Disc records and cylinders

Cylinder recordings continued to compete with the growing disc record market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In that decade Columbia (which had been making both discs and cylinders) switched exclusively to discs, and Edison started marketing their own disc records. However Edison continued to sell new cylinder records to consumers with cylinder phonograph machines through 1929. The latest of the new cylinders were simply dubs of disc records, and as such are of lower fidelity than the disc versions.

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Later application of phonograph cylinder technology

Cylinder on Dictaphone dictation machine. The recording head moved R-L. The black lines are shiny gaps between tracks. Wax cylinders could record 1200-1500 words. They could be reused 100-120 times by putting them in a machine that erased them by 'shaving' off the surface.

Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for Dictaphone and Ediphone recordings for office use for decades.

In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their DictaBelt technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by magnetic tape recording. However cylinders for older style dictating machines continued to be available for some years, and it was not unusual to encounter cylinder dictating machines into the 1950s.

In the late 20th and early 21st century some new recordings have been made on cylinders for the novelty effect of using obsolete technology. Probably the most famous of these are by They Might Be Giants, who in 1996 recorded "I Can Hear You," performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. This song was released on Factory Showroom in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. (The band also performed and recorded a song about Edison, a studio recording of which appeared on their 1999 internet-only release Long Tall Weekend and subsequently on their first album aimed towards a younger audience, No!.)

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Preservation of cylinder recordings

Proper way to hold a cylinder record: put fingers on the inside; do not touch the outer surface which has the recording.

Because of the nature of the recording medium, playback of cylinders can cause degradation of the recording. Currently, the only professional machine manufactured for the playback of cylinder recordings is the Archeophone Series I player, designed by Henri Chamoux. The Archeophone is presently used by the Edison National Historic Site, Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, Ohio) and The Department of Special Collections, Donald C Davidson Library at The University of California, Santa Barbara. Further information on this player may be sighted on the external links below.

Other modern so-called 'plug-in' mounts, each incorporating the use of a Stanton 500AL MK II magnetic cartridge, have been manufactured from time to time. Information on each may be sighted on the Phonograph Makers Pages link. It is possible to use these on the Edison cylinder players.

In an attempt to preserve the historic content of the recordings, cylinders can be read with a confocal microscope and converted to a digital recording format. The resulting sound clip in most cases sounds better than stylus playback from the original cylinder. Having an electronic version of the original recordings enables archivists to open access to the recordings to a wider audience. This technique also has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken cylinders. (Fadeyev & Haber, 2003)

Modern reproductions of cylinder and disc recordings usually give the impression that the introduction of discs was a quantum leap in audio fidelity, but this is on modern playback equipment; played on equipment from around 1900, the cylinders do not have noticeably more rumble and poorer bass reproduction than the discs. Another factor is that many cylinders are amateur recordings, while disc recording equipment was simply too expensive for anyone but professional engineers. In other words, while many extremely poor recordings were made on cylinder, the vast majority of disc recordings were competently recorded. Nevertheless, it does not mean that a professional engineer will necessarily get worse results on cylinder than on disc.

Also important is the quality of the material: the earliest tinfoil recordings wore out fast. Once the tinfoil was removed from the cylinder it was nearly impossible to re-align in playable condition. None of the earliest tinfoil recordings has been played back since the 19th century. (Hypothetically in the future some sound might be salvaged from few surviving flattened out early tinfoil records.) The earliest soft wax recordings also wore out quite fast, though they have better fidelity than the early rubber discs.

In addition to poor states of preservation, the poor impression modern listeners can get of wax cylinders is from their early date, which can compare unfavorably to recordings made even a dozen years later. Other than a single playable example from 1878 (from an experimental phonograph-clock), the oldest playable preserved cylinders are from the year 1888. These include a severely degraded recording of Johannes Brahms and a short speech by Sir Arthur Sullivan which was fortunately dubbed in moderately listenable condition. Somewhat later are the almost unlistenable 1889 amateur recordings of Nina Grieg. The earliest preserved rubber disc recordings are children's records, featuring animal noises and nursery rhymes. This means that the earliest disc recordings most music lovers will hear are shellac discs made after 1900, after more than ten years of development.

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See also

• Audio format
• Audio storage
• Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

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Notes

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References

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Phonograph cylinders

• Tinfoil.com — History of phonograph cylinders; listen to many examples dating from 1878 through 1912
• The 1878 Lambert recording - Analysis of the 1878 Lambert recording (earliest surviving recording).
• 1888 white wax cylinder - Listen to one of the earliest classical music cylinders ever recorded
• French cylinders - Listen to several French cylinders (Opera, Cafe-Concert)
• Phonograph cylinders on Bill Clark's 78 rpm Record site
• Bob Morritt's Columbia Phonograph Company Cylinder Records Site
• How did they mass produce those old cylinder records?
• The three surviving Edison cylinders on the National Recording Registry with descriptions, audio and transcripts.
• Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library with streaming and downloadable versions of over 6000 cylinders.
• The Cylinder Archive - Dedicated to the hobby of collecting phonograph cylinder records
• The Archeophone - Official Archeophone site