatically play through a stacked series of discs) or a "turntable" (which was usually meant to be burdened with only one disc at a time) entered common usage. By circa 1980 the use of a "record changer", which might scuff up or otherwise damage the discs, was widely disparaged, so the "turntable" emerged triumphant and retained its position to the end of the 20th Century and beyond. Through all these changes, however, the discs have continued to be known as "phonograph records" or, much more commonly, simply as "records".
The brand name Gramophone was not used in the USA after 1901, and the word fell out of use there, though it has survived in its nickname form, Grammy, as the title of the Grammy Awards. The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, resembling a Victor disc machine with a taper arm.
Modern amplifier equipment still labels the input that accepts the output from a modern magnetic pickup cartridge as the "phono" input, abbreviated from "phonograph".
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