premises to provide steady power, of course, so Edison tinkered with a weight-driven clockwork mechanism, which replaced the hand crank and assured a steady rotation speed. Without mechanizing the rotation, the sound of the phonograph, whether for music or speech, left much to be desired. When Edison finally wrote to Preece about his invention in February 1878, he said that the machine had to be cranked at 120 turns per minute in order to achieve acceptable sound. A clockwork mechanism also made all the difference in comprehensibility when transcribing business letters that had been dictated.
Listening comprehension was influenced by subjective factors, Edison noticed. If a person who had never heard of the phonograph was pulled off the street and asked to listen to a recording of a simple sentence, he would not find it comprehensible, even if it were played a dozen times. If that same person were first told what he was about to hear, he would declare, after hearing it played, that it was a perfect reproduction. The same phenomenon was observed when novices first listened through a telephone. Edison speculated, “They do not expect or imagine that a machine can talk hence cannot understand it[s] words.”
In his lab, Edison made good progress in increasing the phonograph’s volume, using copper sheets for recording instead of tinfoil. If a speaker shouted into the microphone, Edison was able to make the playback distinctly audible at a distance of 475 feet. Shouting would not be practical in an office setting, but the progress encouraged him to find still better means of increasing playback volume. He got the idea that sound could be amplified by triggering a valve releasing steam or compressed air that would hit an enormous diaphragm, effectively sending a phonograph’s sounds outward for miles. The idea was so novel that, at the Patent Office’s urging, he separated the idea from his workup for the phonograph and filed a separate patent application, granted in early March 1878. He called this talking foghorn an “aerophone.”
Outside of the lab, Edward Johnson was the first to successfully commercialize the phonograph, albeit only modestly, when he added it to his traveling “concerts” featuring the musical telephone. His prospectus promised that
Recitations, conversational remarks, Songs (with words), Cornet Solos, Animal Mimicry, Laughter, Coughing, etc, etc, will be delivered into the mouth of the machine, and subsequently reproduced by the machine with such fidelity of tone, Articulation, emphasis, etc., as will kindle an enthusiasm as hearty as it will be spontaneous…. The Apparatus is really a great discovery and not a mear [
sic
] trick or toy for producing deceptive effects—the known reputation of Mr. Edison as a producer of practical inventions is however the best guarantee I have to offer of the genuinness [
sic
] of this great discovery.
His show played in small towns in New York and Pennsylvania, where competition in the amusement business was scarce: Elmira, Cortland, Homer, Dunkirk, Fredonia, Jamestown, Lockport, and so on, each night a different locale. Local promoters were so pleased to receive Johnson and his assistant that they agreed to his demand of a guaranteed flat fee of $100 rather than accept a percentage of the gate receipts.
Johnson first had the telephone deliver piped-in music, saving the phonograph to close the show. “You should hear me bring down the House by my singing in the Phonograph when I failed to get a Volunteer,” Johnson wrote a colleague. “The effect when they hear me is stupendous, but when they hear the Phonograph reproducing my song with all its imperfections they endanger the walls with clamor.”
Johnson reported that he was paid promptly by the promoters, even though for them the concerts “had not been pecuniarily successful.” Did Edison show him proper appreciation? He had not, Johnson groused, nor had Edison provided him with one of the newest
Listening comprehension was influenced by subjective factors, Edison noticed. If a person who had never heard of the phonograph was pulled off the street and asked to listen to a recording of a simple sentence, he would not find it comprehensible, even if it were played a dozen times. If that same person were first told what he was about to hear, he would declare, after hearing it played, that it was a perfect reproduction. The same phenomenon was observed when novices first listened through a telephone. Edison speculated, “They do not expect or imagine that a machine can talk hence cannot understand it[s] words.”
In his lab, Edison made good progress in increasing the phonograph’s volume, using copper sheets for recording instead of tinfoil. If a speaker shouted into the microphone, Edison was able to make the playback distinctly audible at a distance of 475 feet. Shouting would not be practical in an office setting, but the progress encouraged him to find still better means of increasing playback volume. He got the idea that sound could be amplified by triggering a valve releasing steam or compressed air that would hit an enormous diaphragm, effectively sending a phonograph’s sounds outward for miles. The idea was so novel that, at the Patent Office’s urging, he separated the idea from his workup for the phonograph and filed a separate patent application, granted in early March 1878. He called this talking foghorn an “aerophone.”
Outside of the lab, Edward Johnson was the first to successfully commercialize the phonograph, albeit only modestly, when he added it to his traveling “concerts” featuring the musical telephone. His prospectus promised that
Recitations, conversational remarks, Songs (with words), Cornet Solos, Animal Mimicry, Laughter, Coughing, etc, etc, will be delivered into the mouth of the machine, and subsequently reproduced by the machine with such fidelity of tone, Articulation, emphasis, etc., as will kindle an enthusiasm as hearty as it will be spontaneous…. The Apparatus is really a great discovery and not a mear [
sic
] trick or toy for producing deceptive effects—the known reputation of Mr. Edison as a producer of practical inventions is however the best guarantee I have to offer of the genuinness [
sic
] of this great discovery.
His show played in small towns in New York and Pennsylvania, where competition in the amusement business was scarce: Elmira, Cortland, Homer, Dunkirk, Fredonia, Jamestown, Lockport, and so on, each night a different locale. Local promoters were so pleased to receive Johnson and his assistant that they agreed to his demand of a guaranteed flat fee of $100 rather than accept a percentage of the gate receipts.
Johnson first had the telephone deliver piped-in music, saving the phonograph to close the show. “You should hear me bring down the House by my singing in the Phonograph when I failed to get a Volunteer,” Johnson wrote a colleague. “The effect when they hear me is stupendous, but when they hear the Phonograph reproducing my song with all its imperfections they endanger the walls with clamor.”
Johnson reported that he was paid promptly by the promoters, even though for them the concerts “had not been pecuniarily successful.” Did Edison show him proper appreciation? He had not, Johnson groused, nor had Edison provided him with one of the newest
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