Audio Formats: Edison Cylinders and Vinyl Records

Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention of the phonograph using soundwaves traveling through the air, amplified by a horn, to vibrate a stylus that carved grooves in a soft material, is generally regarded as the beginning of audio recording. Eventually, molds of cylinders were introduced to more efficiently copy live recordings. Displayed is an Edison Amberol cylinder made of hard black wax. Cylinder technology advanced to accommodate more plays before wearing out and allowing for more minutes of recorded sound. This generation of cylinder could play up to four minutes of recorded audio. Disc-shaped recordings made of a resin-based shellac were a competing format with wax and celluloid cylinders until they gained dominance in the 1920s. Beginning in the 1940s, the shellac material was replaced by polyvinyl chloride plastic, which had the benefit of less expensive reproduction through pressing. There were several speeds of records, but the industry coalesced on 12-inch diameter disks played at 33 ⅓ rotations-per-minute (RPM) for ~22 minutes of audio per side. Vinyl records are still in production today.