UNIVERSAL ZONOPHONE RECORD  No C 5199 Orchestra The Warbler's Serenade Hager's orchestra. 9 inch. I will grade this one G+, but trying to be conservative. It plays all the way through, but the first few seconds are pretty harsh listening--the first 8 or so grooves are heavily greyed. Otherwise sounds good.

ZON-O-PHONE 5255 Ragtime skedaddle Frank Mazziotta piccolo solo. 9 inch This one visually I would grade G+ or V-. as it has all kinds of little pits (both on front and back.) I thought this would make it sound terrible, but I couldn't really hear them, so sound-wise I would grade it V at least.

ZON-O-PHONE 401 High School Cadets March (sousa) Seventh Regiment Band. 10 in. This one plays loud and clear; first few grooves are greyed out--not sure what causes this, but a lot of the records I got in this box have this issue. V- visual, V sound
ZON-O-PHONE 75 Yankee Doodle Boy Billy MUrray 10 inch. V+, both visually and sound wise. I did have to crank the volume up
ZON-O-PHone 425 You're a grand old rag. V- same issue--first 8-10 grooves lightly greyed, produces some harsh sound, but evens out and plays great after first few seconds.



I will ship media rate, so that's $8  Yes, I know how to ship 78s. Check my feedback

C10 = N : Store Stock New
As new and unplayed (there are virtually no 78s that can categorically be claimed to be unplayed).

C9 : N-
Nearly New, but has been played. No visible signs of wear or damage.

C8 = E+
Plays like new, with very, very few signs of handling, such as tiny scuffs from being slipped in and out of sleeves.

C7 = E : Excellent
Still very shiny, near new looking, with no visible signs of wear, but a few inaudible scuffs and scratches.

C6 = E-
Still shiny but without the luster of a new record, few light scratches.

C5 = V+
V+ is an average condition 78 in which scuffs and general use has dulled the finish somewhat. Wear is moderate but playing is generally free from distortion. Surface noise not overly pronounced.

C4 = V : Very Good
Moderate, even wear throughout, but still very playable. Surface noise and scratches audible but not intrusive.

C3 = V-
Quite playable still, but distortion and heavy greying in loud passages. Music remains loud in most passages. Surface noise and scratches well below music level.

C2 = G+
Grey throughout but still serviceable. Music begins to sound muffled. Heavy scratches.

C1 = G : Good
Quite seriously worn and scratched, but music level is stillhigher than surface noise.

G- ; F ; and P
The VJM system has these designations for records in extremely poor condition. We do not place these on the 10-point scale because records in this condition have little or no value. In cases where the record is extremely rare, it would be worth the C1 price.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

sfc = surface

lbl = label

nap = not affecting play

scr/scrs = scratch/scratches

lc or lam  = lamination crack

cr = crack

gv/gvs= groove/grooves

hlc/hc = hairline crack

wol = writing on label

sol = sticker onlabel

fade = faded label

eb = edge bite

ec = edge chip

ef =edge flake

cvr = cover

s = stereo

rc= rim chip

rf = rough;

aud/inaud = audible/inaudible

lt = light

WIKIPEDIA:

A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, is a device for the mechanical of . The sound vibration are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, etched, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a . To recreate the sound, the surface is similarly rotated while a playback traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it, very faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring , or directly to the listener's ears through -type earphones.

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by . 's made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the , including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, initiated the transition from to with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, which is predominantly used in many languages. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the or needle, and the sound and systems.

The disc was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. In the 1980s, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply due to the rise of the , , and other formats. However, records are still a favorite format for some , , , and (particularly in and ), and have undergone a .

Contents Terminology This section needs additional citations for . Please help by . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2019) ()

Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, the playback device is often called a "turntable", "record player", or "", although each of these terms denote categorically distinct items. When used in conjunction with a as part of a setup, turntables are often colloquially called "decks". In later electric phonographs (more often known since the 1940s as record players or, most recently, turntables), the motions of the stylus are converted into an by a , then converted back into sound by a .

Close up of the mechanism of an Edison Amberola, circa 1915

The term phonograph ("sound writing") was derived from the words φωνή (phonē, 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, 'writing'). The similar related terms gramophone (from the Greek γράμμα gramma 'letter' and φωνή phōnē 'voice') and graphophone have similar root meanings. The roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as ("light writing"), ("distant writing"), and ("distant sound"). The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic ; in 1852 carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of , involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", "Graphonole" and the like were still specific to various makers of sometimes very different (i.e. cylinder and disc) machines; so considerable use was made of the generic term "talking machine", especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips – a potential source of confusion both then and now.

United Kingdom

In , "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using , which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the . Originally, "gramophone" was a proprietary of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term; it has been so used in the UK and most Commonwealth countries ever since.[] The term "phonograph" was usually restricted to machines that used .

"Gramophone" generally referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer records, 33+1⁄3-rpm LPs (long-playing records) and 45-rpm , and EPs (extended-play recordings), the common name became "record player" or "turntable". Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, might also play audiotape . From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, ) or a "stereo" (most systems being by the mid-1960s).

United States Early phonograph at Deaf Smith County Historical Museum in ,

In , "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to 's upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs). "Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but from about 1902 on, the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played. By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) sold by the was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were generally called "phonograph records" or simply "records", but almost never "Victrola records".

Boy and toy record player, 1920s

After electrical disc-playing machines appeared on the market in the late 1920s, often combined with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by the public. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs". Portable record players (no radio included), with a latched cover and an integrated and , were becoming popular as well, especially in schools and for use by children and teenagers.

In the years following the Second World War, as "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, ) and, later, "stereo" () component sound systems slowly evolved from an exotic specialty item into a common feature of American homes, the description of the record-spinning component as a "record changer" (which could automatically play through a stacked series of discs) or a "turntable" (which could hold only one disc at a time) entered common usage. By the 1980s, the use of a "record changer" was widely disparaged. So, the "turntable" emerged triumphant and retained its position to the present. Through all these changes, however, the discs have continued to be known as "phonograph records" or, much more commonly, simply as "records".

Gramophone, as a brand name, was not used in the United States after 1902, and the word quickly fell out of use there, although it has survived in its nickname form, Grammy, as the name of the . The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, resembling a Victor disc machine with a taper arm.

Modern amplifier-component manufacturers continue to label the input jack for a magnetic pickup cartridge as the "phono" input.

Australia Wood engraving published in , depicting a public demonstration of new technology at the Royal Society of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) on 8 August, 1878.

In , "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in . The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June, 1878 to a meeting of the by the Society's Honorary Secretary, who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year. On 8 August, 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione, along with a range of other new inventions, including the .

Early history Predecessors to the phonograph

Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to 's phonograph, Edison being the first to invent a device that could both record and reproduce sound. The phonograph's predecessors include 's phonautograph, and 's paleophone. Recordings made with the phonautograph were intended to be visual representations of the sound, but were never sonically reproduced until 2008. Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the Phonograph in 1877.

Dictionary illustration of a . This version uses a barrel made of . Phonautograph Main article:

Direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects such as had been made by English physician in 1807, but the first known device for recording airborne speech, music and other sounds is the , patented in 1857 by French typesetter and inventor . In this device, sound waves travelling through the air vibrated a parchment which was linked to a bristle, and the bristle traced a line through a thin coating of soot on a sheet of paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder. The sound vibrations were recorded as undulations or other irregularities in the traced line. Scott's phonautograph was intended purely for the visual study and analysis of the tracings. Reproduction of the recorded sound was not possible with the original phonautograph.

In 2008, phonautograph recordings made by Scott were played back as sound by American audio historians, who used optical scanning and computer processing to convert the traced waveforms into digital audio files. These recordings, made circa 1860, include fragments of two French songs and a recitation in Italian.

Paleophone

, a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising a definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the , a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute.

Cros proposed the use of , a process already in use to make metal printing plates from line drawings, to convert an insubstantial phonautograph tracing in soot into a groove or ridge on a metal disc or cylinder. This metal surface would then be given the same motion and speed as the original recording surface. A linked to a would be made to ride in the groove or on the ridge so that the stylus would be moved back and forth in accordance with the recorded vibrations. It would transmit these vibrations to the connected diaphragm, and the diaphragm would transmit them to the air.

An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised a more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a phonographe, but Cros himself favored the word paleophone, sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of the past').

Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception.

Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at the age of 45.

The early phonographs for Edison's phonograph, May 18, 1880

conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by . His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a 'talking-machine' can be found in the on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: "Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?" The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."

Edison presented his own account of inventing the phonograph:

"I was experimenting," he said, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm traveled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disc was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several hundred words were possible.

"From my experiments on the telephone I knew of how to work a pawl connected to the ; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a . This pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: ',' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I reached the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the diaphragm properly, I could cause such records to reproduce the original movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice.

"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed , which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on each sketch. If the workman lost, I would pay his regular wages; if he made more than the wages, he kept it. The workman who got the sketch was John Kruesi. I didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of."

The music critic attended an early demonstration (1881–2) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he writes "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."

newspaper reported on an 1878 demonstration at the Royal Society of Victoria, writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. "Rule Britannia" was distinctly repeated, but great laughter was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of "He's a jolly good fellow," which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a very cracked voice."

Early machines Phonograph cabinet built with , 1912. The clockwork portion of the phonograph is concealed in the base beneath the statue; the amplifying horn is the shell behind the human figure.

Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally , which was temporarily wrapped around a grooved mounted on a correspondingly supported by plain and threaded . While the cylinder was rotated and slowly progressed along its , the airborne vibrated a connected to a that indented the foil into the cylinder's groove, thereby recording the vibrations as "hill-and-dale" variations of the depth of the indentation.

Playback was accomplished by exactly repeating the recording procedure, the only difference being that the recorded foil now served to vibrate the stylus, which transmitted its vibrations to the diaphragm and onward into the air as audible sound. Although Edison's very first experimental tinfoil phonograph used separate and somewhat different recording and playback assemblies, in subsequent machines a single diaphragm and stylus served both purposes. One peculiar consequence was that it was possible to additional sound onto a recording being played back. The recording was heavily worn by each playing, and it was nearly impossible to accurately remount a recorded foil after it had been removed from the cylinder. In this form, the only practical use that could be found for the phonograph was as a startling novelty for private amusement at home or public exhibitions for profit.

Edison's early patents show that he was aware that sound could be recorded as a on a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more "scientifically correct".

Edison's patent specified that the audio recording be , and it was not until 1886 that vertically modulated incised recording using wax-coated cylinders was patented by and . They named their version the .

Introduction of the disc record

The use of a flat recording surface instead of a cylindrical one was an obvious alternative which thought-experimenter Charles Cros initially favored and which practical experimenter Thomas Edison and others actually tested in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The oldest surviving example is a copper of a recording cut into a wax disc in 1881.

Cylindrical records continued in use until the mid-20th century. The commercialization of sound recording technology had been initially aimed at use in business correspondence, i.e. transcription into writing,[] in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages. With paper documents being the end product, the cylinders were considered ephemeral; need to archive large numbers of bulky, fragile sound recordings seemed unlikely, and the ease of producing multiple copies was not a consideration.

In 1887, patented a variant of the phonograph which he named the Gramophone. Berliner's approach was essentially the same one proposed, but never implemented, by Charles Cros in 1877. The diaphragm was linked to the recording stylus in a way that caused it to vibrate laterally (side to side) as it traced a spiral onto a zinc disc very thinly coated with a compound of . The zinc disc was then immersed in a bath of chromic acid; this etched a groove into the disc where the stylus had removed the coating, after which the recording could be played. With some later improvements the flat discs of Berliner could be produced in large quantities at much lower cost than the cylinders of Edison's system.

In May 1889, in , the first "phonograph parlor" opened. It featured a row of coin-operated machines, each supplied with a different wax cylinder record. The customer selected a machine according to the title that it advertised, inserted a , then heard the recording through -like listening tubes. By the mid-1890s, most American cities had at least one phonograph parlor. The coin-operated mechanism was invented by Louis T. Glass and William S. Arnold. The cabinet contained an Edison Class M or Class E phonograph. The Class M was powered by a wet-cell glass battery that would spill dangerous acid if it tipped over or broke. The Class E sold for a lower price and ran on 120 V DC. The phenomenon of phonograph parlors peaked in Paris around 1900: in 's luxurious salon, patrons sat in plush upholstered chairs and chose from among many hundreds of available cylinders by using speaking tubes to communicate with attendants on the floor below.

Menu 0:00 This 1906 recording enticed store customers with the wonders of the invention.
2 minutes, 23 seconds. Problems playing this file? See .

By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced -based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly, the medium's first major African-American star was obliged to perform his "The Laughing Song" (or the separate "The Whistling Coon") literally thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.)

Oldest surviving recordings

's cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording, although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial. Wax recordings of 's choral music made on June 29, 1888, at in London were thought to be the oldest-known surviving musical recordings, until the recent playback by a group of American historians of a recording of made on April 9, 1860. The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact.

A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including a slightly earlier one which is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President , but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned. These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb, not preserved, has been called the first instance of . On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording. Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th century media legends such as and Shakespearean actor are amongst the earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present.

Improvements at the Volta Laboratory Main article:

and his two associates took Edison's phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bell's in Washington, D. C., in 1879, and continued until they were granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax.

Although Edison had in 1877 the fame bestowed on him for this invention was not due to its efficiency. Recording with his tinfoil phonograph was too difficult to be practical, as the tinfoil tore easily, and even when the was properly adjusted, its reproduction of sound was distorted, and good for only a few playbacks; nevertheless Edison had discovered the idea of . However immediately after his discovery he did not improve it, allegedly because of an agreement to spend the next five years developing the system.

Volta's early challenge

Meanwhile, Bell, a and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after his invention of the . According to , it was through that Bell took up the phonograph challenge. Bell had married in 1879 while Hubbard was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine which seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate.

In 1879 Hubbard got Bell interested in improving the phonograph, and it was agreed that a should be set up in Washington. Experiments were also to be conducted on the , which resulted in the .

Volta Graphophone See also: A 'G' (Graham Bell) model Graphophone being played back by a typist after its cylinder had recorded dictation.

By 1881, the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent. Wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. Rather than apply for a patent at that time, however, they deposited the machine in a sealed box at the , and specified that it was not to be opened without the consent of two of the three men.

The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables.

One interesting exception was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by . Tainter was granted on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch.

The preserved Bell and Tainter records are of both the lateral cut and the Edison-style hill-and-dale (up-and-down) styles. Edison for many years used the on both his and , and is credited with the invention of the lateral cut, acid-etched Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been experimenting with both formats and directions of groove modulation as early as 1881.

The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus.

Graphophone commercialization A later-model Columbia Graphophone of 1901 Edison-Phonograph playing: Iola by the „Edison Military Band“ (video, 3 min 51 s)

In 1885, when the Volta Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed applications and began to seek out investors. The of Alexandria, Virginia, was created on January 6, 1886 and incorporated on February 3, 1886. It was formed to control the patents and to handle the commercial development of their sound recording and reproduction inventions, one of which became the first .

After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in the City of Washington, businessmen from created the on March 28, 1887, in order to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace. The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone, which itself later evolved into .

Shortly after American Graphophone's creation, Jesse H. Lippincott used nearly $1 million of an inheritance to gain control of it, as well as the rights to the Graphophone and the Bell and Tainter patents. Not long later Lippincott purchased the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. He then created the to consolidate the national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph. In the early 1890s Lippincott fell victim to the unit's mechanical problems and also to resistance from .

A coin-operated version of the Graphophone, , was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company.

The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of in business, because their wax recording process was practical and their machines were durable. But it would take several more years and the renewed efforts of Edison and the further improvements of and many others, before the became a major factor in .

Disc vs. cylinder as a recording medium

Discs are not inherently better than cylinders at providing audio fidelity. Rather, the advantages of the format are seen in the manufacturing process: discs can be stamped; cylinders could not be until 1901–1902 when the gold moulding process was introduced by Edison.

Recordings made on a cylinder remain at a constant linear velocity for the entirety of the recording, while those made on a disc have a higher linear velocity at the outer portion of the disc compared to the inner portion.

Edison's patented recording method recorded with vertical modulations in a groove. Berliner utilized a laterally modulated groove.

A Victor V phonograph, circa 1907

Though Edison's recording technology was better than Berliner's,[] there were commercial advantages to a disc system since the disc could be easily mass-produced by molding and stamping and it required less storage space for a collection of recordings.

Berliner successfully argued that his technology was different enough from Edison's that he did not need to pay royalties on it, which reduced his business expenses.

Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records, and "gramophones". His "" was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (12.7 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. Also in 1895 Berliner replaced the hard rubber used to make the discs with a shellac compound. Berliner's early records had very poor sound quality, however. Work by eventually improved the sound fidelity to a point where it was as good as the cylinder. By late 1901, ten-inch (25 cm) records were marketed by Johnson and Berliner's , and Berliner had sold his interests. In 1904, discs were first pressed with music on both sides and capable of around seven minutes total playing time, as opposed to the cylinder's typical duration on two minutes at that time. As a result of this and the fragility of wax cylinders in transit and storage, cylinders sales declined. Edison felt the increasing commercial pressure for disc records, and by 1912, though reluctant at first, his production of disc records was in full swing. This was the . Nevertheless, he continued to manufacture cylinders until 1929 and was last to withdraw from that market.

From the mid-1890s until , both and disc recordings and machines to play them on were widely mass-marketed and sold. The disc system superseded the cylinder in Europe by 1906 when both Columbia and Pathe withdrew from that market. By 1913, Edison was the only company still producing cylinders in the USA although in Great Britain small manufacturers pressed on until 1922.

Dominance of the disc record A 1930s portable wind-up gramophone from ()

Berliner's lateral disc record was the ancestor of the 78 rpm, 45 rpm, 33⅓ rpm, and all other analogue disc records popular for use in sound recording. See .

The 1920s brought improved technology. Radio sales increased, bringing many phonograph dealers to near financial ruin. With efforts at improved audio fidelity, the big record companies succeeded in keeping business booming through the end of the decade, but the record sales plummeted during the , with many companies merging or going out of business.

Record sales picked up appreciably by the late 30s and early 40s, with greater improvements in fidelity and more money to be spent. By this time home phonographs had become much more common, though it wasn't until the 1940s that console radio/phono set-ups with automatic record changers became more common.

In the 1930s, (originally known as vinylite) was introduced as a record material for radio , and for radio commercials. At that time, virtually no discs for home use were made from this material. Vinyl was used for the popular 78-rpm issued to US soldiers during . This significantly reduced breakage during transport. The first commercial vinylite record was the set of five 12" discs "" (Asch Records album S-800, dubbed from Soviet masters in 1945). Victor began selling some home-use vinyl 78s in late 1945; but most 78s were made of a compound until the 78-rpm format was completely phased out. (Shellac records were heavier and more brittle.) 33s and 45s were, however, made exclusively of vinyl, with the exception of some 45s manufactured out of .

Booms in record sales returned after the Second World War, as industry standards changed from 78s to vinyl, (commonly called record albums), which could contain an entire , and 45s which usually contained one hit song popularized on the radio – thus the term record – plus another song on the back or . An "" version of the 45 was also available, designated , which provided capacity for longer musical selections, or for two regular-length songs per side.

Shortcomings include caused by dirt or abrasions (scratches) and failure caused by deep surface scratches causing of the stylus forward and missing a section, or groove lock, causing a section to repeat, usually punctuated by a popping noise. This was so comm