IX- 2
Edison had anticipated the disc format his earliest
patents and thoroughly investigated during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. discovered that the cylinder had
several theoretical advantages over the disc: could be
turned more constant speed and the needle was not pressed
into the groove centrifugal force the end the
recording. The
first hard rubber discs (measuring from five six inches in
diameter) were cheaper produce than cylinders, and disc
playing machines could also made very cheaply. The pioneer disc
instrument, called the Gramophone, was the work the European
immigrant Emile Berliner. the turn
of the century, European manufacturers had successfully
introduced disc machines selling for less than $10 and American
manufacturers had produced $20 machines.
Within short time its introduction, the gramophone
was being manufactured Europe and the United States. demonstrated machine, with a
laterally cut disc, the same time that Edison was
"perfecting" his phonograph West Orange. The first gramophones
on the American market were match for the phonograph until
Eldridge Johnson, mechanic Camden, New Jersey, made some
. also devised a
method mass producing the disc record. The cylinder format enabled better tracking a
more constant speed and this brought better fidelity. The
phonograph buying public however were not concerned with
matters theory, but instead they were attracted the
longer playing disc, and its ease storage
