Audio Timeline

1. Audio Timeline By:Kierra Jackson

2. First Recording-1877 • Thomas Alva Edison recorded a musical composition in his lab. Thomas Alva Edison conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts.

3. 1878 • In 1878 the first music was put on record cornetist by Jules Levy.TheEdiphone and subsequent wax cylinders used in Edison's other product lines continued to be sold up until 1929 when the Edison Company Folded.

4. 1881 • Clement Ader, using carbon microphones and armature headphones, accidentally produces a stereo effect when listeners outside the hall monitor adjacent telephone lines linked to stage mikes at the Paris Opera.

5. 1887 • Emile Berliner is granted a patent on a flat-disc gramophone, making the production of multiple copies practical.

6. 1888 • Edison introduces an electric motor-driven phonograph.

7. 1895 • Gramophone record, lateral grooves, horizontal stylus.

8. More… 1898 1900 Poulsen unveils his invention to the public at the Paris Exposition. Austria's Emperor Franz Josef records his congratulations. • Disc first produced around 1898; popular from 1910-1950s; by 1910 actual speed ranged from about 78 to 80 rpm; size was 10 or 12 inches.

9. 1901 • The Victor Talking Machine Company is founded by Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson. • Experimental optical recordings are made on motion picture film

10. 1906 • Lee DeForest invents the triode vacuum tube, the first electronic signal amplifier.

11. 1910 • Enrico Caruso is heard in the first live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, NYC

12. 1912 • Major Edwin F. Armstrong is issued a patent for a regenerative circuit, making radio reception practical.

13. 1913 • The first "talking movie" is demonstrated by Edison using his Kinetophone process, a cylinder player mechanically synchronized to a film projector.

14. 1930 • Wire recording ,the technology of magnetic recording dates back to 1878, when Oberlin Smith proposed the idea of recording telephone signals onto a length of steel piano wire.

15. 1932 • The first cardioid ribbon microphone is patented by Dr. Harry F. Olson of RCA, using a field coil instead of a permanent magnet.

16. 1936 • The first demonstration of the Tefifon technology was in 1936 at the "Radioexposition" in Berlin, Germany, the brainchild of  Karl Daniel.   The Tefifon was a belt recorder, somewhat similar to the Sonaband Recordall that came out much later in 1957. 

17. 1945 • Introduced in 1945 by the Gray Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, the Audograph used technology similar to the Soundscriber and Dictabelt, in that the modulated grooves were embossed onto soft vinyl.

18. 1945 • Soundscriber was another competitor in the growing dictation marketplace. Flexible vinyl records were "cut" using a stylus cutting head, and playback  was made on a dedicated player as the model shown here.

19. 1951 • The Minifon was released in 1951. It's main attribute was it's small portable size and claimed to fit in one's shirt pocket (assuming I suppose. one has a Gi-normous shirt pocket ) Nevertheless, compared to the Websters and Silvertone home machines etc, it was indeed truly portable.

20. 1957 • The Sonaband machines used the same technology as that of the Dictabelt. Stereophonic vinyl record…

21. 1958 • In 1958 RCA developed an audio cartridge system known simply as the Sound Tape Cartridge. • It was one of the first attempts at taming unruly reel to reel audio tape and making it transportable in the consumer marketplace.

22. 1960 • In October, 1960, IBM decided to enter the fray of the Office Dictation equipment marketplace. The IBM Selectric had quickly become the coveted office typewriter of choice, so adding dictation equipment to the office product lineup.

23. 1962 • The stereo 4 track cartridge was the forerunner of the 8 track cartridge system. The format was actually developed in 1954 by George Eash at Muntz Stereo in Van Nuys, CA.   Muntz took up the call and began marketing the 4 track system in 1962.

24. 1967 • The cartridges from Smith Corona came in 3 standard lengths: 3 minutes, 6 minutes and 10 Minutes. An oddity is that the recording format was Full Track: That is the information was recorded across the full width of the tape in one direction only.

25. 1977 • The Elcaset format was introduced by Sony in 1977.  Though marketed as a consumer format, it was intended as a platform to offer open reel to reel quality with the convenience of a "compact" cassette.

26. 1987 • Though this machine came along much later in the Cart Machine timeline, we ended up placing it just below the original cart tape machine,  to better show the evolution. • "Though the name played on the "Cart" terminology, it wasn't really a cart based unit at all. This was perhaps one of the first moves away from analog tape  based carts, into the digital domain.  The Sonifex DX-300 used 3 floppy drives. Stereophonic vinyl record.

27. 1992 • The TASCAM DA-88 is a professional 8 track Digital Recorder that uses standard Hi8/Digital8 standard Videocassettes as the recording medium. A standard Hi8/Digital8 videocassette is both inexpensive, but was also designed for high data density recordings, since it was made to record high resolution video.Digital Compact Cassette…

28. Sources • http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/audio.history.timeline.html -_-http://www.videointerchange.com/audio_history.htm