Emile Berliner's Fix: Flatten the Cylinder to a Disc

[@rocketcarmike]

A huge antiques place I visited had over a hundred cylinders. I was surprised that 95% of each cylinder package was taken up with Edison's name and a PORTRAIT of him. The actual artist/song information was tiny text written on the edge of the cylinder and the end cap of the package. Even the serial number was bigger than the song title. It was basically impossible to find a specific cylinder from a collection of them. The guy seemed to have no respect for the content, like he thought the entire value of music to consumers was them basking in his genius. Imagine all the album art in iTunes was just a picture of Steve Jobs with "STEVE JOBS" written over it in giant text, with the actual song name and artist written in tiny text across the bottom under a copyright notice.

[@MrWombatty]

Edison's huge ego didn't leave much room for anybody else!

[@stevethepocket]

I suppose it's not too different from how, for most of the lifespan of records as a medium, the most prominent thing on the label was the record company's logo.

[@SlavTiger]

tbh i could see that.

[@Nik.No.K]

Lmao

[@mickblock]

19:00 Alec has your back in that sentiment, judging by the title he chose to display on a recording published in the manner you're talking about.

[@tasosjw]

Ok I am convinced! I will buy a disk instead of a cylinder. Thank for the great review

[@lordofthecats6397]

Don''t be so sure, this was obviously sponsored by Victor Co.

[@josephdoesmore8922]

Ha lol i have a edison and a victor my self :) its all upon taste i think... but they both play great! and i do prefer edison ;)

[@roberthaas5372]

@@lordofthecats6397 😃😃😃😃

[@GeneralChangFromDanang]

I would wait a couple years. Edison will improve the cylinder, I just know it.

[@ian_b]

I would wait a while, I think there's going to be a format war.

[@garyrector7394]

This brings back old memories. When I was a kid in the late '40s and early '50s my grandfolks had a Victrola talking machine very much like the one you show in this video, and I spent many a happy hour cranking that thing up to sing along with the old records. Thank you for this and all your videos on technology. They are wonderfully well written, edited, and produced and full of interesting information. It's obvious that you put a huge amount of effort and dedication into making them.

[@lordofthecats6397]

Things have changed since then, haven't they ;)

[@JediNg135]

Gary, I sometimes wonder what it's like for someone who has lived through all those developments. If it evokes the sense of wonderment that I imagine it would, when one really considers the sort of technological changes we went through

[@PGar58]

Agreed. Alec is likable and smart and can communicate on our level.

[@markbullock3741]

I have a similar story, except my grandmother's machine was an Edison phonograph. I could play the Edison Diamond platters, and by changing to a Victor reproducer use the same tone arm and horn to play the "wobble" groove discs.

[@H3R0_]

I know this is a crazy reply but are you still alive? Just would like to know

[@johnopalko5223]

My piano teacher, back in 1963, had a disc recorder. She used it to record students so they could listen to themselves. It looked like a regular phonograph, except it had a cutting head on a worm gear. She'd put a blank plastic (vinyl, I presume) disc on the turntable and fire it up. As it recorded, black detritus would emerge from where the cutter touched the disc, which she continuously swept away with a small paintbrush. You could then take the disc home and play it on your regular record player. So, consumer disc recorders did exist, but I imagine they were fairly rare. Hers was the only one I had ever seen in the wild, as it were. I did see one in the film, "The King's Speech.," decades later.

[@SlyPearTree]

My father who is in his 80s has told us his children since we were young that consumer disk recorder existed. I really hope that this channel or techmoan get one to demonstrate one day.

[@pcno2832]

They were fairly common in the 1940s but the proliferation of tape recorders in the 1950s put an end to them.

[@jamesrindley6215]

Wow, I remember seeing one of these disc recorders at my primary school in the 70s being used to record the end of year event and then play it back to the kids at assembly later. When I told my parents about it they said no - there is no such thing, and so I started to think maybe I misunderstood what happened. Thanks for sharing your memory, it makes me feel perhaps I did remember it right, and even back then I was fascinated by machines so I certainly gave it a good look.

[@luvmyrecords]

Great thinking, on her part. FYI - those home recording discs usually were made of aluminum, with a lacquer coating, onto which the recording was etched.

[@luvmyrecords]

@@SlyPearTree Do a little search for home recording, and you will be happy. Oh - Mr. Rogers demonstrated one of those home recordings on his show, to give kids an idea as to how records - which were the norm then - were made. (After that, he had picture-picture show a film about how a commercial record was manufactured. )

[@Laurabeck329]

That Victrola is just gorgeous.

[@PiddeBas]

And sounds astonishing for what it is, i.e completely acoustic with no electrical parts or electrical amplification.

[@8bits59]

It makes me want to get one just to see what it sounds like in working order.

[@Hadloc411]

My grandparents have an old crank Victrola, still works well.

[@cjc363636]

I've heard them in antique shops. The well-maintained ones sound far louder and much less 'tinny' than I'd expect, or hear in movies when they show 'source' sound from a 78 crank phonograph. Sounded good, considering the completely acoustic/wind-up technology.

[@FullThrottleMonty]

@@Tadfafty Or maybe a bamboo needle!

[@JimGardner]

The issue of frequency response which Edison at first recognised as the advantage cylinders had over discs, did raise it's ugly head again once sound quality improved with the introduction of polyvinyl acetate 33⅓ rpm discs. Luckily this was solved with some clever mechanical engineering at the pressing plant, and the use of Compressor Limiters in the Mastering stage - but it did occasionally produce headaches for record producers nonetheless, thanks to the idiosyncrasies of musicians and producers who insisted on a certain play-order of songs. Famous examples include early pressings of Led Zeppelin 1, which would cause the needle to jump out of the groove on record players with cheap or poorly balanced tone arms. Despite that sound engineers who understood this problem did try to encourage artists and record producers to sequence the order of songs with high dynamic range towards the start of Side One and Two on the outer edge of the disk, some musicians ignored this advice and found out the hard way that physics pays no respect to artistic choices. For example, Barbra Streisand famously ignored her engineer's advice not to place 'Somewhere' from her Broadway Album at the end of Side Two - which resulted in early pressings of the award winning album being basically unplayable on all but the most high-end of domestic record players, thanks to the explosive finale coming so close to the centre of the disk. The record company later re-issued the album with a re-mastered version of 'Somewhere' with a whole 5dB cut from the low-end at the mastering plant - leaving the recording feeling much flatter than it was intended to sound. Indeed this was cited as a specific example in industry journals of the time, as being one of the biggest advantages which the fledgling Compact Disc format had over vinyl, since digital mastering merely required that the maximum peak level was within a -3dBV to 0dBV threshold across the whole programme - regardless of where in the play-order those peaks were physically located on the disc's surface.

[@Calandron1]

Jim Gardner that's dope. Never would have known about that, thanks

[@CatsMeowPaw]

Until very recently I did not know vinyl suffered from decreasing sound quality and the ability to represent high frequency or loud sounds on inner parts of the disc. Yet.. I have people still frequently tell me that vinyl is superior to CD, despite the perfect frequency response, much higher dynamic range than vinyl, and uniform sound quality from the first minute to the eightieth. Somehow people still regard vinyl to sound superior. It doesn't make any sense apart from the 'feels' people have for vinyl.

[@Myrtone]

Jim - "The issue of frequency response which Edison at first recognised as the advantage cylinders had over discs, did raise it's ugly head again once sound quality improved with the introduction of polyvinyl acetate 33⅓ rpm discs." I do wonder if this came sometime after the arrival of microgroove records, perhaps with the arrival of stereo. They ought to always be played with a well designed and properly balanced tonearm. Microgroove records play best with an elliptical stylus, not a spherical one. I wonder if any musicians and producers who "insisted on a certain play-order of songs" hoped that anyone who wanted to play their records would play them *properly* using equipment that has no problem tracking high dynamic range even towards the end of a side.

[@QoraxAudio]

I think you mixed two things up: frequency response and dynamic range.

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

It's typical for a musical composition to crescendo, the end of a record tends to be much more bombastic than the beginning. If vinyl records ran from inside to outside, it would leave the high IPS section of the disc free for more powerful tracks. Or, each individual song would increase in IPS as they progressed, meaning you'd have more dynamic range available for the track's finale regardless of it's position on the record. I've actually seen some LPs pressed to go "backwards" like that, particularly performances of Ravel's Bolero. Might as well have the quiet strings and flutes at the center of the disc and the entire screaming world toward the edge.

[@fattimiv]

"Pi, about 3.14" That's a suspiciously high precision for an engineer

[@jw41538]

Pi is about five, as a near-graduate in engineering.

[@violenceisfun991]

Pi is exactly 3

[@Khetamine]

3.1415296 as a 15 year old math student.

[@fattimiv]

@@Khetamine Double check the last few digits ;)

[@happygimp0]

Mathematician: Pi is 4*atan(1) Software engineer: Pi is 3.14159265358979 Mechanical engineer: pi is about 22/7 Astrophysicist: Pi is about 1.

[@spugintrntl]

Damn those 1920s millenials, they destroyed the wax cylinder industry!

[@RCAvhstape]

They weren't Millennials, they were Centennials...or...something

[@KaitouKaiju]

Those people are known as the Lost generation because WWI

[@AverageJoe8686]

Berliner was the first Napster.

[@Kj16V]

OK 19th century Boomer 😁

[@UncleKennysPlace]

@@AverageJoe8686 And JFK was a Berliner.

[@robspiess]

How albums of discs stored much more compactly than cylinders reminds me of how books eventually replaced scrolls.

[@junkman8742]

Cuneiform Tablets

[@mspysu79]

Edison's main problem was always his arrogance. He thought he knew what people would want to listen to, no one recorded with Edison without his permission and his tastes in music where, well a bit behind in the times. Other companies like Columbia came along and made cylinder machines and records, then promptly got sued by Edison. The Berliner machines had issues until Eldridge R Johnson took the ideas improved them mad the disc system sound almost as good as the Edison system, made a cheap reliable machine and sold it, eventually settling on the Victor Talking Machine name (some say after winning a series of lawsuits). Johnson unlike Edison was happy to let the artists become the stars Enrico Caruso and Nelly Melba for example and he had no problem with recording "New Music".

[@thenorthamericanphonograph1039]

It is interesting to note to get the discs to sound better, E.R. Johson melted Edison brown wax cylinders to make the first of his Victor wax disc recording studio blanks!

[@AstrosElectronicsLab]

Agreed, just look at his DC vs AC power generation "war" with Tesla. Edison was so up himself that he believed DC was far superior at carrying power into peoples homes and AC was a waste of time. Yeah, problem with that was that DC required HUGE amounts of current to carry it any long distance where as AC didn't.

[@edisone1]

Incorrect. You display no understanding of electricity.

[@ButtonMasherReal]

@@edisone1 Yeah, I'm gonna have to trust the guy who has "Electronics" in his name over you.

[@JeffDeWitt]

Edison had many talents, he was also an arrogant, egotistical jerk and among his accomplishments were major innovations in the field of patent trolling.

[@johnsimon8457]

18:57 Edison has his name three time on the label including his picture. Humble fellow!

[@bpark10001]

When my brother and I were kids, we recorded on a Victrola by putting a disk with a blank back side on, one of us guiding the needle slowly toward the center while the other yelled into the horn. The recording could be played back on the same machine, and was clearly heard! Our dad mentioned that this could be done.

[@ferociousgumby]

Have you heard the one about the ancients recording sound on pottery? As the wheel whirled around and spun the pot, the "stylus" which made impressions on the clay picked up the sounds around it. Supposedly. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eqvHZXSMjaeDb80

[@RTDragonCommando]

The sound out of that machine is absolutely amazing for having no electronics. Imagine one using modern materials, still 100% mechanical, I would love to own something like that.

[@TheMamaluigi300]

Yeah, compared to the Edison cylinder sample, it may as well be a compact disc

[@luvmyrecords]

I am a veteran collector, and just have to compliment you on how well you simplified your explanations for those encountering this wonderful old technology for the first time. You are terrific!

[@PetarBozic]

Alec, you are a magnificent human. I say this, because at 2:39 you pull out a massive, 3D printed representation of the two different grooves, and my mind literally explodes! (or should that be "figuratively explodes, literally"?) Thank you sincerely for making SUCH an amazing effort,and going to such length, to provide us with not just understandable ways of understanding complex technical phenomena, but making it impossible not to understand what's going on. You have a genuine talent for what you do, and it is my pleasure to watch your documentaries one after another.

[@johnjenkins6829]

Anyone know a source for an STL file to make one of these?

[@ideologybot4592]

He gets a lot of grief now, but I still admire the hell out of Edison. He considered his name and face to be good for marketing and he was usually right, so I don't really blame him for plastering it on everything. And besides, he DID sell a ton of phonographs, and Diamond Disc players, and the discs themselves. When marketing those Diamond Discs, his company would put a player and the actual singer who recorded the music side by side behind a curtain, have them both sing, and ask customers if they could tell the difference. I'm sure they could, I've heard Diamond Discs before, but it was close enough that a bunch of records were sold. He did have problems, obviously, first and most obviously, his terrible taste in music. And NO ONE recorded on his medium that he didn't approve. Another problem was that he thought he knew good sound because he COULDN'T hear. He was almost completely deaf, so he 'listened' to recorded sounds by biting the cabinet of his machines and having the soundwave come up his jawbone. It gave him extraordinary sensitivity in some ways - sound engineers marveled about how he could hear a slightly worn reed in a saxophone that the ear would never pick up - but also made him a bastard to work with because he hated tremolo or really any kind of playing with character for how it assaulted his sensitive jaw. Everything had to be smooth and balanced. The legendary piano composer-player Rachmaninoff was brought in for a recording session with Edison, who cut him off immediately, saying he was no piano player, he was a pounder. Rachmaninoff just about left the session, but Edison's people convinced him to stay. Edison was the best kind of loon. Hell to be around sometimes, but he was such an incredible inventor. When his imports of phenol that he needed for the Diamond Discs were cut off by World War 1, he figured out how to synthesize and manufacture huge quantities of it in TEN DAYS during one of his lab marathons. Wild, weird times.

[@combatking0]

What do you mean, my compact cylinders and digital versatile cylinders are the wrong shape?

[@loganiushere]

I have one word for you: lol

[@renakunisaki]

I mean technically they are cylinders... just very flat ones.

[@RealBadGaming52]

Digital Versitile Cylindar…a DVC

[@HoneyBadgerVideos]

such consistent content for so many years, what a legend

[@MalooMF9]

Get to 9:20 or so. "...soooooo that's why they're called aaaaaaaalbums." Man. Learning new things every day.

[@AtomicBoo]

YESSSS, thats what I said as well

[@deanc9453]

Good catch

[@dfirth224]

My parents were the "Greatest Generation". They had several 78 rpm "albums". Mostly classical music. I liked to play them when I was kid in the 60s.

[@mumblbeebee6546]

"Wobbles per Inch" deserves a T-Shirt!! I discovered you half a year ago, and today I went back into the archive and found these episodes. Dude, were you born this good? I expected an "awww" moment to see how far you had come. Nope: fluid, confident, funny, just slightly different looks. I am even more in awe of your skills now! Right, onwards with the archive research ;)

[@yetidynamics]

i'm willing to bet they discovered that surface noise reduction by accident

[@staalman1226]

Didn't expect to see you here

[@Ecksterphono]

They did day discover it by accident when Varian Harris experimented with a long durable lasting coating for indestructibles cylinders, which he first used while working with Thomas Lambert. This coating ended up making the song sound clearer. It also made the cylinders turn pink in Color ( Pink Lambert). Varian Harris went on to experiment with fine celluloid sheets wrapped around an asphalt core. Hence U.S. everlasting cylinders were born.

[@Quasihamster]

80's kids: "Only 80's kids will understand format wars." Thomas Edison: Hold my mandrel.

[@supportedlivingnetwork2481]

And 2000s kids Blu-Ray vs HDDVD

[@mrbishi634]

Interesting that a format war emerged with the very first format. Later we had VHS vs. Betamax, Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, MP3 vs. AAC ... some things never change.

[@Quasihamster]

@@mrbishi634 Format war. Format war never changes. (But sometimes, it auto-rewinds)

[@ideologybot4592]

Edison's format war started in the 80's, too.

[@bobcarn]

I just came across this video and loved it! A couple years ago I came across a Victrola in a small shop nearby. It was working and they only wanted something like $150 for it, and it came with records, so I picked it right up. They even put me in contact with the man who put it on consignment and he gave me a few hundred more records he had in his basement. I actually found a company that restores the reproducer, so I sent that in. And the company sells new needles (which, surprisingly, are still being made), so I got a stash of those. I love popping an old record onto those. One of my favorites is Caruso singing the aria from The Pearl Fishers. My fully-grown nephews were AMAZED that a mechanical device could reproduce sound, and reproducer it so loudly! I love having that piece of the past in my sitting room. They did make it to look like furniture, and it's a welcome addition to my room.

[@victrolalover7795]

I bought a 1923 VV-215 floor console model similar to the one in the video for 150 dollars last winter and restored it myself and couldn't be happier! It is really amazing how nice they sound.

[@gregvarner9562]

I've been watching you videos for a couple of years now. I never went back to you "early years". This was charming to watch and your analysis was still spot on on the subject. Since this video is years old I doubt you'll ever see this but thanks for making it way back then.

[@Coastfog]

I just wrote under another old video that IMO he already figured out his style back then, he just honed it to perfection over the years. The amount of research, the great presentation, the dad jokes, just good stuff. One of my favorites on YT.

[@raydunakin]

I'm really surprised that closing the lid of the Victrola makes such a huge improvement in the sound quality.

[@someonesomebody304]

I've been a vinyl collector since the late 80's. I clicked on this video to learn about the cylinder to disc history... but I learned SO MUCH more. Thank you!

[@Ckbtony1983]

I bet it has a wonderful smell when you opened it at 14:13 like old dust and even older wood an ancient idk woody smell... My uncle collected alot of these machines when i was a kid and would restore them he had a vast collection of victrolla records... I remember staying up to all hours of the night listening to them with my grandfather ahhhh good memories. Thank you for sharing

[@bobsagget823]

ok boomer

[@UriahStuff]

​@@bobsagget823he's just sharing his memories?

[@stevefranks6541]

Greetings, I own a collection of antique phonographs and have restored several. I presently own a 1905 2/4 minute Edison Standard cylinder machine and 3 Berliner type disc machines - 1918 Victor XVI Victrola, 1912 Victor the First horn phonograph, and a 1922 Victor suitcase portable. Fun machines to play or show off. I very much enjoyed your most comprehensive history of the two recording systems and how the phonograph war was won. A lot of research went into your presentation. Especially the little realized lid open or closed effect on sound quality. You almost missed it. ;-) I gave you extra points for knowing the one needle a side rule too. I also enjoyed your excellent presentation on the vacuum tube. Keep up the great work on your KZbin site.

[@GingerNingerGames]

It's wild to see how much the production quality has increased in the years of your videos, but you've always been informative as hell. Love your work

[@wyrmoffastring]

The fact that something Edison invented ended up profiting others and not him is some class A Karmic Justice.

[@glennso47]

I recall when TVs and record players looked like furniture.

[@michaelmartin9022]

A company in Japan is selling a flat screen HD TV in a "retro" cabinet. The top comes off and you can use the space that would once have housed the tube to store DVD's etc.

[@SMGJohn]

Fuck, I am from the 90s and even I remember when computers used to look like furniture LOL its not until recently that shit starts to look like it belongs in a bad 80s science fiction movie. I prefer industrial designs, machines must look like machines be it a computer or a TV, furniture designs were just designed to hige the true identity of what was under it.

[@mor4y]

Here in the UK a lot of unfashionable dark wood furniture is bought up cheaply, then its retrofitted with the newest TV tech or a awesome custom created stereo solution and then sold onto either the US or Japan, where bulky dark wood furniture (especially antique English) is still in fashion. Those awesome wardrobes with the loads of tiny drawers or compartments seem popular in the US and Japan too, seen some of them with little engraved brass name plates for each section, stunning bits of furniture, but UK folks think they look too old 🤷‍♂️

[@Foolish188]

@@michaelmartin9022 What's a DVD? Some kind of antique technology?

[@tilleye3774]

80's kids: "Only 80's kids will understand format wars." Thomas Edison: Hold my mandrel.

[@ferociousgumby]

This topic has always fascinated me. What I like most is the SHOUTED announcement at the beginning of the recording, assuming the cylinder could not be labelled.

[@lizichell2]

He reminds me of an American techmoan. Smarty dressed articulate and knowledgable. Great channel

[@johncoops6897]

Only problem is that he babbles on far too much. Techmoan tends to get to the point, so you get a similar amount of info in about 1/2 the time. For example, this video is over 20 minutes long which is unnecessary.

[@Aleph-Noll]

@@johncoops6897 the vast majority of techmoans videos are over 20 mins long lol

[@johncoops6897]

@@Aleph-Noll - Yeah, so what? The Techmoan videos contain a LOT more information than these boring ramblings.

[@nickwilczynski3684]

I'm always impressed by the level of detail in Tech Connections' vids. I love Techmoan's stuff too, but these are extremely informative. He's not rambling. He researches all this stuff and writes it out.

[@ChessPieceRook]

God, i wish you had hour long in-depth documentaries. You not only look like my boyfriend, but you cover such interesting vintage tech topics, i could watch this stuff for days on end.

[@jw41538]

same

[@RCAvhstape]

"Edison kept locking himself down into proprietary formats..." So he was the Apple Computer of his day.

[@dangerouslytalented]

Helium Road I was thinking Sony

[@anselmschueler]

dangerouslytalented What?

[@dangerouslytalented]

Mark Neu Sony Betamax and various camera cards and things

He should have just made a dongle

[@robfriedrich2822]

Comparing with Apple isn't wrong, it was more expensive, but better. Sound quality nearly like electrical recordings.

[@hiro2protagonist]

6 year old vid & still a banger of a video. Love this channel.

[@c182SkylaneRG]

Wow! Closing the lid makes a huge difference! I'll have to remember to do that the next time I'm listening to my parents' record player. :)

[@IDontKnowWhatImDoingDIY]

Revisiting these videos. Man they're top notch. Informative and fun.

[@kitemanmusic]

Just remembered. In the late 1950's, a friend of mine had a wax cylinder recorder, and we recorded a play on it. Amazingly, this video was on the side list of recommended videos.

[@mercster]

"So let's have a look inside and see how it works." The gravitas and clear joy you took in that moment to lift the lid... for some reason KZbin started recommending your extremely old videos to me. :-)

To me too!

[@benjaminmiddaugh2729]

Edison was very much the forerunner of the RIAA and MPAA.

[@renakunisaki]

He was Sony before Sony was.

[@richaarrd1]

Ran into this video accidentally. I thought I knew what there was to know about cylinders and disks, but this presentation (like so many) gives the"story behind the story." I do remember wire recorder/players and we had a home disk recorder that I remember spewing out a thin thread of the removed surface. Thank you, YOUNG MAN!

[@RCAvhstape]

A while back I saw an absolutely beautiful Victrola machine in an antique shop. I spent some time dithering about whether it would be worth the money and where I would put it in my living room, but before I could act the shop burned to the ground. :-(

[@Stal_Wolf]

That's sad... :'(

[@matthorakova2677]

What's super sad, is we have a full console brunswick, we have no room for it. it works, has a collection of laquered (they weren't really vinyl back then) records, and it's too valuable to toss, but locals think it's just garbage, there's no love anymore. We will keep it, for the soul purpose of it's prosperity.

[@OrinSorinson]

That story ended completely different from what I expected.

[@gustavefrankfurter6462]

I bet you could've bought it cheap after the fire.

[@BaronVonQuiply]

Given that the shop was on fire at the time, if you'd asked nicely I'm sure they would have given it to you.

[@PGar58]

These are good videos. I like the mix of information and wit. Keep it up.

[@Deses]

So KZbin is recommending this video now... look at how young he looked!

[@crusinscamp]

Side note: the doors in front of the horn on the Victrola may be partially closed for volume control. Yes, the old Victrolas can play surprisingly loud.

[@BillyBobDingledorf]

Picked up one a couple weeks ago. Got some "medium" needles and they are loud! Glad I didn't get the loud needles.

[@muskiet8687]

17:37 "We put the needle on the record" Suddenly I got a blast from the past!

[@spacemissing]

Early disc records weren't all "78" RPM. Many Victor discs were cut at slower speeds, around 72, and some were cut at higher speeds. One I bought years ago has "SPEED 82" printed on the label. 78.26 was the standard set when electric motors got into the act.

[@Edwin48100]

Yes! I have that disc that says (Speed 82) at the bottom under the record No.96200! Victrola red label with a price of $7 dollars! "Lucia-Sextette (Chi mi frena).

[@stevethepocket]

Did old players have a knob to fine tune the speed or something?

[@Edwin48100]

@@stevethepocket Old Phonographs have a speed control on them by the turntable. Records before 1925 varied in speeds.

[@jimshulman9221]

@@Edwin48100also well into the electrical recording era, since studios were still using drop-weight motors (akin to a grandfather clock mechanism) well into the 1930s. It's quite common to find early electrical recordings at around 76rpm for Victor, and 80-83rpm for Columbia.

[@redwez1982]

Anyone here in 2020? Big fan of the channel. First video of yours I’ve seen from the olden days.

[@Nexfero]

19:58 Only an authorized jobber can sell an Edison wax cylinder for less than thirty-five cents. $0.35 in 1906 = Nine Dollars in 2018

[@rath3715]

my fiance and i were mesmerized every second of this video.. thank you so much, it clearly took a lot of time to create.

[@ProfessorYana]

Fun fact: the "Victrola" name is also responsible for the nickname for a particular form of "pay-to-play" corruption; to wit, "payola".

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

Professor Yana's Forsaken Outpost Payola, plugola, and drugola. If I learned nothing else from a mass media communications associate program, I learned those three things. Most particularly, not to do them.

[@jochenstacker]

Professor Yana's Forsaken Outpost don't forget Crapola :-)

[@customsongmaker]

Professor Yana's Forsaken Outpost - Probably taken from Playola

[@JohnSmith-kz8yo]

Don't forget Shinola shoe polish.

[@Iconoclasher]

Also Motorola has the same history. MOTOR car + vicTROLA Motorola had the first car radio.

[@ebinrock]

I just love the craftsmanship and sheer beauty in early 20th Century furniture and appliances. I love that dark polished wood look (12:33 - 18:38).

[@TheSulross]

Edison was wrong about DC vs AC electricity grid too

[@johnbloodworthiii6464]

One must still wonder however if had DC won would we no be further along in storage of DC power.

[@fun_ghoul]

@@johnbloodworthiii6464 I'd like to think DC would have favoured development of more microgeneration, sooner.

[@hanspeter2210]

No, He was right. DC/DC converters ftw

[@gavincurtis]

Tesla's AC is obviously superior...BUT modern technology allows for HYBRID systems that are even more efficient. They are apparently testing high voltage DC power lines now. High voltage DC for long distance transmission removes loss from parasitic inductance. Then the DC is converted back into AC.

[@MsHojat]

DC is most efficient for high power long distance transmission, so it is still used in that application. It's not even being _tested,_ it's been used for many decades already.

[@tommyhatcher3399]

Watched a few of your videos now. What you're doing is very important. You explore the absolute, definitive Point A of technology and break it down in terms you can imagine. What you actually talk about is the technology of the human body and how it is we perceive each other.

[@poughkeepsieblue]

My victrola is a 1934, and it still plays beautifully, and reliably to this day. It is one of my most prized antiques.

[@keithmerchant8035]

Holy crap dude. Your production value, writing, editing, and hair have improved a hundred fold since this video

[@zelphx]

Great explanation of "Frequency Response". I learned about rotational differences on the "Merry-Go-Round" in elementary school... seriously. I did not yet know it was science :)

[@jn1mrgn]

They probably don't have those anymore. I know they're gone from where I went to school.

[@hugglesthemerciless]

I love seeing old videos of yours and seeing how far you come, thank you for the amazing jorney

[@AlexSh789]

21:09 - Where is the link to the MP3? It's not in the description.

[@5isalivegaming72]

Look at how young you were! KZbin is a rough occupation to volunteer for, so thankful you've stuck with it!

[@rtyuik7]

18:50 , with auto-generated captions on, "Edison formally admitted defeat back in 1912 by introducing bees" like 'yeah, okay, cylinders suck, but take THIS!!' XD

[@cadynshanahan]

Finally! someone who has good music in their vid, and actually gives you easy access to it! This man really thinks of his viewers! :)

[@wompastompa3692]

12:23 Is this what John Fogerty is talking about when he sings "dinosaur victrola, listenin' to Buck Owens" in the song _Lookin' Out My Back Door_ ?

[@OtakuUnitedStudio]

Gosh dang that name. Bringing me back some SotE memories.

[@windingmonster3838]

Oh man, that opening is a banger! I've never seen you're old stuff. I dig it! Thank you for never stopping! EDIT: The more I watch the more I'm convinced that this should be on PBS.

[@SergioGarcia-jg3yy]

Really interesting, thanks. But, please, take those cassettes away from the speaker...

[@brickman409]

You never really realize how much your favourite KZbinr has improved until you watch one of their old videos. I do kind of miss that intro music though

[@neilforbes416]

Emile Berliner established the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellshaft(German Gramophone Company) around the mid-to-late 1870s. His initial trademark on single-sided discs was the Aufnahmende Engerl(Recording Angel) embossed on the unrecorded side of the disc. Within a decade he'd travelled to England where he established a British division called The Gramophone Company Of England Ltd. and it was through the British division that Berliner first acquired the painting that was to provide the new trademark, it was of a Jack Russell Terrier listening to "his master's voice" on, initially a cylinder-based phonograph, but on request, the artist painted over the cylinder machine with a disc-playing gramophone, thus the trademark "His Master's Voice" was born. Ownership of the trademark would be held by Berliner but control of the trademark, and licencing its use would be vested in the British division of Berliner's empire. In the 1890s, Berliner travelled to the USA and set up the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey. The new entity would licence the trademark from the British division. This arrangement lasted until the outbreak of WW1. After that war, Berliner lost control of his British and US companies. The Gramophone Company of England assumed TOTAL ownership and control of "Nipper" as the dog was named in the trademark, and Berliner's DGG had to licence the trademark it once owned, a bitter pill to swallow. DGG could only use the HMV trademark in Germany under the translation: "Die Stimme Seines Herrens", for export, they had to create a new brand, Polydor. In the meantime, Victor in the USA was using the HMV trademark, licencing same from The Gramophone Co. in England. Until 1929 when some reps from RCA came sniffing around the Victor plant, looking for somewhere bigger than what they had, so they could build more radios. RCA started as a division of General Electric but soon took on autonomy after getting hold of the Victor plant and brand-name, but that's all they should've got, no more. The HMV trademark licencing should've ended the minute the ink was dry on the deed of sale of the Victor plant and name to RCA and the Dog & Gramophone should not have been seen in America or Canada again until 1955. WW2 came and went, just prior to that war, The Gramophone Company had merged with Columbia Graphophone Company(a surviving remnant of a failed US venture) to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd.[EMI], the year was 1938. The merger also brought the Parlophone brand into the mix as Columbia had gained this former Dutch-owned trademark as war booty from WW1. After the 2nd war, EMI expanded into Europe, its new German division, Electrola GmbH taking over control of the HMV trademark, leaving DGG having to use Polydor now for domestic as ell as export markets. Berliner himself was spared the ignominy of seeing all this as he was in his grave by then. Siemens bought out DGG. In America a new label, Capitol was launched just after the war, the new entity struggling to find its feet. A decade on and Capitol would become the infant member of the expanding EMI group. Infant, because EMI bought an established label rather than EMI setting the company up from scratch. EMI owned almost 95% of Capitol, the remaining 5-and-a-bit% held by Capitol's founder. It's here that EMI should've brought in the HMV brand, reappearing in the USA to carry the EMI British roster into the American market, particularly in the 1960s: The Beatles, Cliff Richard & The Shadows, Herman's Hermits, Manfred Mann, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas etc., drawn from EMI's HMV, Columbia and Parlophone labels, all together on HMV in the USA instead of scattered around the non-EMI labels like they were.

[@just_rogers]

Why did this come up in my recommended in 2023? I have no idea, but I'm glad it did!

[@SirNarax]

I would love to get an old record player and some old records. I really like that early 20th century style music. Even with the quality loss, it adds to it I think.

[@SvanteLoven]

I´d just like to add to the "protocol" that the quality of the production _really_ has improved since this video was posted. Quite amazing. The actual content however, has the same quality as current posts. Just saying: I am pretty amazed by the production improvements over just two ~three years. Please keep it up! /regards from Sweden, Svante

[@NotSleepy]

excellent production and good research.

[@00Mandy00]

7 years on, this is so cute. I like the little intro tune.

[@DenisGomesFranco]

17:42 "Put the needle on the record" Someone should remix that.

[@JoergWessels]

When the drumbeats go like this!

[@tvctaswegia497]

Danni minogue did it I believe

[@spectrumfunction2836]

I was always so confused how they worked, this was very clear and entertaining. Good video.

[@honkhonkler7732]

Can you imagine if the concept of a disk hadn't been invented and Sony released the CC (compact cylinder) in the early 1980's? Can you imagine loading up the Sony PlayStation with a digital cylinder for gameplay?

[@AEternalCoachworks]

Wow, KZbin just recommended an old video of yours, how cool🤣 I've been watching you for a year, now, but nothing this old🤣 and yes, I'm going to watch it all. Good to know you've got such a back catalog.

[@DanielMonteiroNit]

in Brazil, vinyl record players were still known as "vitrolas" up until late 80s...

[@YujiUedaFan]

Someone should tell him that records came back in 2016!

[@jtracome87]

Ueda Yuuji Fan Well, actually, not that much in Brazil.

[@YujiUedaFan]

Brazil is still a part of an American continent.

[@MrWombatty]

Probably the Portuguese word for vinyl-record!

[@luvmyrecords]

Would one still use that term in referring to a record player (I am a musician and record collector learning Brazilian Portuguese. Obrigado!)?

[@ChatGPT1111]

Wow, simply brilliant. I think I learned more audio history from this than any other YT video ever!

[@philipteevee8067]

Another excellent video. Very nearly as good as "the engineer guy" videos - high praise indeed!

[@dadautube]

yes, i like this guy's works: neat and thorough, albeit a little erratic and 'forgetful' in some points ... if you like this, try Techmoan as well ... his videos are good too ...

[@MagicPlants]

This is awesome. You deserve to have your own show on Netflix. That's this generations version of "You should have a TV show" which was my first thought, being 33 years old haha. Seriously wish this type of thing was on TV back then.

[@ElectricityTaster]

Come a long way in 7 years.

[@rev.davemoorman3883]

We had an upright Victrola when I was a kid (12 or so). I fooled with it so much that I broke the governor - making it useless. However, it had a supply of wooden needles (or, as you noted, bamboo). These produced a very mellow tone. We also had a needle trimmer - a scissor-like device with a triangle hold that held the wooden (er, bamboo) needle at the correct angle. Just snip - and the needle once again had a nice, sharp point. And I discovered that a straight pin did fine when the supply of steel needles was used up.

[@dadautube]

wasn't there a time people did record their voice on disc too? in fact, there were small booths called Voice-O-Graph in some places you stepped into, closed the door to reduce outside noise, put a coin into a special machine and you got your voice recorded ('scratched') on a disc, weren't there? there's even a revival of that thing in recent times: bandwidth.wamu.org/the-latest-vintage-craze-in-music-isnt-vinyl-its-these-old-fashioned-recording-booths/

[@treestandsafety3996]

Check the forties movie "Brighton Rock" for an example of the device you mention.

[@nickv1008]

I hear they had booths you could sit in and have a picture of yourself made, crazy dad, will never catch on....

[@ChrisMaxfieldActs]

@@treestandsafety3996 The Beatles did their first recording (That'll Be the Day and an original by Paul called In Spite of All the Danger) in one of those recording booths.

[@treestandsafety3996]

@@ChrisMaxfieldActs I know..flexi disks were included in magazines, I seem to remember, back in the 80s.."ive got a crush on you" by The Jets, was one I bought!

[@Losttoanyreason]

Nice video. I always wondered how we got to the flat record . I really like the hidden cone idea. The lines are so clean. My Mom used to be a legal secretary in the 50's before she married and the lawyer she worked for used a wax cylinder dictaphone, LOL. I also saw them on an episode of Perry Mason which is from the same period. We had a pastor friend that owned an old record player. It stood like 4 feet tall not counting the cone which wasn't hidden. It was gorgeous with burl wood veneers and he had a lot of old 78's to play on it. I really like the player you demonstrated with the hidden cone. It has such simple lines . As for Edison, he was a turd. So I love it that he got took to the bank on a some of the things that count like AC power, phonographes, motion pictures. He wanted to hog everything and many of the items he claimed credit for were invented by the people who slaved...err... worked for him.

[@Travelinmatt1976]

I had a Grafonola and you use the doors in front of the horn to adjust the volume

[@naota3k]

This is like a home-made Crash Course Recording. You're doing such a great job, Alec!

[@HenningGu]

You had an intro? :O

[@patdthomas]

When I was 14, I was given an old upright Victrola that was missing the turntable and motor. Just a large gaping square hole remained but the tone arm, reproducer and a good selection of needles were still there. So I bought a turntable from a Lafayette Electronics store which consisted of only an 8" plastic platter that was idler wheel driven by an attached motor mounted to a small faceplate. I mounted it to a sheet of plywood which was then set into the vacant hole that once housed the original turntable. Now I had a functioning Victrola! It may have looked wonky with the lid up, but now I had something semi-original to play my growing collection of 78s on.

[@TheTonyMcD]

Edison was the Apple of his day. He made a lot of products and they were all very flashy. But, they were all inferior, more expensive, used his own proprietary formats, and were very strictly controlled.

[@gigteevee6118]

I watched this thinking it was posted 4hrs ago, turns out it was 4 years ago 😳 quite the time jump! Production values and lighting have improved a lot but it's good to see the details are still true to form 😁

[@charvelgtrs]

3:08 legit got ASMR from that.

[@CV2200A]

That Victrola had another way to control the volume. Open the two center doors wide for loud, open them less for softer and play the record with them closed for very quiet.

[@Mochrie99]

"Then we just release the brake and put the needle on the record..." "....put the needle on the record, put the needle on the record, put the needle on the record when the drum beats go like this!...."

[@clasicradiolover]

I thought about that too.

[@Oppned1]

I wish I discovered this channel sooner, it's one of the better ones. Very interesting topics that are presented in an understandable way and that keeps me interested throughout. Great job!

[@boskaczastka]

You're doing it right man! extremely interesting stuff! Can I have some requests? Please make the sound louder and clearer. And more helpers like the 3d print of grooves! macro pics! animations! photos! it will be great! Edit: I watched till the end. Good animations and pics! :)

[@Myrtone]

Re: 5:15 A 7 inch record has a diameter of about 22 inches. Pi is often approximated as 3 1/7. In fact, a really good approximation, great for many applications involving it is 355/113. Re: 16:00 In fact the parallel tracking concept was later revived on microgroove disc players, and were also deemed more "scientifically correct" that pivoted tonearms. But the easier and cheaper pivoted tonearm remained more common. Re: 17:00 There were also pneumatic amplifiers which allowed louder sound with quieter needles. Regarding 20:16 Pathé records used concert sized cylinder masters right up to the end of the acoustical recording era. This allowed them to cut their master discs in reverse, so that the grooving could spiral outwards from the centre. So the linear velocity would progressively increase during playback rather than decrease. Given musical styles typical of the time, this actually made the geometry of discs less of a problem. It was typical for the end of a piece to be louder, higher in pitch or both than the beginning.

[@pingozingo]

that Motorola origin, wowza

[@pingozingo]

Ive heard of the -sonic ending with Panasonic being one of the last survivors. Any other naming trends you know of?

[@Nolroa]

@@pingozingo The tendency to place the lowercase i before a word: iMac, iPods, iPhone, iPads, iWatchs ....

[@pingozingo]

@@Nolroa iHeard that the i stands for interactive or something like that

[@Nolroa]

@@pingozingo actually, the i stands for Internet connection. In the words of Steve Jobs himself: "iMac comes from the union of the excitement of the internet with the simplicity of the Macintosh". It was 1998 and the fact that a computer equipment came ready to connect immediately to the Internet was a novelty. although in the same presentation of the iMac in 1998 Jobs also referred to concepts such as instructing, informing and inspiring. This concept seems to have stopped being used, the iWatch changed its name to Apple Watch. Another example is the Apple TV.

[@dachandewuffsteiger]

Holy shit, your channel has grown so far. I'm like honestly proud of you. Top notch stuff man. top notch.

[@gtb81.]

no wonder my Edison records sound so rough on my player, the groves are different xD also the ones i have he actually stamped the logo into the wax