The Evolution of Record Players: From Early Beginnings to Modern times — Part One

The ubiquity of music in our lives is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of human history, if you wanted to listen to music, you needed to be in the presence of live musicians. This began to change in the late 19th century with the advent of audio players, which completely changed people’s relationship to art and paved the way for the emergence of DJ culture decades later.

The story of the reproducibility of sound recording begins with the creation of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877. The phonograph was inspired by the phonautograph, an 1857 device by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville that did not convert sound waves into audio but rather into drawings on paper. The phonograph was also inspired by Alexander Graham Bell’s telegraph. John Kruesi was appointed to develop the project from Edison’s sketches.

Early devices

Phonograph

The phonograph was a machine that could record and reproduce sound. It worked by using a metal cylinder, a needle attached to a diaphragm, a cone-shaped mouthpiece, a sheet of tin, and a crank. The sound was received through the mouthpiece and then “drawn” by the needle onto the soft metal sheet. To reproduce the sound, the needle had to be positioned above the grooves it had previously drawn and the crank turned.

Gramophone

After Edison invented the phonograph, he put it to the side for ten years. During that time, Graham Bell and engineer Charles Tainter improved the design. They made a cylinder out of paper and covered it with wax, instead of using a metal cylinder covered with tin. This new invention was called a gramophone. The improvement spurred competition between Bell and Edison. Edison created a new version of the phonograph, also made out of wax.

The phonograph and the gramophone, while successful in the latter years of the century, were still quite limited. Emile Berliner, a German living in the United States, went further in his experiment in 1887. Rather than cylinders, he replaced them with flat zinc discs, which would later be replaced by vulcanite (a type of rubber) and shellac (which made 78 revolutions per minute). This eventually led to the creation of the gramophone, which would serve as the basis for modern day record players.

Victrola

With the gramophone, people began to focus more on recording and playing music instead of just recording voices. However, records could only hold a maximum of four minutes of audio. In 1895, mass production of the devices and records began, and an American company called the Victor Talking Machine Company bought the gramophone. This changed the game completely.

The company strived for a more compact, functional and harmonious design for homes which lead to the invention of the “victrola” — more commonly known as the record player. This device was essentially a wooden box which housed a turntable, an arm with a needle to read and translate the grooves of records into sound and a crank. In the following decades, the record player evolved with the addition of speakers and volume controls.

The new century brought about a radical change in how people listened to music. With the invention of the record player, we were now able to enjoy music at home with an ease never before imagined. In the first decade of the new century, the first stars of recorded music were emerging: opera singers such as Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba. And as records were easier to produce, handle, and sell, until they disappeared for good in the 1910s.

Although it would take three decades for the next big change to occur, the Second World War generated many technological advances. One example is that, to track submarines, the British Royal Navy developed longer ranges in sound frequency recordings. Another relevant fact from this period is that shellac became essential for the production of explosives, which led to a 70% reduction in the production of records in the United States.

Peter Goldmark’s LP

Under Peter Goldmark’s leadership, CBS-Columbia made important changes to the way records were produced. They switched to vinyl, which was less fragile and of a higher quality than gum records. Most importantly, the new wafers could hold 45 minutes of recording, as opposed to just one song. This technological advances allowed for the release of albums, which in turn spurred a race to produce better and better record players.

The Art of Beatmatching

If it weren’t for records and record players, DJ culture wouldn’t exist. The first DJs started appearing in dance clubs in the 1940s, but DJing as we know it started to take shape in the 1960s. This was thanks to the Northern Soul movement in England and the legendary performances of DJ Francis Grasso in New York. Both of these scenes were focused on developing the art of beatmatching.

Technics Turntables: A Legend Is Born

Technics, a Panasonic brand, would create one of its most precious instruments in the 1970s- the SL-1100 record player in 1971, and the SL-1200 in 1972. The devices were designed for home use, but eventually gained much prominence among DJs starting with the disco scene and later the hip-hop culture. In 1979, the Technics 1200 MK2 appeared, an improved version of the 1972 model. Its main innovation was in the pitch control- no longer knob-shaped, circular, but vertical, and changing from left to right side. Pitch control allows DJs to speed up or slow down songs.

Technics has been the go-to brand for DJs using turntables for years, despite increasing competition from other companies. They have always been at the forefront of the latest DJing technologies and techniques, and today they are more innovative than ever before. Turntablism is one of their most impressive achievements, and today’s DJs have more opportunity than ever to perfect their art.

In 2003, Native Instruments and Stanton Magnetics teamed up to create Final Scratch. This software program uses timecode technology and allows the DJ to play any song from their virtual library using a digital vinyl record on a turntable. This opened up new possibilities for professional DJs and other companies, such as Traktor and Serato, soon followed suit and began competing for this market.

However, the industry was shaken up when CDs were introduced in the 1980s, and again when digital music emerged in the 2000s. You will learn more about what happened next in the next chapter.

Discover more great grooves and help preserve our global musical heritage at www.kollektivx.com.