Melvin Carter Jr., age 13, of Keen, N.H., for his question:
WHAT WAS THE FIRST SOUND RECORDED ON A PHONOGRAPH RECORD?
The first sound ever recorded on a phonograph record was the word "Mary." The word was said by Thomas Edison, the machine's inventor. He went on to record the phrase "Mary had a little lamb" as he tested his new machine.
In 1877 Edison built and tested his first practical phonograph. Earlier in the same year, Charles Cros, a Frenchman, had drawn up a plan for a similar machine but his never advanced beyond the planning stage.
Edison's phonograph record was a small metal cylinder wrapped in tin foil. It was mounted on an axle that could be rotated. Next to the cylinder was a mouthpiece with a diaphragm or vibrating disk. A needle that was attached to the diaphragm was then placed against the cylinder.
As Edison spoke into the mouthpiece, the cylinder was rotated. The sound waves made the diaphragm and needle vibrate. As the needle vibrated, it made dents in the foil. The dents represented the original sound waves.
To play Edison's phonograph, another needle attached to a diaphragm was placed against the cylinder. As the cylinder was rotated, the dents in the foil made the needle and diaphragm vibrate. The vibrations sounded roughly like the original sound.
And so in Edison's first successful test, the words "Mary had a little lamb" came back from dents in the foil wrapped cylinder.
In 1885, two Americans, Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter, invented the Graphophone. It had a cardboard cylinder coated with wax instead of a metal cylinder wrapped in tin foil.
In 1887, Emil Berliner, who had moved to the United States from Germany, invented the Gramophone. It had a flat disk instead of a cylinder.
Early phonographs had spring motors and had to be wound by hand to be played. The motors sometimes ran too fast or too slow, making the recorded words or music sound odd. The needle mechanism of such phonographs did not respond to low bass or high treble notes, and so bass drums and violins could not be heard clearly.
In the mid 1920s, we were given phonographs with electric motors.
In the mid 1920s, manufacturers also produced phonographs with amplifiers that made them sound much better because of greatly improved sound quality.
Until the late 1940s, all commercial records were played at 78 revolutions per minute. They were made of a shellac and clay mixture that were easily broken. Long playing (LP) records were developed at the Columbia Broadcasting System Laboratories under the direction of American electrical engineer Peter Goodmark.
Columbia Records Inc. introduced the LP record in 1948. Unbreakable plastic LP records that turned at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute created a demand for high fidelity phonographs.
Stereophonic phonographs and records came along in 1958 and then by the 1960s, almost all new phonographs and records were stereophonic.
Compact disks weren't far behind.