Playing Me SoftlybyLauren Roberts 
The MP3s and iPods of today have their roots in the nineteenth century development of the telegraph, that marvel of science that transmitted words through air and water to distant places and the telephone. While working to improve the efficiency of the telegraph transmitter, inventor Thomas Edison noticed that the tape on the machine emitted a noise resembling spoken words when it was played at high speed. Would it be possible to record a telephone message, he wondered. His experiments began, and success came when he tried a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder and heard his own message: “Mary had a little lamb.” The word “phonograph” was Edison’s trade name for the recording device. It used a metal cylinder covered with tin foil and had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording and one for playback. When words were spoken into the mouthpiece, the sound vibrations were indented onto the cylinder by the needle in a vertical groove pattern. This machine was the first ever to record and reproduce sound, and it brought Edison international fame. According to the History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph, “Edison took his new invention to the offices of Scientific American in New York City and showed it to staff there. As the December 22, 1877, issue reported, ‘Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night.’ Interest was great, and the invention was reported in several New York newspapers, and later in other American newspapers and magazines.”
Edison filed for the patent on December 24, 1877 (receiving it on February 19, 1878). One month later, he established the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, then set out on tour. He received $10,000 for the manufacturing and sales rights and 20 percent of the profit. It was a success, but it was neither easy to operate nor did it have a long life. 1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographerAs it must, the novelty of it for the public wore off and Edison moved onto other things. But the phonograph’s life was just beginning. Alexander Graham Bell, in conjunction with his cousin, Chichester A. Bell and scientist and instrument maker, Charles Sumner Tainter, made some improvements, most notably the use of wax in the place of tin foil and a floating stylus rather than a rigid needle. These changes resulted in another patent issued on May 4, 1886. the improved machine was now known as the graphophone. Edison had refused to collaborate with them on it, and he now returned with his own improvements resulting in what was called the New Phonograph and later the Perfected Phonograph. Under businessman Jesse H. Lippincott, several phonograph companies, including Edison’s, became the North American Phonograph Company, though Lipponcott’s vision of it was limited to leasing it for business use. He failed to foresee the significant opposition to it from stenographers, and it was not a success. When he fell ill, Edison, the company’s principal creditor, assumed control. He made only a few changes, but they were right. Leasing was eliminated; sales resumed. Entertainment offerings on the cylinders were increased. And in 1894, he declared bankruptcy for the company, a move that enabled him to buy back the rights to his invention. Two years later, business settled, he started the National Phonograph Company which would manufacture phonographs for home entertainment. Subsequently, he began producing cylinders and in 1898, issued the first phonograph to carry the Edison trademark design, the Edison Standard Phonograph. Prices dropped, and the selection of entertainment choices increased. There were marches, sentimental ballads, “coon” songs, hymns, comic monologues and descriptive specialties, which offered sound reenactments of events. But problems existed. Early cylinders’ length were only two minutes, limiting the types of offerings. Neither could cylinders be duplicated so performers had to repeat their performances for each cylinder made. It was 1901 before the ability to mass produce cylinders was developed by creating a kind of master cylinder from whose mold sub-masters could be made. Each master could make 120-150 per day. Three years later, the savings in cost showed. Cylinders had dropped in price to 35 cents each. But the cylinders’ time was coming to an end. Discs and disc players began to dominate the home entertainment market by 1905 because of their longer listening time. Columbia, one of Edison’s chief competitors, stopped making their own in 1909 and abandoned them altogether in 1912. Edison refused to give up the cylinder, especially once he introduced the Blue Amberol Record one which had the best sound at the time. Even the quality couldn’t stop its demise, however, and as public interest turned to discs so did Edison with the manufacture of the Edison Disc Phonograph, though he continued to manufacture cylinders until 1929. Edison wasn’t finding sales of his phonograph cabinets as easy with the competition such as Victrola who were perceived to have more attractive models. The discs worked only with the Edison models, and they had a tendency to not only separate from the core materials but to emit notable amounts of surface noise despite Edison’s claims of superiority. One of the tests he used, the famous Tone Tests, featured artists alternating their live performance on a darkened stage with that on the disc in front of live audiences. Positive audience reactions reinforced the Edison motto that the discs were “re-creations” of performances, not merely recordings of them. By 1916, demand increased for console cabinets to house the disc players, and the Edison Company produced a series of models to compete with those of the Victor Company. The cabinets came in English, French, and Italian period styles, as well as Gothic styles with prices that ranged from a breathtaking $1,000 to an nearly unbelievable $6,000. As America entered the second decade of the twentieth century, technological and cultural changes were taking place. Among them: the automobile, the movement of young people into cities from farms, the entrance of more women into the workplace, the growth of sports and travel. People accustomed to having music at home wanted it to go with them if possible. The portable phonograph, with its ability to play music anywhere, was the answer.  Sonora Phonograph Company actually began life as Sonora Chime Company. The company’s logo (a bell) and its slogan (“Clear as a Bell”) were appropriate for all of its products—clocks, phonographs, radios. As Sonora Chime Company, it produced a system of chiming bells, actually shaped like bells, to be put into its clocks. They were so melodious and had such an accurate pitch that they were able to obtain a patent. They started making two-movement chime clocks around 1900. Within a decade, they entered the hottest market then going, the phonograph. With its slogan already in place, the fidelity of its machines’ sound reproductions was a natural marketing advantage. In 1913, the company was reincorporated as the Sonora Phonograph Company in New York City. Interestingly, Sonora was one of the companies that the Big 3 (Victor, Edison and Columbia) “allowed” to exist in order to avoid threats of a government antitrust suit. It didn’t hurt that they paid substantial fees to the Big 3 on the patents held by them for parts. Sonora produced beautiful cabinets and high quality sound, which won them the gold medal for tone at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915. By 1919, the Sonora Phonograph Company opened an assembly factory for its cabinets in Saginaw, Michigan. The company’s headquarters moved there in 1927. Despite its reputation, the company suffered a number of receiverships and a bankruptcy. By the time it emerged from under the latter, it had been renamed the Sonora Radio and Television Corporation. It did not save the company, however, On January 1, 1957, the State of Illinois decreed the Sonora Radio & Phonograph Corporation bankrupt again. Almost two years later, on December 23, 1958 a decree, #164184, was issued by the State of Illinois dissolving the corporation permanently. One interesting note about Sonora is that by 1923, its phonographs were being sold in both France and Canada. It had a factory and two stores in Paris. Outside the Paris plant was a sign that proclaimed, “L’Amerique Guarantie avec un Sonora Radio” (You are guaranteed to hear American stations on a Sonora radio.”) In addition to Sonora, other manufacturers (including the Big 3) were wooing the portables market through dealers. Though available during the war years and supported with ads (“Ideal for the home, the school, the outing, the camp, the yacht, the automobile trip, the trench dug-out, the hospital ward, and for the study of languages and music.”), portables didn’t really become part of the American lifestyle until the second decade. While soldiers in the trenches loved them, they did not yet fit many American lifestyles until the second decade when the trade journal, Talking Machine World, began to feature advertisements and articles for portables and new models were developed. Dealers who hadn’t carried many in the summer of 1921 (and saw dismal sales) were urged to promote them the following year and to do it year round as seen in this editoral from TMW: During July and August . . . dealers should make a special effort through window displays to interest vacationists in the portable talking machine and in a goodly number of records to carry along with them on their outings. There is no one factor that contributes more to the enjoyment of a vacation than the talking machine.Columbia also wrote in one of its (public) advertisements: “Think of what a wonderful selling proposition this Portable Grafonola offers you for summer business! Just the thing for vacation use, for week-end trips, for summer bungalows, picnics, lawn parties, day trips, porch dancing, beach parties, to take aboard the motor boat, automobile or canoe.” One of the most interesting of the portable machines was the “Camp-Fone,” a portable phonograph weighing 15 pounds and designed to exploit the physical fitness craze. In April, 1923, Robert Wheelan of Health Builders (New York City) had Walter Camp, a fitness enthusiast, record for Health Builders a “Daily Dozen” set of discs which were sold by mail order. Listeners performed “building exercises” while playing the discs. “The Camp-Fone appeals both to the Walter-Camp ‘fans,’ and to all outdoor camp enthusiasts, as well,” noted ads. “Present owners of large phonographs require the Camp-Fone so that their daily exercises will not be interrupted when they go to the country. Camp-Fone is popular in the small apartment.” While portable phonographs stayed around for quite a while—I seem to recall either owning one, probably by inheritance, as a young girl in the early sixties—they were doomed, as all technology seems to be, by newer innovations, in this case, the radio which was coming into homes for free with far greater choices for entertainment. This is a trend that continues today. Cylinders giving way to discs. Discs giving way to long-playing records. Records giving way to four-track and eight-track tapes, then cassettes, then CDs and MP3s. What’s next? That’s impossible to say, but what is possible to say is that the little metal cylinder with the tin foil has spawned one hellva technological family. Bookmark specifications: Sonora “Clear as a Bell” Dimensions: 5 1/2" x 2 1/4" Material: Paper Manufacturer: Sonora Date: 1920s Acquired: eBay Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 1,200 bookmarks and approximately 1,100 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) and Book Publicists of Southern California as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. You can reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |