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Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology:
Paper 5
Development of the Phonograph at
Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory
Leslie J. Newville
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHONOGRAPH
AT ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL'S
VOLTA LABORATORY
By Leslie J. Newville
The fame of Thomas A. Edison rests most securely on his genius formaking practical application of the ideas of others. However, itwas Alexander Graham Bell, long a Smithsonian Regent and friend ofits third Secretary S. P. Langley, who, with his Volta Laboratoryassociates made practical the phonograph, which has been calledEdison's most original invention.
The Author: Leslie J. Newville wrote this paper while he wasattached to the office of the curator of Science and Technology inthe Smithsonian Institution's United States National Museum.
The story of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone has beentold and retold. How he became involved in the difficult task of makingpractical phonograph records, and succeeded (in association with CharlesSumner Tainter and Chichester Bell), is not so well known.
But material collected through the years by the U. S. National Museum ofthe Smithsonian Institution now makes clear how Bell and two associatestook Edison's tinfoil machine and made it reproduce sound from waxinstead of tinfoil. They began their work in Washington, D. C., in 1879,and continued until granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax.
Preserved at the Smithsonian are some 20 pieces of experimentalapparatus, including a number of complete machines. Their firstexperimental machine was sealed in a box and deposited in theSmithsonian archives in 1881. The others were delivered by AlexanderGraham Bell to the National Museum in two lots in 1915 and 1922. Bellwas an old man by this time, busy with his aeronautical experiments inNova Scotia.
It was not until 1947, however, that the Museum received the key to theexperimental "Graphophones," as they were called to differentiate themfrom the Edison machine. In that year Mrs. Laura F. Tainter donated tothe Museum 10 bound notebooks, along with Tainter's unpublishedautobiography.[1] This material describes in detail the strange machinesand even stranger experiments which led in 1886 to a greatly improvedphonograph.
Thomas A. Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877. But the famebestowed on Edison for this startling invention (sometimes called hismost original) was not due to its efficiency. Recording with the tinfoilphonograph is too difficult to be practical. The tinfoil tears easily,and even when the stylus is properly adjusted, the reproduction isdistorted and squeaky, and good for only a few playbacks. Neverthelessyoung Edison, the "wizard" as he was called, had hit upon a secret of...