The Daily Lesson

Thomas Edison invented so many things if we did two a day here at the Press we still wouldn’t cover them all in a year.  Even so, not everything Edison did is worth remembering, like the talking doll or the spirit phone.  What Edison invented on August 12, 1877, though, is worth remembering... the phonograph.  After all, had he not invented the phonograph, then I would have nothing to play my Led Zeplin albums on, even though what Edison invented is a far cry from any modern stereo system.

The first phonograph was a cylinder covered with a thin sheet of foil.  By speaking into the mouthpiece, it caused a needle to vibrate, making deep and shallow indentations in the foil.  The needle was then moved to the start of the indentation, and by cranking the cylinder, it moved along those indentations, moving up and down, and playing back the sound of the voice...more or less. 

Aside from being the first time anybody had ever done such a thing, making it incredibly cool... yeah.  It wasn’t very good.  When people argue which sound system is superior, what Edison first invented doesn’t even come up.  The foil was really thin, so it tore easily.  Once removed from the cylinder, it couldn’t be played again.  It was hand-cranked, so getting the speed right was luck.  And the sound quality was not good at all, regardless of how well it was cranked.  But it was a start.

What came next was Edison’s “perfected” phonograph, which featured solid wax cylinders.  And then in 1887, Emile Berliner, who helped develop phones with Alex Bell, invented the gramophone – all on his own, a flat disc player, which eventually beat out Edison’s cylinders.

What became obvious was that if the record was slowed down, say, from 78 rpm to, say, 33 and a third, then one could get a whole lot more stuff on a record, so was born the the LP – Long Play.  As early as 1931, RCA came up with an LP that worked, but too few people could afford it, what with the Depression and all.  The first LPs were only in movie theatres until 1948, when Columbia Records came up with the first micro-groove record, capable of holding up to 23 minutes of music per side. 

On March 31, 1949, RCA Victor came out with the 45, capable of holding from three to five minutes of music on each side.  And that also created the “B Side.”  And that completely changed the way music was marketed, both on the radio and in the music stores.  Long songs simply were not marketable.   

Meanwhile, a British guy named Alan Blumlein came up with the first modern stereo system in 1931.  It wasn’t until 1958 that stereo records and the machines to play them were mass produced.  Somewhere in the 1960s, songs that were written for manufactured “bands” were replaced by bands that wrote their own stuff.  Music moved away from the “hit” 45 format and became more album oriented.  Songs got longer.  And then came the concept album – an entire album based on a central theme.  And that led to Led Zeplin IV in 1971, and the greatest song ever recorded, “Stairway to Heaven,” clocking in at 8 minutes and 2 seconds.  It’s like your grandmother used to tell you, “Everything happens for a purpose.”