DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHONOGRAPH 



AT ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL'S 



VOLTA LABORATORY 



By Leslie ]. Newville 



The fame of Thomas A . Edison rests most securely 

 on his genius for tnaking practical application of the 

 ideas of others. However, it was Alexander Gra- 

 ham Bell, long a Smithsonian Regent and friend of 

 its third Secretary S. P. Langley, who, with his 

 Volta Laboratory associates made practical the 

 phonograph, which has been called Edison's most 

 original invention . 



The Author: Leslie J. Newville wrote this 

 paper ivhile he ivas attached to the office of the 

 curator of Science and Technology in the Smith- 

 sonian Institution' s United States National Aiu- 

 seum. 



THE STORY OF Alexander Graham Bell's inxcntioii 

 of the telephone has been told and retold. How 

 he became involved in the difficult task of making 

 practical phonograph records, and succeeded (in asso- 

 ciation with Charles Sumner Taintcr and CUiichcster 

 Bell), is not so well known. 



But material collected through the years by the 

 U. S. National Mu.seum of the .Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion now makes clear how Bell and two as.sociates took 

 Edison's tinfoil machine and made it reproduce sound 

 from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work 

 in Washington, D. C, in 1879, and continued until 

 granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax. 



Preserved at the Smithsonian are some 20 pieces of 

 experimental apparatus, including a number of com- 

 plete machines. Their first experimental machine 

 was sealed in a box and deposited in the Smithsonian 

 archives in 1881. The others were delivered by Alex- 

 ander Graham Bell to the National Museum in two 

 lots in 1915 and 1922. Bell was an old man by this 

 time, busy with his aeronautical experiments in Nova 

 Scotia. 



It was not until 1947, however, that the Mu.seum 



recei\ed the key to the exj^erimental '"Graphoijhones," 

 as they were called to differentiate them from the 

 Edison machine. In that year Mrs. Laura F. Tainter 

 donated to the Museum 10 bound notebooks, along 

 with Tainter's unpublished autobiography.' This 

 material describes in detail the strange machines and 

 even stranger experiments which led in 1886 to a 

 greatK' improsed phoncjgraph. 



Thomas .\. Edison had in\ented the ])honograph 

 in 1877. But the fame bestowed on Edison for this 

 startling invention (sometimes called his most orig- 

 inal) was not due to its efficiency. Recording with the 

 tinfoil phon()gra])h is too difficult to be |)raciical. 

 The tinfoil tears easily, and even when (he st\lus is 

 [)ropcrly adjusted, the reproduction is distorted and 

 squeaky, and g(jod for only a few playbacks. Never- 

 theless young Edison, the "wizard"" as he was called, 

 had hit upon a secret of w liiih men had dreamed for 



'Charles .Sumner Tainter (1854-1940), '■'I'lu- talkini; ma- 

 chine and some little known fact.s in connection with its early 

 development," unpublished manuscript in the collections ol 

 the U. S. National .Mu.seiuu. 



70 



BULLETIN 218: CONTRIRI'TIONS FROM THE MUSEUM CF HISTORY .\ND TECHNOLOGY 



