New Jersey may not be the first or most glamorous place you think of when considering places important to music history, but Thomas Edison’s phonograph was the first time music was able to be recorded and distributed, rather than only experienced live. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 in Menlo Park, initially using a needle to make scratches on tinfoil-wrapped cylinders that could only be played back a few times before tearing.
His idea was originally for a dictation machine, and after patenting the phonograph did not return to the idea of improving the durability or the sound quality until 1887, when he started producing wax cylinders, instead of the flimsy tin. He sold and improved the formula for blank wax cylinders to both the consumer at home for personal use and to competing recording companies like Columbia Records. Edison’s studio in West Orange, NJ, was the leading producer of audio recording equipment, as such many of the world’s best artists came to New Jersey to record.
The design of the phonograph required a sound to be funneled into the machine, which left significant background noise. To combat this, enormous and expensive horns that could surround the instruments and players were constructed to keep out as much noise as possible. The picture aside is of Edison’s 125-foot-long brass horn, which strikes me more as a sewage pipe than recording equipment. It’s completely understandable that this machine was dismantled in 1942 to recycle the brass for the WWII efforts. A more typical recording session is seen in the picture below, where the output of the instrument would be fitted to a horn and fed into the cylinder to be recorded.
A little-known fact about Edison is that he was almost completely deaf, yet he had strong opinions about the music that was recorded in his studio. He believed he owned the rights to all music recorded on his machines and did not include the artists’ names on his recordings until 1910. Despite being hard of hearing, he had incredible pitch, making him very strict with artists during recording sessions. In one case, he insisted a world-renowned pianist had missed a note and that the recording would need to be restarted, and when the recording was played back with the note indeed missed, the insulted musician stormed out. He was also known to despise vibrato and disregarded distinguished violinists on that account.
Edison’s contributions to music history are little known, though significant. With his invention, people could record and listen to their own work again, preserving performances for centuries. Edison regarded the phonograph as his favorite invention, calling it his “baby” and predicting its impact, saying it would “support me in my old age.” It’s interesting to see the origins of recorded music, especially the contrast between analog and digital music. There’s something special about the true replica of a voice that hasn’t spoken for over 100 years.
