Queens garbage disposal company breaks record in coolest antique discovery!

Three phonograph records from the early 1900s

It’s 2011, and music technology has come a long way: On the Internet, you can download whatever songs or albums you want, for less money than a CD would cost. At your local Best Buy, you can purchase the most high-tech speakers and sound equipment of today. But even with all of this new, crazy technology, all I can think about are my vintage phonograph cylinders that were manufactured in the early 1900s.

Phonograph cylinders were the first-ever mainstream medium for reproducing and recording sound. They were produced from 1888 to 1915, and were known as “records.” They were shaped like cylinders, and they had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface. The audio recording could be reproduced when the cylinder was played on a mechanical phonograph, which Thomas Edison created in 1877.

Edison, RCA Victor, and Columbia were the first three major music labels, and I have records produced by two of them.

The three phonograph cylinders I have are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that I found during my Brooklyn and Queens residential and commercial estate cleanouts. They were sitting on the shelves of basements and garages. I found each one on a different demolition or rubbish removal job, and based on my research, each one was produced in a different year. Take a look…

Edison Gold Moulded Record from 1904

EDISON GOLD MOULDED RECORD
-Copyright Aug. 9, 1904 by National Phonography Company under patents of Thomas A. Edison
-Top label says: “{ACCORDIAN} THE MINER MARCH”
-Edison Gold Moulded Records, which were produced in 1902 by Edison Records, were made of improved hard black wax and were capable of being played 100 times before wearing out.

Edison Blue Amerbol Record from 1910

EDISON BLUE AMBEROL RECORD
-Patented on July 12, 1910
-“I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden” by H. Raderman’s Jazz Orchestra
-Cost 60 cents
-Blue Amberol Records were introduced for public sale in November 1912
-Amberols were different from Gold Moulded records in that they played four minutes — rather than two minutes — of music on the same sized record.

Columbia Gold Moulded Indestructible Cylinder Record, date unknown

COLUMBIA GOLD MOULDED INDESTRUCTIBLE CYCLINDER RECORD
-From New York
-Cost 35 cents
-Fits any cylinder machine and lasts forever, according to label
-No date  — There is no date on this cylinder. However, the label that advertises its indestructible exterior causes me to believe this record is from around 1906. The “Indestructible” label was marketed starting in 1906, and Columbia Records purchased this technology around that time. These records were made out of celluloid, an early hard plastic, that would not break.

THOMAS EDISON PHONOGRAPH

Watch and listen to this phonograph playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Philip Sousa. This type of phonograph is most likely what my records were played on. (Video courtesy of glennman62 on YouTube.)

The History of Sound
1877 — Thomas Edison invents the cylinder “phonograph” used to record and playback sound.

1887 – Emile Berliner invents the flat record player (“gramophone”) using acoustic horn
and licenses technology to record companies who make “70-rpm” disks

1900 – Eldredge Johnson perfects first system of mass duplication of pre-recorded flat disks.

1906 – RCA Victor’s “Victrola” model record player is introduced. It has a variable turntable
speed control to accommodate the wide range of phonograph records produced at that
time

1912 – Disk recordings overtake cylinders in the popular market. Columbia drops cylinders.

1913 – Edison Co. finally introduces a disk player, now that the cylinder market is gone.

1921 – The first automatic “record changer” turntable is patented for a stack of 78’s.

1928 – Billboard magazine publishes its first music chart of performed songs.

1936 – Billboard magazine publishes its first chart of top-selling records.

1948 – The Audio Engineering Society (The AES) is formed.

1954 – The First “transistor radio” went on sale in the U.S. named The Regency TR-1

1957 – Compatible Stereo disks and record players are offered for sale (33 1/3 and 45rpm.)

1961 – FM Stereo radio broadcasting begins and FM slowly starts to gain respect.

1964 – The 8-track stereo tape cartridge is developed for automobile use by Lear.

1982 – The digital Compact Disc (CD) is introduced by a Japanese conglomerate.

1982 – The first CD released (in Japan) is Billy Joel’s “52nd Street” (October, 1982.)

1983 – The first CD titles are released in the US in June (12 CBS, 15 Telarc, 30 Denon.)

1990 – Phillips introduces a digital audio tape recorder (DAT) using a digital cassette.

1999 – Broadband Internet service providers begin to be offered to consumers faster Web page
downloads and smoother and faster streaming media.

2000 – Internet music-swapping site “Napster” is created, and alarms the recording industry, which mounts a massive campaign to shut it down despite First Amendment concerns.

2000 – The first year recording sales actually declined — record industry blames online music swapping as the cause and tried to advance digital copy protection schemes.

2001 – Music DVD’s are introduced which can contain 7-10 times the amount of music, or
multimedia content to augment the usual sound recordings.

2006 – February 22 – Apple Computer’s online music store integrated into its iTunes software
and iPod hardware, and sold its 1 billionth song, proving that digital music
can be accepted by the public when distributed across a network in a virtual form, as
opposed to inscribed only in discrete tangible media.

**The above information was taken from the TimeLine of Music and Media Technology on http://classicthemes.com. See the full timeline at http://www.classicthemes.com/technologyTimeline.html.

DiMola Bros Rubbish Removal
1640 Summerfield St.
Ridgewood, NY 11385
Phone: 718-326-6969
Fax: 718-326-7979
NGDimola@aol.com / http://dimolabros.com

~ by DiMolaBros1956 on March 2, 2011.