Electrical recording
technology
The replacement of the acoustic recording horn by a microphone, amplifier and electromagnetic cutter, developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories and licensed by Western Electric to the major American record companies in 1925. Victor contracted for commercial use of the system in March 1925 and issued its first electrically recorded orchestral sides that April. The technical change is measurable: the acoustic process captured roughly 250 to 2,500 hertz, while the Western Electric system as developed by Harrison and Maxfield handled something like 50 to 6,000 hertz. What that meant musically is more interesting than the numbers. Instruments that acoustic recording could barely register — the double bass, the bass drum, a quiet guitar, an unforced voice — became recordable, so ensembles no longer had to be rearranged around the limits of a horn. Rhythm sections could be heard; a singer could sing rather than shout. Much of what makes recordings from the later 1920s onward sound like music rather than like documents is this change, and it arrived exactly as the traditions in this Journey were first being captured in quantity.
A technology is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
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Timeline
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Connections · 1
- Sound recordingpart_of
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 20 blocks · 1 evidence · 14 related
- Story
- The replacement of the acoustic recording horn by a microphone, amplifier and electromagnetic cutter, developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories and licensed by Western Electric to the major American record companies in 1925. Victor contracted for commercial use of the system in March 1925 and issued its first electrically recorded orchestral sides that April. The technical change is measurable: the acoustic process captured roughly 250 to 2,500 hertz, while the Western Electric system as developed by Harrison and Maxfield handled something like 50 to 6,000 hertz. What that meant musically is more interesting than the numbers. Instruments that acoustic recording could barely register — the double bass, the bass drum, a quiet guitar, an unforced voice — became recordable, so ensembles no longer had to be rearranged around the limits of a horn. Rhythm sections could be heard; a singer could sing rather than shout. Much of what makes recordings from the later 1920s onward sound like music rather than like documents is this change, and it arrived exactly as the traditions in this Journey were first being captured in quantity.
- Knowledge
- Sound recording
- Electrical recording
- Connections
- Sound recording
- Victor and Columbia adopt electrical 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
- Western Electric licensed the Bell Laboratories electrical recording system to Victor and Columbia in 1925; Victor contracted in March and issued its first electrical orchestral recording in April; the Harrison and Maxfield matched-impedance recorder handled roughly 50–6,000 Hz against the acoustic process's roughly 250–2,500 Hz. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to this technical history; the article was not opened, no Bell Laboratories or company record was consulted, and the frequency figures should be read as approximate.
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.
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/atlas?object=TECH_ELECTRICAL_RECORDING&experience=TECH_ELECTRICAL_RECORDING