Thomas Edison - Research Paper Example

Thomas Edison’s Phonograph The phonograph was the first device ever designed for recording and replaying sound. It was invented and patented by Thomas Edison, a famous American inventor. The invention of the phonograph was the invention that made him famous. It uses a cylinder with tin-foil on it to record sound by indentations made by a pin. The first thing that was recorded on it was, “Mary had a little lamb.” Phonographs record all kinds of sounds and play it back allowing someone to hear it multiple times.

It is important to note Thomas Edison had an engineer close to him to help him make his ideas come to reality. The engineer was called John Kruesi. The engineer build the phonograph from sketches handed to him by Thomas Edison himself and he did this barely within thirty hours. Thomas Edison is applauded up to today for his invention that allows one to record sound. Although there was a French scientist namely Charles Cros who had written evidence of a theory behind a machine resembling a phonograph which remained only a theory after Thomas Edison constructed and patented his invention.

There was the use of the phonograph prior to the use of tape decks and CD players respectively. The precise date well known for Thomas Edison’s first completion of the first phonograph is August 12, 1877 though historians believed that it was done months later as it was not patented until December 24th, 1877. Thomas Edison’s personal assistant who went by the name of Charles Batchelor confirmed that the phonograph itself was not constructed until December 4th and completed two days later.

What happened is that Thomas Edison on his quest to improve the telegraph transmitter barely noticed that there was noise produced by the movement of the paper tape through the transmitter. The noise resembled spoken words whilst playing at high speeds. Therefore, while experimenting with a stylus – a hard-pointed needle-like instrument - on a tin-foil cylinder, Thomas Edison speaks right into the machine. There have been variations of Thomas Edison’s ideology by the modern inventors prior to his success of the phonograph during his times.

The Phonographs plays recordings made by analogue disc recordings. An analogue of the indigenous sound waves was apparently stored as rugged waves in a circular spiraling groove on the surface of a plastic disc. The needle-like instrument called the stylus moved along the groove as the disc went round the phonograph. Produced vibrations by the latter were then turned into electrical signals which were changed back into the sound we hear by speakers connected to it. This was called the phonograph.

Looking back at the onset of a phonograph is a great and fascinating experience. Before the creation of the phonograph, there was no possible and ideological method that allowed sound could be captured. The creation of methods to engrave and replay these cylinders, and later on discs marked a radical path in the revolution of the society. This meant that people could listen to music comfortably at their homes for the first time without the requirement of a band. Early phonographs were probably inaccessible to some of the people in society, but they paved way for more advanced and intriguing music devices prevalent in the young and old in today’s modern society.

Today, compressed discs of a variety of musical performances are produced and sold in music stores and record shops for people who own record players. It is evident that there would be trouble in the recognition and use of modern playback devices by Edison owing to the fact that many features have been greatly enhanced since his times. In today’s modern time, the phonograph plays an essential role as it is used in telephone, radios, voice recorders (on the telephone), “Talkies,” to more modern technologies such as the walk mans and cassettes.

Thomas Edison claimed that the then current use of his phonograph was so closely tied to the possibilities of the future use. He said, “The phonograph’s invention would revolutionize the world and show the importance of sound.” It is therefore of great importance to put Thomas Edison in mind as we listen to our favorite albums present in our generation as he played quite an important role in realizing the secrets of recording sound. References Marilyn, Strathern. Foreword, in Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, edited by Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch.

New York: Routledge, 1992, viii. Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Syverson, M. A. The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition. Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale, 1999.