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JERRY FABRIS—When the phonograph industry got its start, the music business was very much driven by sheet music sales. The phonograph companies decided what to record based on what sheet music was selling well. But as the phonograph industry developed, they started to have more of an influence on what became popular. Edison’s outlook, and the way he wanted the industry to go, was not to be driven by star performers and hit records. … He hoped with the phonograph, what would drive sales of records would be merit, like “What is good music?” And what that meant to him was, what could he keep in the record catalogue that would sell over time? …
JERRY FABRIS—…The rest of the music industry was going in a very different direction, which was more in terms of star performers and hit records.
NARRATOR—Edison also showed a pragmatic attitude toward what good music meant. When he heard this record, he wrote in his notebook, “Good Loud — Flappers will like this.”
[1] “Where’s My Sweetie Hiding—fox trot,” by Tommie Malie, Adie Britt, Jack Little, Dick Finch, Diamond Disc 9805-A-5-1, EDIS-SRP-0438-01
NARRATOR— By the Diamond Disc era, Edison had moved most of his sound recording operations to New York City, to take advantage of the city’s musical talent. You’re listening to Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake in 1925, playing “Broken Busted Blues.” Here’s a 1916 hit by Jerome Kern, from the Broadway smash The Girl from Utah.
[6] Some of these days - from "Honky tonk", Performed by: Sophie Tucker, Composed by: Shelton Brooks, Record format: Edison Amberol cylinder, Release number: 4M-691 (A- .4), Release date: June 1911, NPS object catalog number: EDIS 35979
NARRATOR—This Embossing and Translating Telegraph recorded messages by embossing, or indenting them in Morse Code on waxed-paper discs. The machine could then replay them over multiple telegraph lines. This represents one link in the progression of ideas that led Edison to the phonograph. His assistant, Charles Batchelor, remembered that Mr. Edison made the crucial leap while working with a telephone diaphragm: one of the thin, vibrating sheets used in receivers. You’ll see a diaphragm with a stylus attached to it on the next machine.
This is the first phonograph, from 1877—the one Edison tested by speaking the nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” As sound waves shook the diaphragm, the stylus indented patterns on the revolving foil cylinder. The operator then switched to a playback stylus, which retraced the pattern.
[SOUND—JERRY FABRIS TO RECORD THE FOLLOWING ON A TINFOIL PHONOGRAPH.]
JERRY FABRIS—Hi, this is Jerry Fabris, the Museum Curator of sound recordings. I recorded these words on a replica tinfoil phonograph. Edison’s original sounded something like this.
NARRATOR— The third machine in this group is an improved Edison phonograph from 1878. It’s called the “Brady Model,” because Edison had his portrait taken with this machine, or an identical prototype, at the studio of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady. The phonograph made Thomas Edison a household name at age 30. The press proclaimed him “The Wizard of Menlo Park.”
(ENG) Early Wax Cylinder Machines (311)
English audio guide for Early Wax Cylinder Machines, #311
NARRATOR— Edison built the first of these two machines in 1887, shortly before the West Orange lab opened. It was the first Edison phonograph to use a wax cylinder instead of tin foil. Edison had been away from his favorite invention for nearly a decade while he finished work on the incandescent light. Meanwhile, other inventors had improved his initial concept. The idea of a wax cylinder came from Charles Sumner Tainter and Chichester Bell, who worked in Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta Laboratory.
JERRY FABRIS—The problem with tinfoil was, once you took the record off of the machine, it was basically ruined. Because as you peeled it off, it crinkled up and lost its shape.
NARRATOR— Edison made his second wax-cylinder phonograph, [to the right], in 1888. Later that year he spoke on a wax cylinder titled “Around the World on the Phonograph.”
THOMAS A. EDISON—…and from Vienna to Budapest to see the Hungarians. And then most people would go to Monte Carlo. But we’ll not go to Monte Carlo, we’ll go to Munich. Or “München”—I believe they call it München. …[2]
NARRATOR— This is thought to be the earliest recording of Edison's voice in existence today.
[1] “The Fifth Regiment March,” Performed by: Issler's Orchestra. Record format: Edison yellow paraffine cylinder. Recorded by: Walter H. Miller. Location: West Orange, New Jersey or local vicinity. Recording date: c. March 1889. NPS object catalog number: EDIS 564
[2] “Around the World on the Phonograph” Spoken by: Thomas A. Edison. Record format: Edison yellow paraffine cylinder. Recording date: c. late October 1888. Location: West Orange, New Jersey or local vicinity. NPS object catalog number: EDIS 566
NARRATOR— This miniature phonograph was a portable model. Edison had invented the phonograph without a specific market for it in mind—an exception to his usual method. By the 1880s he decided to market it primarily for business use, as a dictation machine.
BERNIE CARLSON— The problem with that machine, called a Class M machine, was that the machine had way too many controls and adjustments on it and it went out of kilter at any given time and so it was very unreliable.
NARRATOR—Edison experimented with several sources of power for the phonograph before he found a reliable spring motor. Water through a nozzle powered the machine to the right, one of only two surviving examples of this model.
By the 1890s, small entrepreneurs started adapting Edison phonographs into coin-operated machines, like the next example.
[MUSIC—TBA.]
NARRATOR—Coin-slot machines opened up a market for the phonograph that neither Edison nor his rivals had considered practical.
JERRY FABRIS—People started using it for playback of music. And took his machine that he really intended for recording letters, and put it into a nickel-in-the-slot type device. … That turned the whole direction of everyone involved in the phonograph industry. People realized that this was the sensible, practical way to go, was to focus on providing pre-recorded music for people. Make the machines really easy to use, and give people some inexpensive entertainment.
(ENG) Recording Studio Equipment (313)
English audio guide for Recording Studio Equipment, #313
JERRY FABRIS—These are all machines that the public would not have seen, used by technicians, by Edison’s employees, to make pre-recorded music in the recording studio. And this was something that came about during the 1890s, was the idea of a recording studio. A special place where this new kind of art happens, of creating music on records.
NARRATOR—Edison National Historic Site oversees perhaps the greatest collection of Edison-era recording studio equipment in the world.
[SOUND—FADE IN “FIREMAN’S DUTY”: CHIMES, FOOTSTEPS, ENGINES.][2]
NARRATOR— Notice the sound-effect devices, including blocks with shoe soles for simulating footsteps. Early recordings sometimes blended music, dialogue, and sound.
[SOUND—FADE IN HORSES, FROM PEERLESS QUARTET, “A CALL TO ARMS.”][3]
NARRATOR— The bells, horns, blocks, and clappers used in phonograph studios became precursors of the sound effects heard in radio drama, films, and television.
You’ll also see stringed instruments invented by Augustus Stroh. The Stroh violin has no body for resonance. Rather, it has an amplifying horn, to direct the sound in a recording studio.
Much of Edison’s experimental recording took place here at the lab. He also built recording studios on Columbia Street in West Orange, and in New York City, where he could easily hire the best musicians.
[MUSIC— ERNEST STEVENS TRIO: “LEAVE ME WITH A SMILE”; DIAMOND DISC MX 1566.]
NARRATOR— Ernest Stevens worked with Edison as a music director and pianist from 1922 to ’24. Fifty years later, Stevens described one of Edison’s experimental approaches in the recording studio.
ERNEST STEVENS— Before electrical recordings, your group of singers and an orchestra used to assemble around a recording machine, with a series of perhaps five or six, or seven or eight different horns within a radius of five or six feet. That would mean that the trombone vibration would go this way, and the trumpet this way, and the clarinet this way, all in a mixture. And his idea was that it took sound waves 125 feet before they would untangle themselves. So he had a brass horn made 125 feet long; the diameter of the bell was 7 feet and it tapered down to around three inches to the recording machine. [4]
NARRATOR—Here’s how Edison tested the acoustics and instrument placement at his recording studio on Columbia Street.
ERNEST STEVENS— The side walls and the floors and the ceilings were all padded with cow hair. And over that cow hair was canvas. And he would have marked 75 squares, two feet square. He’d come down to the studio and say, “Stevens, have the saxophone start on one and play ‘Leave Me with a Smile,’ and continue all those 75 squares, and I’ll take a nap. Call me when it’s finished.”[5]
[1] Johnson "jass" blues - fox trot, Performed by: Friscoe "Jass" Band, Composed by: E. Arnold Johnson, Record format: Edison Diamond Disc, Matrix number: 5553-C-2-1, Recording date: May 10, 1917, Release number: 50470-L, Release date: July 1918, NPS object catalog number: EDIS 41060
[2] Fireman's duty, performed by the Invincible Quartette, Gold Moulded cylinder 8048, Released July 1902 (Starting around 0:55, shortly before fire alarm)
[3] Diamond Disc 3459-C, 1915 (Horses around 2:45)
[4] Ernest Stevens 5/24/1974, excerpt from transfer no. 230-01
[5] Ernest Stevens 5/24/1974, excerpt from transfer no. 230-01
JERRY FABRIS—This elaborate system that you see here dates from 1913. And it was Edison’s second attempt to match up the phonograph with motion pictures.
NARRATOR—Edison called his latest system the kinetophone. You’re listening to a 1914 kinetophone cylinder, from an Edison movie called The Old Violin.
ACTOR—Ach, stop, please! Don’t play ragtime!
ACTRESS—But they play all those things at the movies.
ACTOR—The movies? Is it for this that I teach you to play the piano?…
[SOUND—PIANO AND VIOLIN, PLAYING CLASSICAL.]
JERRY FABRIS—So the phonograph would be up by the stage, by the screen, supplying the sound. The projector would be in the back of the theater, projecting the image. And the difficulty was getting those two machines, the projector and the phonograph, to run together in synchronization. … It worked well when one of Edison’s trained, specialized engineers was there, running the equipment. … But then when it came time to turn the equipment over the local theater owners, then it just didn’t work. And so it was kind of a flash-in-the-pan thing; it quickly fell by the wayside because it was just too complicated.
[1] Here and below: The old violin. Performers unknown. Directed by: Higham. Recording date: January 1914. Location: Edison motion picture film studio, Bronx, NY. Record format: Edison Kinetophone cylinder. Record number: 83 B (.1). Film production log number: 5105. NPS object catalog number: EDIS 4627
(ENG) Diamond Disc Phonograph (315)
English audio guide for Diamond Disc Phonograph, #315
NARRATOR—Edison used this customized player during the Diamond Disc era. As you saw in the Music Room, Edison himself evaluated artists and repertoire for Diamond Discs. He could fold down the cover of the horn compartment to use as a desktop, for taking notes. This also allowed him to put his head directly into the amplifying horn.
JERRY FABRIS—…By the time of the Diamond Disc, if you wanted to speak with Edison, you literally had to shout in his ear. … Another related story that you hear a lot is that one way he compensated for his hearing was to bite down on a phonograph. Or even with piano music, there are stories that he would bite down on the piano. … This phonograph though, I don’t see any teeth marks on it.
NARRATOR—Biting down on a phonograph or piano sent sound vibrations through Edison’s teeth and skull bones to his inner ear.
[1] Moonlight Bay, Performed by: The Premier Quartet, Composed by: Percy Wenrich, Lyrics by: Edward Madden, Record format: Edison Diamond Disc, Matrix number: 3743-A-3-1, Recording date: 1915, Release number: 50258-R, Release date: September 1915, NPS object catalog number: EDIS 40555
THOMAS A. EDISON—This is Thomas A. Edison speaking. … I would sing for you, but my wife says my voice sounds like a claxon horn. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year![1]
NARRATOR— Edison made this recording in 1924, as a Christmas gift to his phonograph dealers. Sales had fallen drastically. One problem was that the Old Man refused to develop machines that would play other makers’ records. Edison phonographs played only Edison cylinders and discs.
[MUSIC—“I WANNA BE LOVED BY YOU,” DIAMOND DISC 52410-L, 1928.][2]
NARRATOR— The last two prototypes showcase efforts to diversify the phonograph division. Theodore Edison, the boss’s son, designed the device with the large horn around 1928. It’s called the Cine-Music phonograph, and it played some of the earliest long-play discs as musical accompaniment for silent films. But before Cine-Music made it to market, the Vitaphone Company introduced the first practical system for synchronizing sound and motion pictures. This revolution made Cine-Music obsolete.
The wooden cabinet contains an experimental radio-phonograph combination.
NARRATOR—Edison resisted marketing radios. He also refused to convert to electrical recording, with microphones and amplifiers. These decisions and others kept him from competing effectively with Victor and other companies. Edison’s invention—the phonograph—had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. But his commercial enterprise was failing. In 1927, Charles and Theodore Edison convinced their father to step aside as head of the phonograph division. They introduced a new line of Edison radios and electrical phonographs.
The Old Man spoke live by telephone on the first Edison radio broadcast, February 11th, 1929—his 82nd birthday.
THOMAS A. EDISON—Ladies and gentlemen, this is Thomas A. Edison speaking from Fort Myers, Florida. This has been such an eventful day, with so many kind messages from so many friendly people, that I find it difficult to express my heartfelt thanks. I am still working hard, and I ask you to accept my efforts as proof of my affection instead of my words. I wish I could invite all of you to have some birthday cake, but unfortunately we can’t eat by radio just yet. I’ll have to work on that problem. Well good night, everybody. Thank you and good luck!
NARRATOR—A few months later, Edison Industries left the entertainment phonograph business for good, just before the Stock Market crash in October, 1929.
[2] “I Wanna Be Loved By You,” Green Brothers Novelty Band, The Edison CD Sampler, copyright 1984 Edison National Historic Site, West Orange, NJ, track 18
LEONARD DeGRAAF—The Edison Archives contains over five million pages of material relating to Edison’s life and work: approximately 5000 laboratory notebooks, Edison’s personal and business correspondence, … papers of various family members. It contains also the records of dozens of companies that were created to manufacture and market the different products of the Edison Laboratories, both the Menlo Park and West Orange Laboratories. … In addition, the archives has litigation records relating to the different patent suits that Edison was involved with, with his competitors and people who infringed his patents…The archives also has over 60,000 historic photographs. … It has advertising material that documents how the Edison Companies attempt to market the products. It also has blueprints and drawings. Sheet music, which was used by the company to produce the recordings. … And it also has the sound recording archives.
NARRATOR—In 1956, the business successor to Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated, named Thomas A. Edison Industries, McGraw-Edison Company, donated the West Orange laboratory and the Edison archives to the nation. They became part of Edison National Historic Site in 1962. At the same time, the Edison family donated Glenmont, Thomas Edison’s home in West Orange, where he lived during the years he worked here.
NARRATOR—Late in his life, Mr. Edison began an exhaustive series of chemistry experiments, testing various plants as sources of synthetic rubber. Norman Spieden, the first laboratory curator, spoke in 1961.
NORMAN SPIEDEN— Edison used to go on camping trips with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. And those two men were very much concerned about the fact that all of the rubber supply for this country came from halfway around the world, out in the Dutch East Indies and the Malay Peninsula. And Edison wanted to find some plant that would grow within the limits of this country, from which we could get rubber in case of emergency. So he began to study botany when he was 80 years old. … And between the age of 80 and 84, he tested 17,000 different kinds of plants for rubber. … And he found some rubber in about 1200 different plants. And out of the 1200, there were 40 that had appreciable quantities of rubber. And from the 40 plants, he chose goldenrod, because that was the only one that would grow anywhere in the country. … And also it was a one-season plant. You didn’t have to plant it for years before you needed the rubber.[1]
NARRATOR—Edison died before completing his work on the project.
[1] Norman Spieden 1/25/1961, excerpt from transfer no. 393-01
NARRATOR— The doll on display represents an entertaining chapter in the development of Edison’s phonograph. Jerry Fabris.
JERRY FABRIS—One of the early marketing attempts was a talking doll. They put a tiny little phonograph mechanism inside a doll, and you’d turn a crank and hear the doll talk. …
NARRATOR – You’re Hearing an Edison Talking Doll now.
[SOUND—EDISON TALKING DOLL HEARD RECITING “LITTLE JACK HORNER”.][1]
JERRY FABRIS—… Didn’t work out because it was just too fragile; it broke easily.
[1] “Little Jack Horner,” The Edison CD Sampler copyright 1984 Edison National Historic Site, West Orange, NJ, track 5
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