By late 1901, ten-inch records were marketed by the Victor Talking Machine Company who manufactured gramophones for Berliner. So in that sense, Berliner’s early ‘gramophone records’ were the first to be offered to the public. Cylinders could not be reproduced until 1901–1902 when the gold molding process was introduced by Edison. In this respect, flat discs had a distinct advantage: they can be easily reproduced by molding and stamping. As they did, so too did the demand for manufactured ‘records’. Before this, artists would have to perform a piece of music multiple times to produce more than one copy.Ĭylinders did not disappear overnight, and the popularity of gramophones and phonographs began to soar. With these methods, artists could reproduce recordings of a single track many times, seriously impacting the commercial value of the method for the better. He was the first to record sound waves outwardly on a disk and create master copies using electroplating. What is significant about Berliner’s work is that he also pioneered the mass-production of recordings. Scaling Up: The Beginnings of Record Pressing

Very early designs of the gramophone played zinc disks coated in a thin layer of beeswax, but in the 1890s, Berliner collaborated with a German toy manufacturer to create five-inch rubber disks before introducing seven-inch rubber discs in 1894.Įventually, Berliner’s American Gramophone Company perfected shellac disks, which went on to dominate the recorded music industry until the 1930s. He was determined to improve the phonograph himself and proceeded to adapted his invention to play solid wax cylinders. Bell’s company did, at one point, approach Edison to discuss a possible collaboration, but Edison refused.

The American Graphophone Company was formed to promote the Volta Laboratory device and the later production of wax cylinder music records.

Bell’s team also pioneered clockwork playback and the use of electric motors to rotate the wax cylinders.Ī race now began among rival systems. Both improvements delivered superior sound quality and improved durability, and the machine was exhibited to the public as the graphophone. Principally he used wax in the place of tinfoil and a floating stylus instead of a rigid needle which would incise, rather than indent the cylinder.

One such inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, whose Volta Laboratory made improvements on Edison’s invention. When Edison eventually turned his attention toward inventing the incandescent light bulb, others moved forward to improve the phonograph.

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