Berliner patents the gramophone
node
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.
A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
Read in · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 1
- Sound recordingconcerns
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 14 related
- Story
- 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.
- Knowledge
- Sound recording
- Berliner patents the gramophone
- Connections
- Sound recording
- Electrical recording
- Race records
- Radio diffusion
- Field recording
- Edison demonstrates recorded and reproduced sound
- Berliner patents the gramophone
- The first jazz record is made
- KDKA broadcasts
- Victor and Columbia adopt electrical recording
- The Kumasi Trio record in London
- Evidence
- 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.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
Actions
/atlas?object=EVT_BERLINER_PATENT_1887&experience=EVT_BERLINER_PATENT_1887