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Berliner patents the gramophone

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Emile Berliner is granted a patent for a machine recording and reproducing sound in a lateral groove of even depth, and moves shortly afterwards from cylinder to flat disc. The disc is the commercially decisive step: it can be pressed from a master in quantity at low unit cost, which turns recording from a curiosity into an industry — and therefore turns musical diffusion into something that happens at the speed of freight rather than the speed of travelling musicians.

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Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 14 related

  1. Story
  2. Emile Berliner is granted a patent for a machine recording and reproducing sound in a lateral groove of even depth, and moves shortly afterwards from cylinder to flat disc. The disc is the commercially decisive step: it can be pressed from a master in quantity at low unit cost, which turns recording from a curiosity into an industry — and therefore turns musical diffusion into something that happens at the speed of freight rather than the speed of travelling musicians.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Sound recording
  5. Berliner patents the gramophone
  6. Connections
  7. Sound recording
  8. Electrical recording
  9. Race records
  10. Radio diffusion
  11. Field recording
  12. Edison demonstrates recorded and reproduced sound
  13. Berliner patents the gramophone
  14. The first jazz record is made
  15. KDKA broadcasts
  16. Victor and Columbia adopt electrical recording
  17. The Kumasi Trio record in London
  18. Evidence
  19. Berliner was granted a gramophone patent on 8 November 1887 for recording in a lateral groove of even depth, and moved from cylinder to flat disc, which could be mass-produced far more cheaply than Edison's cylinders. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to Library of Congress and Smithsonian collection materials; neither page was opened and the patent number is not given.
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/atlas?object=EVT_BERLINER_PATENT_1887&experience=EVT_BERLINER_PATENT_1887