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The Phono-Cut Record Company produced the first vertical cut discs in the United States, from 1910 to 1913. [1]
Based in Boston, Phono-Cut was established in 1910 as a subsidiary of the Boston Talking Machine Company. The vertical cut recording system was developed by Pathé in France in 1905 and did not infringe on patents held by Victor and Columbia. However, customers willing to purchase vertical cut records also needed to obtain special equipment to play them, equipped with a sapphire ball in the reproducer rather than the standard steel needle. Consequently, the public's marginal interest in vertical cut technology was not enough to keep Boston Talking Machine afloat, and in 1913 it was sold to Morris Keen and folded into his Keen-O-Phone firm. [2]
Phono-Cut records utilized only one system of numbering starting with 5000; the highest known number is 5244 ('Bake Dat Chicken Pie' by Collins and Harlan). Some members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra made Phono-Cut Records, among them legendary clarinetist Georges Grisez. Henry Burr also made some records for Phono-Cut. As they were made for a failed system, and most remaining vertical cut records were scrapped during the shellac drives of World War II, Phono-Cut discs are not common, though they are not viewed as exceptionally valuable by collectors. Nevertheless, by bringing the vertical cut process to the United States, Phono-Cut paved the way for other labels, such as Rex Records (1912), Gennett Records, Paramount Records, Okeh Records and Brunswick Records, to enter the marketplace using vertical cut technology until the Victor and Columbia patents were declared expired in 1921.
A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of recorded sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones.
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. Before sound-on-film technology became viable, soundtracks for films was commonly played live with organs or pianos.
An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present-day form, it records a fluctuating signal by moving the tape across a tape head that polarizes the magnetic domains in the tape in proportion to the audio signal. Tape-recording devices include the reel-to-reel tape deck and the cassette deck, which uses a cassette for storage.
Berliner Gramophone – its discs identified with an etched-in "E. Berliner's Gramophone" as the logo – was the first disc record label in the world. Its records were played on Emile Berliner's invention, the Gramophone, which competed with the wax cylinder–playing phonographs that were more common in the 1890s and could record.
Leeds Talk-O-Phone was a record label, producing cylinders from 1894 to 1903 and single-sided lateral-cut disc phonograph records in the United States of America from about 1902 to 1909.
Emile Berliner originally Emil Berliner, was a German-American inventor. He is best known for inventing the lateral-cut flat disc record used with a gramophone. He founded the United States Gramophone Company in 1894; The Gramophone Company in London, England, in 1897; Deutsche Grammophon in Hanover, Germany, in 1898; and Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada in Montreal in 1899. Berliner also invented what was probably the first radial aircraft engine (1908), a helicopter (1919), and acoustical tiles (1920s).
The American Record Company was an American record label that was in business from 1904 to 1906.
Pathé Records was an international record company and label and producer of phonographs, based in France, and active from the 1890s through the 1930s.
Edison Records was one of the early record labels that pioneered sound recording and reproduction, and was an important and successful company in the early recording industry.
Grey Gull Records was a record company and label founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919. The company was started by Theodore Lyman Shaw, a member of an upper class family from Wellesley, Massachusetts.
The Edison Diamond Disc Record is a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a permanent conical diamond stylus for playing them. Diamond Discs were incompatible with lateral-groove disc record players, e.g. the Victor Victrola, the disposable steel needles of which would damage them while extracting hardly any sound. Uniquely, they are just under 1⁄4 in thick.
Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration of two loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.
The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States.
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording.
Eldridge Reeves Johnson was an American businessman and engineer who founded the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901 and built it into the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. Victor was the corporate predecessor of RCA Records.
RIAA equalization is a specification for the recording and playback of phonograph records, established by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The purposes of the equalization are to permit greater recording times, to improve sound quality, and to reduce the groove damage that would otherwise arise during playback.
The Volta Laboratory and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., by Alexander Graham Bell.
Aretino was a United States record label, in business from about 1907 to 1914.
John W. Myers, who was usually credited as J. W. Myers, was an American baritone singer, who recorded widely in the United States between the early 1890s and early 1917. His recordings, including "Two Little Girls in Blue" (1893), "The Sidewalks of New York" (1895), "Just Tell Them That You Saw Me" (1895), "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" (1901), "On a Sunday Afternoon" (1902), "Way Down In Old Indiana" (1902), and "In the Good Old Summer Time" (1902), were among the most popular of the period.
The Starr Piano Company was an American manufacturer of pianos from the late 1800s to the middle 1900s. Founded by James Starr, the company also made phonographs and records and was the parent company of the jazz label Gennett. The company is known for manufacturing Starr, Trayser, Duchess, Richmond, Remington, and Royal pianos.