History of the gramophone

Ambassadors of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyry, who arrived in Baghdad, were amazed. In the palace of the caliph stood a giant fairy tree, the trunk and branches of which were made of silver, leaves of gold, and in the crown of trees sat birds made of precious metals and stones. And most of all, it was amazing that these birds twittered in every way as real! It was a thousand years ago. But attempts to reproduce human speech, music, our distant ancestors have, probably, since they began to think about the wiser question: what is an echo?

When the heyday of mechanics began, skilful masters created a lot of wonders, for example, a mechanical scribe.

They put him at the table, started it, and he started to write! Dipped the pen in ink, flicked off the pen, printed letters and words on paper, and even watched the written eyes. And of course, among these toys there were a lot of music. Before the most common for the era of musical instruments put a car, made in the form of a man and dressed in the latest fashion. But the main thing in a self-playing instrument is music, and it's not always worth it to make a complex and expensive robot musician, and even in full size. When the masters understood this truth, they began to design robots that were not like human beings. So almost 300 years ago in Italy appeared a musical instrument for those who. .. can not play. You just need to turn the knob. The most popular song was "Charming Catherine", in French "Sharman Catherine".From the name of this song and the name of the instrument - a barrel organ. But she, like all kinds of musical automata, mechanical pianos, reproduced one melody. And around there were so many wonderful and different sounds. How to save them?

Phonograph. The end of XIX century.

Today, even a small child is not surprised that a small black disc "tells" a favorite fairy tale. But how many years did people dream about this?"Sound does not disappear without a trace, it can somehow be saved" - such an assumption was expressed in 1589 by the physicist Porta. In 1807, another physicist, Jung, was the first to put a trail of a tuning fork on the smoked paper.

Phonograph "Talking doll".The end of XIX century.

A half-century has passed - the French compositor Scott creates a "sound autograph".This device could capture the "character" of any sound on the sensitive layer of the rotating roller.

And finally a memorable 1877 came - the famous American inventor T. Edison came up with a device that he called a phonograph. Here is how he himself recalled this: "One day, when I was working on improving the phone, I somehow sang over the phone's diaphragm( thin steel plate) to which the needle was soldered. Thanks to the trembling of the plate, the needle pricked my finger, which made me think. If it were possible to record these fluctuations of the needle, and then again draw a needle along such a record, why should not the plate speak? That's the whole story: I did not prick my finger - I would not have invented a phonograph! »

Probably not all that simple and casual, as Edison said. He did not invent a phonograph, someone would have invented it. But Edison knew how to notice everything very well and think about the facts and phenomena that many passed by without paying attention. It turns out, sometimes it is useful to prick your finger and think about it!

For the sake of justice it should be said that the principle of recording and reproducing sound almost a year before Edison was discovered and described by the French poet and scholar Charles Cro. However, while the sealed envelope describing the paleophone( as Kroe called his invention) lay in the office of the French Academy, practical and businesslike Edison filed an application for a phonograph.

Sticker to the gramophone plate early XX century.

The slowness of the "immortals"( as members of the academy were called in France) cost the country a priority in the invention of sound recording.

So, December of 1877.Thomas Alva Edison recites into the mouthpiece of the outlandish apparatus a short nursery rhyme for Mary and her little sheep. And after a minute astounded helpers hear the device repeating an uncomplicated history with the voice of the inventor. Miracle? None of Edison's contemporaries doubted this.

To look and listen to the "talking machine," as soon as evening newspapers reported it, so many people poured in that it was necessary to launch additional trains on the line leading to Menlep Park where the inventor lived and worked. A little later the phonograph was shown in circuses, giving it out as an "inexplicable mystery of nature".But what did the phonograph look like? Imagine a thick cylinder with a handle. It's a phonograph roller. It was wrapped with foil or waxed paper. The person spoke or sang, and the roller at this time rotated. And the needle attached to the membrane, scratched a groove on it. Then the needle was rearranged to the beginning of the groove, the pen was turned again - and the voice sounded.

Gramophone. The beginning of XX century.

This phonograph was demonstrated in March 1878 at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. The device obediently reproduced the phrase recorded on the platen. And suddenly Academician Buyo, who was present at the meeting, rushed to Edison's representative and grabbed him by the throat, shouting loudly: "Scoundrel, we will not allow us to fool us to some ventriloquist!"

After listening to the explanation of a physicist who proved that sound in a phonograph is obtained by vibration of a metal membraneBuyo angrily replied: "I never admit that the noble voice of a person's voice can be replaced by a piece of iron!"

Buyo was not alone in his distrust. Two years later, in 1880, the French physiologist Fallier wrote about the phonograph: "People admire the phonograph and believe that anyone can at his discretion hear the voice of any famous actor or celebrated singer. However, all this is a completely unusual fantasy! "

With the help of a phonograph it was possible to make a single record, and this, naturally, is not very convenient. Therefore, the phonograph is the "progenitor", and the "father" of the modern player should be considered a gramophone. His first 11 years after the invention of Edison was demonstrated by German engineer Emil Berliner, who worked in America. True, at first the novelty did not arouse much interest, and even the shrewd Edison said: "This is a car without a future."Berliner suggested recording the sound on a zinc disc, covered with a thin layer of wax, and then making copies of it. To listen to the records, he invented a device, which he called a gramophone. The gramophone proved to be much more convenient than a phonograph, and in the end people preferred it. True, this predecessor of our stereos was not very beautiful. The disk was rotated by hand. The needle with the membrane moved from the center of the plate to the edge. The belt transmission of the open mechanism was complemented by a large horn. But it was possible to make any number of copies-records from the original record.

The gramophone. Mid-twentieth century.

The gramophone was a huge success. By 1907, only in Russia "about half a million gramophones were in use," the Gramophone News magazine reported. It is a lot of! Especially when you consider that the first factory gramophones appeared in our city in 1897 and cost huge money for those times - 80, 100 and even 600 rubles!

If you could put together all the models of gramophones, the collection would have turned out to be prettiest. You would see shelves, cabinets, jugs, vases, barrels, chests, box-houses, boxes-cars. .. There would meet even lions with an open mouth-mouthpiece.

"Do you need volume?"And the buyer was offered a triple-phone, a three-sound gramophone that had three horns, three membranes and three discs.

"At the end of the last century, the fabulous dream of the famous Arab sheikh and philosopher Abd al-Kader came true, who in 1301 told his disciples that lying is one of the greatest vices. It will disappear only when people learn to turn every word they say into a stone that will serve as evidence against a liar "- so promising was the opening of the chapter" Gramophones "in one of the popular science books published in 1915.

Coin-operated automatic machine, which could choose to listen to any of the 20 records. First half of XX century.

But, despite the high prices and variety of forms, the sound of gramophones left much to be desired. Constant attempts were made to improve the apparatus: only the membrane had more than 500 modifications. Needles were used either diamond, then bamboo, then with a thickening below, then with a steep bend and even with a spring around. The needle was already moving from edge to center.

In 1907, the French firm of the Pate brothers opened a factory in Moscow, which produced absolutely extraordinary gramophones. Their membrane was not vertical, but horizontally with respect to the disk, which had truly gigantic dimensions - half a meter in diameter! From these devices, soon left one name - a gramophone, passed to the apparatus of a more perfect design. They turned from a singing curbstone into a small square box, then into a portable suitcase that absorbed a wide mouth, which had been mocked many times in the newspapers. So people are older and remember the gramophone - the youngest and most common model of the Berliner gramophone.

Today's stereo systems meet the requirements of the most picky music lovers. Pickups with a piezoelectric, corundum and diamond needle handle the plates very delicately. More and more popular players with laser sound reading.

Along with the gramophone, the plates also changed. The first records were called records( from the English word "record" - "record"), They were thick, with a rough edge and weighed almost half a kilogram! Two holes were made in the center. The recording took only one side( bilateral "records" appeared only in 1903), on the other side printed the name of the record along with a libretto or a sheet music example. And what did not the first records do? From wax, celluloid, rubber, metal and even. .. chocolate. Yes, yes, the most real chocolate. At the beginning of the century, such "delicious" records were sold - at first they could be listened to, and then eat( probably if the record did not like it very much).

All these materials in general were not suitable for records. Here's the point. The length of the sonic groove of only one song was about a kilometer. While the needle ran this way, it pressed the grooves to the bottom with incredible force - about a ton per square centimeter! It's about the same as putting an elephant on one leg on a matchbox. What material will withstand such pressure? Probably steel? No, the plates of the best steel wear 20 times faster than shellac.

Shellak? And what is it? In India there is a tiny bug - a varnish chervets. He allocates resin, from which he makes himself a shell( shell - in English shell, hence the shellac).It turned out that this resin can be melted, mixed with other substances, subjected to pressure - it will still remain elastic and at the same time firm. The only drawback with her is that she is very expensive. After all, only 4,000 bugs were needed to make only one plate. This resin was torn from the bark of the tree, poured hot water, washed, filtered to remove pieces of bark. It is clear that so many records can not be made. Hence the high price. Therefore, since 1908, manufacturers have begun to buy up old, unsuitable, broken records. Printed ads of this kind: "For the three old plates issued one new one of the same size, subject to the purchase of another new one."

It was necessary to replace the resin with something. It was chemistry. Polyvinyl chloride in a mixture with vinylate - from these plastics in the main and make today the plate. The dense surface of the plastic made it possible to close and narrow the sonic grooves - a long-playing plate appeared.

Why are traditional records still popular, despite the onslaught of tape recorders? The secret is simple: they guarantee a higher sound quality. This position is strengthened by new phonograph records, which are already produced in a number of countries. They have a number of unusual properties. First, they are extremely durable. Such a plate can be thrown with force on the floor, beating with heels - nothing will happen to it. Secondly, these plates have only 12.5 centimeters in diameter, but each side plays for an hour, that is, the recordings on them are very compact, hence the name "compact disc".Thirdly, the sound on these plates is recorded with the help of sophisticated electronic devices.

And it is in this basic novelty - the role of a pickup for such a plate is played by a laser beam, not at all damaging the plate, no matter how much it is lost. Even if the plate is dirty, covered with a thick layer of dust, the laser beam provides a clean sound.

Inventive human mind invented a new entertainment - fragrant discs. When playing, they fill the room with different flavors. Now the choice is more than 40 different smells. The owner of the player and discs can only decide where he wants to be - on the beach or in front of a burning fireplace, or maybe in the woods after the rain.

Do you know?

When and where was the first record ever made in Russian?

In 1897 in the city of Hanover.