Recorded Sound

1857 – ongoing55 items

musictechnology
An Edison tinfoil phonograph of 1878, its cylinder grooved for the foil, in the National Museum of American History, Washington. Photo: Daderot, 2013. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
An Edison tinfoil phonograph of 1878, its cylinder grooved for the foil, in the National Museum of American History, Washington. Photo: Daderot, 2013. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From soot on paper to a song on demand

In 1860 a Paris typesetter traced a few seconds of someone singing onto soot-blackened paper. Nobody could hear it until 2008. In between, sound learned to be kept, copied, sold and carried: on tinfoil and wax cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, steel wire and magnetic tape, cassettes, compact discs, MP3 files and finally streams that are never owned at all. The places run from Paris, Hanover and Berlin to Calcutta, Eindhoven, Tokyo, Erlangen, Seoul and Stockholm.

How it is laid out

  • Formats as overlapping bands, each running from the year it went on sale to the year its makers gave up. Read them together and the pattern shows: no format dies when the next arrives. Vinyl, the cassette and the CD are all still on sale, and the oldest of them is selling more than it did twenty years ago.

  • Events for the inventions, launches, patents and court rulings between the bands. Sales figures name who counted them, usually the RIAA for the United States.

Threads to follow

Filter by formats for what people bought and played, recording for how sound was captured in the first place, portable for music that left the living room, and internet for the files and the streams. business follows the money and law the patents, copyright and lawsuits that decided which formats won.

I foresee a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music… — John Philip Sousa, “The Menace of Mechanical Music”, 1906

Items

  1. Scott de Martinville patents the phonautograph

    Paris

  2. “Au clair de la lune” traced in soot

    Paris

  3. ≈ 16 years, 8 months

  4. Acoustic recording

    ≈ 48 years

  5. Charles Cros seals his idea in an envelope

    Institut de France, quai de Conti, Paris

  6. Edison’s tinfoil phonograph

    Edison’s laboratory, Menlo Park, New Jersey

  7. Bell and Tainter’s graphophone

    Washington, D.C.

  8. Berliner patents the gramophone

    Washington, D.C.

  9. Cylinders

    ≈ 40 years

  10. A nickel in the slot

    Palais Royal Saloon, San Francisco

  11. 78s

    ≈ 66 years

  12. Poulsen’s telegraphone records on steel wire

    Copenhagen

  13. Deutsche Grammophon founded in Hanover

    Hanover

  14. Caruso records ten arias in a hotel room

    Grand Hotel et de Milan, Via Manzoni, Milan

  15. “My name is Gauhar Jaan”

    Calcutta

  16. Sousa warns of “canned music”

  17. The Copyright Act creates the mechanical royalty

  18. Electrical recording

    Western Electric laboratories, 463 West Street, New York

  19. Pfleumer patents magnetic tape

    Dresden

  20. Blumlein patents stereo

    EMI, Blyth Road, Hayes, Middlesex

  21. The Magnetophon shown in Berlin

    Exhibition grounds by the Funkturm, Berlin

  22. The first orchestra recorded on tape

    BASF Feierabendhaus, Ludwigshafen

  23. AC bias makes tape hi-fi

    Haus des Rundfunks, Masurenallee, Berlin

  24. Bing Crosby’s radio show goes out on tape

  25. Vinyl records

  26. Columbia launches the LP

    Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York

  27. RCA answers with the 45

  28. Les Paul and Mary Ford’s “How High the Moon”

  29. Stereo records go on sale

  30. Compact cassettes

  31. Philips unveils the compact cassette

    Exhibition grounds by the Funkturm, Berlin

  32. 8-track cartridges

    ≈ 23 years

  33. Dolby Laboratories founded

    London

  34. Denon’s first digital recordings

    Tokyo

  35. Philips shows a compact disc

    Philips, Eindhoven

  36. Sony Walkman goes on sale

    Sony headquarters, Shinagawa, Tokyo

  37. “Home Taping Is Killing Music”

  38. Compact discs

  39. The first CD is pressed near Hanover

    PolyGram pressing plant, Langenhagen

  40. CDs go on sale in Japan

  41. “Brothers in Arms”, the CD’s first million-seller

  42. MiniDisc

    ≈ 33 years

  43. The file extension “.mp3” is chosen

    Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen

  44. The first MP3 players

    Seoul

  45. Cher’s “Believe” and Auto-Tune

  46. Napster

    ≈ 2 years, 1 month

  47. Apple presents the iPod

    Town Hall, Apple campus, Cupertino

  48. Paid downloads

  49. The iTunes Music Store opens

  50. Vinyl revival

  51. Streaming

  52. The oldest recording is heard at last

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California

  53. The first Record Store Day

  54. Spotify launches

    Stockholm

  55. Streaming passes half of US music revenue

  56. Vinyl outsells CDs in the United States