TODAY IN MUSIC HISTORY – DECEMBER 15, 1877: EDISON APPLIES FOR PATENT ON THE PHONOGRAPH

Edison and his phonograph (shown without horn attachment)

It was on this day in 1877 that the application for American inventor Thomas Alva Edison’s “telephonic repeater” (the phonograph - a.k.a. the gramophone) was first executed.

Edison first announced his intention to create the primitive recording/playback device in July of that year whilst in the midst of developing a telephone transmitter – wouldn’t it be great, he thought, to somehow be able to capture, and save the human voice in the form of an audio message should there not be a party available to receive a phone call on the opposite end of the dialer?

After experimenting with a telephone diaphragm with an “embossing point” and some paraffin paper (see: Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers.edu), and finding that he could not only record the sound of the human voice but also reproduce it via playback, Edison was well on his way to creating a device for the telephone that would inadvertently serve as the genesis of the music recording industry and which would introduce to the world the beauty of the operatic singing voice.

It would all start with opera – and with a previously unknown (to the general masses) operatic tenor by the name of Enrico Caruso. Watch in the video below a fascinating timeline of Edison’s invention – and his later improvements on his own device – and discover how one man’s majestic voice would turn the music industry on it’s head, bringing the performances heard predominately by the privileged few to the greater, all-inclusive masses, as narrated by French/Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón (clip also shows a working phonograph in action via the singing voice Villazón and composer Umberto Giordano's gorgeous aria "Amor Ti Vieta" from his 1898 opera Fedora):



Discover more (external links):

• The Edison Papers (brief outline of invention) at Rutgers.edu

• Review Edison’s appliacation for Patent #200, 521 (successfully patented February 19, 1878) also at Rutgers.edu (PDF)

• A fascinating point-by-point timeline of Edison’s invention at phonographia.com

(internal links):

• Phonograph nostalgia (Nipper the dog) at Unraveling Musical Myths

• First long distance radio transmission (Enrico Caruso) at Unraveling Musical Myths

-Rose.

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