The acoustic vibrometer, created by the French scientist Scott in 1857, was the first recording instrument. It was a device that recorded a ‘picture’ of sound waves using the vibrations caused by the waves. Although the acoustic vibrometer could not display sound, it enabled mankind for the first time to convert sound signals, and it also paved the way for the construction of the phonograph, a true recording device.
Thomas Edison, an American inventor and businessman, produced the first phonograph in history in 1877. This “talking machine” became a worldwide phenomenon, kicking off the history of human recording. Edison wrapped tin foil around a metal cylinder with a spiral groove. At one end, a small needle brushed against the foil and was attached to the receiver at the other. As the crank turned the metal cylinder, the undulating sound vibrated the short needle, which was carved in different grooves in the tin foil. The original sound is produced when the short needle is repeatedly vibrated along the grooves.
Burriner, a German engineer, develops a way of reproducing recordings in 1891, using a gilded copper mould as the master disc and insect glue as the raw material for casting reproductions, formally replacing the cylinder phonograph with the gramophone. Hand-wound wire is still used to power the phonograph. It is likewise based on the notion of producing sound by running a needle between the grooves of a record. Only the cylinder rotation was changed to disc rotation. The phonograph was widely used when the record was originally invented since it was simple to reproduce and could be mass produced.
In 1948, after World War II, Ged Mark, chief engineer at Columbia Records, invented an entirely new kind of record. Using diamonds as stylus and vinyl as recording material, Mark reduced the recording speed to 33.3 rpm and increased the groove density so that a 12-inch record could play more than 20 minutes of music on each side. This is often referred to as ‘compact recording’, also known as ‘long recording’. The birth of the compact disc greatly contributed to the boom in the popular music market and led to a new era in the development of the phonograph.
In truth, the Danish scientist Paulsen discovered that magnetised steel wire could hold sound impulses as early as the early twentieth century, but the wire was heavy and unwieldy, limiting the use of this type of recording. The contemporary magnetic tape was invented in the 1930s by German physicist Frauenema, who added magnetic iron powder to paper and plastic tapes.
A magnetic tape is a strip of material containing a magnetic layer, usually a plastic film tape base coated with a granular magnetic material or evaporated and deposited with a magnetic oxide. The principle of magnetic tape recording also begins with the electro-acoustic recording mechanism, where the energy of sound vibrations is first transformed by a sensor into an electrical signal whose strength follows the sound, and then the recording head changes its coil properties to magnetise the magnetic material on the tape according to the changing strength of the electrical signal, and depending on the electrical signal, the properties of the magnetised material also vary, thus recording the sound signal. During the Second World War, German radio stations were already making extensive use of tape recorders, but at this time they were still only used to record and broadcast speeches by military generals.
Following its introduction in 1979, the Philips optical disc established its appeal in the world’s first high-density optical disc storage system. The high-density optical disc is a different type of optical storage medium than magnetic carriers. It stores data on the disc using small spiral-shaped pitted rings.
However, CDs have been booming for over 20 years. Since 2005, music sales on the CD medium have plummeted. This is due to the rapid development of Internet technology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. At the same time, music production facilities began to move towards recording studios and personalisation due to the increasing performance of personal computers, the increasing storage capacity and the popularity of various recording software and related hardware devices. Many musicians, musicologists and music lovers could readily make high-quality recordings in the piano room of their own homes or classrooms for personal reference, mutual exchange, online on-demand, or even to be sent to record companies for official publication.
