210 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1908. 



and the improvements made in it up to twenty years ago, but I shall 

 deal more particularly with the invention and the development of a 

 later type of talking machine, and shall describe the various indus- 

 trial and other processes which are connected to-day with the record- 

 ing and reproduction of sound by means of this machine. 



Before going further I should like to call your attention to two of 

 the instruments before you; the larger machine is one of the latest 

 models of the gramophone and the smaller is one of the earliest 

 types (fig. 1). The ditference in appearance of the two machines 

 is striking, but it is small compared with the difference in their capa- 

 bilities, and, if you wdll allow me, I will make this apparent by en- 

 deavoring to obtain an audible reproduction from the old-fashioned 

 type, and will then play a short selection on the up-to-date instru- 

 ment. 



The progress made toward perfection during the period of twenty 

 years since the invention of the gramophone has been very consider- 

 able, and so rapid has it been in recent years that too many people 

 to-day when they hear the word " gramophone " mentioned imme- 

 diately think of an instrument like this (small machine) and of the 

 sounds which it produced just now. The particular lines upon 

 which improvements have been carried out I will deal with later. 



The gramophone was invented by Mr. Emile Berliner. At an 

 early age he left his home in Germany and went to America, where 

 he worked for a number of years with great success on telephone con- 

 struction. He afterwards turned his attention to the improvement 

 of the talking machine, and on May 4, 1887, just twenty-one years 

 ago, he filed an application for patent in the United States, and a 

 corresponding application in this country in November of the same 

 year. On May 16, 1888, he exhibited his invention before the Frank- 

 lin Institute, Pennsylvania. 



At the date of Mr. Berliner's invention, machines for recording 

 and reproducing sound were already known and in use. Some ten 

 years earlier, in 1878, Mr. Thomas A. Edison had patented the first 

 practical talking machine, and he termed the recording machine, the 

 record, and the reproducing machine a phonograph, a phonogram, 

 and a phonet, respectively. In 1885 the graphophone was invented 

 by Prof. Graham Bell and Mr. C. S. Tainter, of telephone fame, 

 who, working as the Volta Laboratory Association of Washington, 

 had been studying the problem of recording and reproducing sound 

 for some years. The fundamental principles on which these two 

 instruments, the phonograph and graj)hophone, worked were the 

 same. In each case the sound waves set up in the air by any source 

 of sound were allowed to strike a delicately held diaphragm, Avhich 

 vibrated under the impact of the sound waves. The vibrations of 

 the diaphragm were made to leave a record on a suitable medium, and 



