Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their heyday, a name which has been passed on to their disc-shaped successor, these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. The first cylinders were wrapped with tin foil but the improved version made of wax was created a decade later, after which they were commercialized. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.
Dame Nellie Melba was an Australian operatic lyric coloratura soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early 20th century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town.
George J. Gaskin was one of the most popular singers in the United States during the 1890s and an early American recording artist.
Ada Jane Jones was an English-American popular singer who made her first recordings in 1893 on Edison cylinders. She is among the earliest female singers to be recorded.
Leonard Garfield Spencer was an American singer, composer, booking agent and vaudeville star who was considered one of the most popular recording artists in the United States from the 1890s to the 1910s.
Russell Dinsmore Hunting was an American comic entertainer, pioneer sound recordist, and an influential figure in the early years of the recorded music industry. He was described as "the most popular pre-1900 recording artist".
Cal Stewart was an American comedian and humorist who pioneered in vaudeville and early sound recordings. He is best remembered for his comic monologues in which he played "Uncle Josh Weathersby", a resident of a mythical New England farming town called "Pumpkin Center" or "Punkin Center".
Daniel William Quinn was an American tenor. He was one of the first American singers to become popular in the new medium of recorded music. Quinn was a very successful recording artist whose career spanned from 1892 to 1918. Quinn recorded many of his hits in the legendary Tin Pan Alley of New York City.
Frank C. Stanley was a popular American singer, banjoist and recording artist active in the 1890s and the 1900s.
Anna Case was an American operatic lyric soprano. She recorded with Thomas Alva Edison, who used her voice extensively in "tone tests" of whether a live audience could tell the difference between the actual singer and a recording. In addition to recordings for Edison Records on both phonograph cylinder and Diamond Disc, Case recorded for Victor and Columbia Records, and made sound film for Vitaphone.
Minnie Nast was a German soprano. She was born in Karlsruhe and studied at the Karlsruhe Conservatory, making her début at Aachen in 1897.
The United States Phonograph Company was a manufacturer of cylinder phonograph records and supplies in the 1890s. It was formed in the Spring of 1893 by Victor Emerson, manager of the New Jersey Phonograph Company. Simon S. Ott and George E. Tewkesbury, heads of the Kansas Phonograph Company and inventors of an automatic phonograph joined later. It was based in Newark, New Jersey. After the collapse of the North American Phonograph Company in August 1894, the United States Phonograph Company became one of the industry's largest suppliers of records, competing mostly with the Columbia Phonograph Company who had joined with the American Graphophone Company to manufacture graphophones, blank wax cylinders, and original and duplicate records. The USPC manufactured duplicates as well, which allowed their recording program to reach the scale of competing with Columbia's. Their central location and proximity to New York allowed them to record the most popular artists of the 1890s, including George J. Gaskin, Dan W. Quinn, Len Spencer, Russell Hunting and Issler's Orchestra. Emerson left the company to lead Columbia's recording department around the summer of 1896. In 1897 the USPC worked with Edison's National Phonograph Company to retrofit phonographs with spring motors invented by Frank Capps. The convenience and cost savings of spring-motor phonographs like these helped shift the phonograph from a public entertainment to a consumer good. In October 1899 the company was prohibited by court order from manufacturing duplicate records, and they began supplying original records for the National Phonograph Company[7][6][6][5][5]. The later U.S. Phonograph Company of Cleveland Ohio is unrelated.
The Chicago Talking Machine Company was a manufacturer and dealer of phonographs, phonograph accessories, and phonograph records from 1893 until 1906, and a major wholesaler of Victor Talking Machine Company products between 1906 and at least 1928.
Issler's Orchestra was an early recording ensemble, and perhaps the first popular band. The group formed in the fall of 1889 at the Edison Laboratory Because the purpose of the group was only to make recordings, it had only four or five performers, a form that would come to be known as a "parlor orchestra". Personnel and instrumentation varied in the first year, but most sessions included Edward Issler on piano, George Schweinfest on flute and D.B. Dana on cornet. Clarinetist William Tuson and xylophonist Charles P. Lowe would also become core members in time.
Estella Louise Mann was an American singer, recording artist, and record executive active in New York in the 1890s. She was one of the first women to make a living as a recording artist, and the first woman to run a record company.
Charles Adam Asbury was an American banjo player and pioneer recording artist active from 1876 to 1897. On the stage, he played parts that emphasized his multiracial ancestry, and his recording work was largely in the minstrel tradition. His surviving recordings are the earliest examples of the stroke style of banjo.
Roger Harding was an American singer, composer and music publisher active in the United States from 1890 to 1901.
David Cornelius Bangs was an American recording artist of the 1890s specializing in recitations.
Marie-Antoinette Willemsen called Meyrianne Héglon was a Belgian opera singer. After her marriage to the composer Xavier Leroux, she was known as Madame Héglon-Leroux.
Agnes Kimball was an American soprano. She was a highly popular recording artist in the United States during the 1910s, and is best remembered for recordings she made during the first half of that decade with the Victor Talking Machine Company, Columbia Records, and Edison Records. A classical vocalist, her repertoire encompassed opera, operetta, musical theatre, art songs, and popular ballads; all genres which were in demand among American consumers during that period in history. Many of these recordings are included in the collection of the Library of Congress, and the Discography of American Historical Recordings has catalogued her work.
