In this essay the History of sound recording and the people who influenced modern sound recording will be listed.
Firstly, Isaac Newtons Laws of Motion can be traced back to its origin in the 17th century, where in the book “Principia Mathematica Philosophie Naturalis” which was published on the 5th July 1687 by S. Pepys. According to this book, it was here where the theory of how sound travels was first introduced.
Furthermore, in the book ‘The Art of Mixing’ (1997) by David Gibson it discusses how physical sound waves travel.
“Whether in the control room or living room, sound first comes out of the speakers in sound waves and travels through every molecule in the room, hitting all parts of your body. Just as waves travel on water, sound waves travel through air.”
According to recording-history.org, the Phonautograph was created by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a French inventor, this device was invented this appliance in the middle of the 19th century. It was the first patented machine that recorded sound from the air. But Martinville didn’t want to record audio so he could listen to it, he wanted to showcase the sound waves for everyone to see, which means he worked on a recording device that would make the waves visible. So, the device was constructed merely for optical reasons. But with the invention in early 1857 he did invent the earliest recording device.
According to thoughtco.com, Thomas Edison had created the first ever recorded Phonograph in 1878 which could be used to record talking, singing and musical instruments. However, according to answers.com, Emile Berliner was the first to create a Phonograph but says even then Edison is the one widely credited for its creation.
According to Merriam-Webster, a Phonograph is “an instrument used for reproducing sounds by the means of a stylus or needle following a spiral groove on a revolving disc or cylinder.”
The creation of the Phonograph was one of the first incarnations of a record player. It operated through the use of a stylus which traced the grooves on a rotating disc which causes vibrations and in turn produces sound. This sound was then projected through a large cone like structure. A cylinder wrapped in tinfoil in the middle and when spoken into, the tinfoil around the cylinder would be scratched by the Stylus inside the machine, this was caused by the vibrations from a voice. This system had to be manually reset.
According to All You Need Is Ears (1994) by George Martin, he described the process of using the Phonograph’s cylinder “Later that year, he patented his phonograph in which the recording groove was cut in with tinfoil, wrapped around a cylinder.”
According to NPS.GOV, later on in the Phonographs life cycle, it was able to play records, firstly which were small cylinders with the musical notes on the outside, which was then changed to be shaped like discs
According to soundrecordinghistory.net, Emile Berliner created the Gramophone on November 8, 1887, Emile Berliner. Berliner was the first inventor to stop recording on cylinders and start recording on flat disks or records.
The first records were made of glass. They were then made using zinc and then plastic. A spiral groove with sound information was etched into the flat record. To play sounds and music, the record was rotated on the gramophone. The "arm" of the gramophone held a needle that read the grooves in the record by vibration and transmitted the information to the gramophone speaker.
Berliner's record disks were the first sound recordings that could be mass-produced by creating master recordings from which molds were made. From each mold, hundreds of disks were pressed and created that could be sold to the public.
40 years later, advancements in technology brought about the use of Magnetic records. This enabled sound engineers to create sound recording devices that used electricity and magnetism as the main forces in the storage and playback.
According to ethw.org, during the second world war, the Allies had become aware of this superior technology and assigned John T.”Jack” Mullin to capture and analyse the technology, he seen stumbled upon an advanced Magnetophone. Mullin returned from the war in 1946 and had demonstrated the Magnetophone to an IRE meeting. The technology caused a stir and soon word got out and reached Bing Crosby.
Bing Crosby was an American singer, actor and songwriter who achieved popularity in radio broadcasting and talking pictures according to the Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. Crosby caught word of the Magnetophone technology captured by Colonel Mullin and requsted to use the technology in which Mullin accepted. With Mullin as his consultant, Crosby began to use the Magnetophone to record his radio programs.
Crosby invested $50,000 in the Ampex corporation with the intention to produce more of these machines. In 1948, the second season of his radio show was recorded using the Ampex Model 200A according to Sterling and Kittross, J.M (1990) Stay Tuned: A concise History of American Broadcasting. Belmont California: Wadsworth.
Moving on, as written by Biography.coms editors, Les Paul was a musician who created the first solid-body electric guitar in 1941 which was at the time a new kind of guitar. However, it is argued that Adolph Rickenbacker beat Les Paul in its creation as he created Lap-steel guitars in the 1930’s according to www.rickenbacker.com.
Les Paul created Sound On Sound Recording which used monophonic sounds in the 20th Century which used a single track for each instrument to produce music, as reported in the book Logic Pro X (2014) by David Nahmani.
“Mixing is the art of blending all the instruments and sounds into a sound field. A good mix can make the difference between an amateur demo track and a professional production. Mixing should carefully balance two goals: blending all the elements into a cohesive whole, and at the same time, keeping them sufficiently defined so that listeners can distinguish among them.”
Beginning in 1927 the first movie to incorporate sound was “The Jazz Singer” (1927) directed by Alan Crosland as stated on filmsite.org. The movie was a ‘photo-dramatic production’ based upon Samson Raphaelsons 1921 short story “The Day of Atonement”
Moving on, Ampex released a commercial version of their 200A in April, 1948 according to Stewart Wolpin from recode.net, which allowed freelance musicians to record stereo channels for their instruments and this allowed for a central channel for the singer, this was done through the use of Multi-track recording which is the process of laying different sounds a top one another along with adjusting the volume levels to make the track sit together through the use of multiple tapes.
As reported by Speakstick the Cassette tape was released by Dutch electronics company Phillips in 1962 which was used for audio recording and playback. This music technology came in two forms; one contains a pre-record while the other is a blank cassette. Used for different purposes such as home recording, portable radio or storing data.
This method of audio recording was not used by the band The Beatles until 1964 who were at the forefront of the technological developments of sound equipment as it was the artistic demands of The Beatles that led to technological innovation as stated by www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk. Furthermore, through the introduction of an improved sound range and signal to noise ratio that was created by Dolby Laboratories in the 1970’s.
[An example of this is the Dolby noise-reduction system which was developed by Dolby for use in analog magnetic tape, this technology helped make high fidelity practical on cassette tapes as written by Ray Dolby.]
This technology enabled the Beatles to use techniques such as Double Tracking for their vocals which was invented by Abbey Roads studio manager Ken Townshend.
From 1987, as reported by obseletemedia.com digital audio systems were created and developed by Sony and with the advent of the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) CD. The DAT was a digital magnetic audio tape initially designed for use with audio. The tape used was 4mm with the tapes capable of recording up to 180 minutes in length.
Furthermore, Hard Disk Recording was created in 1982 brought about their use as they held more advantages when compared to the DAT according to Oscars.org when in 2015, engineers from the company who created the hard disk (Fairlight) received awards. An example of which is that they could hold more on one disk rather than having to buy separate cassette tapes along with better audio quality as written by Cameron W. Jones.
In conclusion, through time, audio recording improved through the many different pioneers and their ideas, from Thomas Edison with the Phonograph to Fairlights creation of the Hard Disk. Sound quality and storage capacity rose through these technological developments and gave us the technology we have today.