Cylinder phonograph

The birth of the phonograph

On 19 December 1877, the American inventor Thomas Edison patented the phonograph, a device that allowed 2 minutes of sound to be recorded and played back on a tin cylinder. A crank turned a cylinder covered with tin foil. You then had to speak into a conical tube with a stylus at the other end. The compressed air in the tube caused the stylus to vibrate, etching grooves in the cylinder material from these movements. To listen to the recording again, the process was reversed. The voice recorded a few minutes earlier resounded once more in the room. The talking machine was born.

This invention was so singular, so strange, and so unexpected, that it initially met with widespread disbelief. Edison was branded a wizard! In England, when the first phonograph imported from America was presented, a bishop in the audience, John H. Vincent, suspicious of trickery, wanted to test the machine. In front of the recorder, he rapidly recited a number of proper names from the Bible. The machine then repeated them correctly, and the prelate admitted defeat: "Only I in the whole country can recite these names so quickly!"

An initially educational and advertising use

At first, the machine was mainly used to record voices for educational purposes (lessons, books, etc.), for entertainment (talking toys), advertising, or public announcements. The possibility of musical reproduction was only incidentally considered, far from imagining the extraordinary future of the phonograph in this field. It must be said that, at the time, having a machine at home that played "recorded" music was a completely incongruous idea. Moreover, the use of tin created many "metallic" sound disturbances due to the stylus rubbing and wear, often allowing only a single listening. In 1887, Edison took up the idea of competitors by replacing tin with wax, which was much more effective.

The phonograph enters homes

The wax cylinder phonograph became popular, even though its role as a musical reproducer was still secondary, as evidenced by this sales catalogue from a Parisian company at the end of the 19th century:
"We are no longer in the days when the phonograph was considered a scientific hoax. No one doubts today that speech can be stored, that it can be endlessly replayed, and that it can be produced at will, all of which is achieved by the phonograph. [...] The 'wizard of Menlo Park,' as he is called in America [after the location of Edison's laboratories in New Jersey], has introduced such improvements into his invention that the phonograph will no longer be an object of curiosity but an instrument both pleasant and deserving a clear place in the home."

This in no way detracts from the mocking tone of some, such as Paul Morand in his book 1900:
"The phonograph! At last! The latest triumph of science - a simple roll and Coquelin [a famous actor on the Parisian stage] delivers a monologue in your bedroom. Larynx and vocal cords of wax. Thorax of nickel... Everyone now knows this fantastic machine that speaks, sings, laughs, and sobs, capable of preserving forever the joyful cries of the baby and the words of the grandfather who will sleep for eternity."

The peak and decline of cylinders

Nevertheless, music eventually took hold of the device, and the phonograph industry boomed around the turn of the century. Alongside flat-disc gramophones, companies flourished everywhere, and producers relied on an eclectic repertoire as soon as industrial production began. The advent of cylinder casting allowed companies to free up time and budgets to expand the recorded repertoire. They thus diversified their potential audience, which was mainly composed of the small and middle classes seeking new cultural experiences.

Edison's Opera model marked the heyday of cylinder phonographs. Produced from 1911 to 1913, this luxury phonograph was specifically designed to fully exploit Edison’s more robust Blue Amberol hardened celluloid cylinders, which could play for up to 4 minutes and 45 seconds. The sound quality of the Edison Opera was excellent, notably because it had a new system in which the cylinders moved under the needle rather than the other way around. Contrary to usual practice, the pickup and horn remained fixed, and it was the cylinder that moved forward while rotating on itself during playback. Thanks to this complex technical feat, the horn could be much larger than on most other devices. The Edison Opera is said to have probably the best sound of all contemporary instruments, cylinders and records alike. It was capable of producing enough volume to fill an average concert hall of the time, hence its name. This model also had an automatic stop device that could be set to the last groove of a cylinder, forcing the machine to stop automatically. The heavy-duty spring motor could play up to a dozen cylinders per winding. In 1913, the Opera was renamed the Edison Concert Phonograph.

Despite the undeniable sound qualities of the phonograph, consumers increasingly disdained cylinders, preferring the flat discs of gramophones, which were easier to store and less fragile. Many cylinder manufacturers went out of business, and Thomas Edison remained, against all odds, the last defender of his invention, finally abandoning cylinder phonograph production in 1929.

Text: Matthieu Thonon