THE GRAMOPHONE REDDIE. 



215 



and a permanent record produced. Copies could be obtained by the 

 galvano-plastic process, by making a matrix, and impressing disks 

 of hard rubber or the like. Although this system of etching was 

 considered at the time a great advance in sound recording, it never 

 gave very satisfactory results. Owing to the action of the acid, 

 which, besides biting down into the metal, also undercut the pro- 

 tective coating, the sound line was always left with rough sides, and 

 this roughness was transmitted to the copies, so that the reproduction 

 was accomi^anied by a very marked and disagreeable scratching 

 sound. 



In 1890 the inventor of the gramophone took out patents for fur- 

 ther improvements, and in particular for new forms of diaphragm 



Fig. 7. — Replica of gramophone apparatus used at Franklin Institute, May 16, 

 1888, the first public exhibition. Now in Deutsches Museum at Munich. 

 (Photograph furnished by E. Berliner.) 



holder, or sound box, as it is called, one for recording purposes and 

 the other for reproducing (fig. 8). 



Although at this date Mr. Berliner himself had spent much time 

 on improving his invention, the gramophone had not yet become a 

 commercial article. It had not even reached the stage of the small 

 machine you see here. It was looked upon as a scientific curiosity, 

 or at best a toy, but not as a machine which could ever be expected to 

 become an instrument of entertainment, and no one, except, perhaps, 

 the inventor, ever imagined it would attain its present perfection or 

 enjoy its present popularity. The phonograph and graphophone had 

 obtained a firm footing, and for commercial purposes, at any rate, 

 serving, for instance, as automatic stenographers, and in a lesser 

 degree as instruments of entertainment, had attained success. 



88292— SM 1908 15 



