Maker GOOD VIBRATIONS
GROOVY MECHANICAL
SOUND PLAYERS
A look back at the all-mechanical marvels that
made fun sounds for over 100 years.
By Bob Knetzger
GOOD VIBRATIONS:
Thomas Edison’s first important invention
after setting up shop in Menlo Park, N.J., was
the practical phonograph. His 1877 design
featured a sharp stylus that pressed into a
tinfoil cylinder. By shouting into a horn as he
turned a crank, Edison caused the vibrations
of his voice to make a pattern of indentations
in a corkscrew groove along the surface of the
spinning cylinder. When the stylus retraced
that up-and-down pattern, the vibrations
reproduced the sound of his voice. Edison
famously demonstrated the effect by reciting
the nursery rhyme ”Mary Had a Little Lamb”
and then playing it back.
Long before iPods, MP3s, or even electricity,
people recorded and listened to music and
speech by all-mechanical, analog means.
It’s telling that he chose so frivolous a
passage. Although the original intent of the
invention was not for entertainment (Edison
was working on a way to record telegraph
messages), the first application for the phonograph was in a talking doll. Unfortunately
the fragile bisque-headed dolls proved too
Bob Knetzger
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