THE GRAMOPHONE EEDDIE. 211 



this sound record was in turn used to perform the inverse operation 

 when it was required to reproduce the recorded sounds; that is to 

 say, the record was made to vibrate a sensitive diaphragm, and this 

 set up in the air particular waves, which conveyed to the ear of the 

 hearer the impression of sound. The essential difference between the 

 Edison and the Bell and Tainter types of sound recording and re- 

 producing machines lay in the manner in which the vibrations of the 

 diaphragm were recorded, for while Edison's invention consisted in 

 indenting a record with an up and down sound line, Bell and Tainter 

 obtained a record by cutting an up and down line in a suitable me- 

 dium. According to both these inventions, therefore, the vibrating 

 diaphragm was made to produce on the surface of the record a sound 

 line of varying depth. Berliner, on the other hand, traced or cut 

 his record in the recording medium in the form of a sinuous line of 

 uniform depth (fig. 2), "substantially," as he says in his patent 

 specification, " in the manner 

 of the phonautograj)h," in- 

 vented in 1857 by Leon Scott. 

 The idea of recording and 

 reproducing speech on this 

 system had also occurred to a 

 Mr. Charles Cross, a French- 

 man, who on xVpril 30, 1877, 



deposited a sealed packet with J^^^- 2.— section across sound lines of gramo- 

 , . ,, . , ^ . phone record. (Magnified 50 diam.) 



the Academic cles ociences, 



Paris, in which he disclosed the idea of reproducing sound by means 

 of a permanent metal record obtained from a Scott phonautograph 

 by photoengraving through the coating of lampblack in which the 

 sound line was traced. Thus he anticipated Berliner, and Edison 

 as well, as far as the idea went ; but he can not be said to have dis- 

 closed the means of carrying his ideas into practice. Mr. Berliner 

 only became aware of this gentleman's invention three months after 

 he had filed his own application for a patent. In the Electrical 

 World of November 12, 1887, in which he first made public his inven- 

 tion of the gramophone, he writes of Mr. Cross as follows: 



Although he had virtually abandoned his invention, the fact remains that to 

 Mr. Charles Cross belongs the honor of having first suggested the idea of and 

 a feasible plan for mechanically reproducing speech once uttered. 



The reasons which led Berliner to adopt a different system of re- 

 cording and reproducing sound from that emploj^ed by Edison and 

 the Volta Association are clearly set out in the introduction to his 

 first patent specification, Xo. 15232, of 1887, where he says: 



By the ordinary method of recoi'ding spoken words or other sounds for re- 

 production, it is attempted to cause a stylus attached to a vibratory diaphragm 



