Part Two: The Phonograph Changed Everything

Recorded sound is so normal now that we barely notice it, but the first time people heard a phonograph it felt impossible. Jack Stanley returns to unpack the social history of early sound recording: the disbelief, the tests, the accusations of fraud, and the moment audiences realized a machine could capture a human voice and play it back on command. We talk about Edison’s instincts for showmanship and why the phonograph succeeds not just as an invention, but as a public spectacle.

From there we follow the medium as it grows up. Wax grooves, cylinders, and discs turn a novelty into a product people bring into the home, changing what music access looks like for everyday listeners who may never see an opera house or Broadway stage. We dig into the birth of the modern recording industry through Columbia, Victor, and the gramophone era, including the power of branding, the Nipper image, and the surprising economics of early records when a few minutes of music can cost a week’s pay.

The conversation also gets honest about culture and conflict: John Philip Sousa’s “canned music” complaints, the shock of early jazz on record, the Great Migration’s role in spreading new sounds, and the barriers Black musicians face even as their styles get copied and sold. We close with Edison’s aggressive marketing ideas like the Edison Realism Test, plus Diamond Disc technology, World War I material shortages, and why these fragile artifacts still matter. If you enjoy deep dives into phonograph history and the origins of the music business, subscribe, share the episode, and leave us a review.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Set The Frame

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello, everybody, and welcome back. I thank you all for such a warm reception. The last episodes had gotten in between our first talk with uh Jack Stanley. Jack is back with us today. He's part of this multi-part conversation we're having regarding phonographs. And today, welcome, Jack. Oh, thank you. Nice to be here. Nice to have you back. And uh we look forward to a lot of these talks. I know you're busy, but we'll uh we'll always have time, I hope. Yeah, do my best, yeah. Sure. We got a very warm reception from your first uh your first conversation. We had verbal, we had audio listeners and video listeners, and there were hundreds and hundreds of people from all over. So I appreciate your time and I appreciate uh your expertise. So I'll leave it up to you where you want to start today.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Well,

Public Shock And Early Skepticism

SPEAKER_03 1:05

as we had discussed, I thought it would be a lot of fun to instead of looking at the phonographs in general, let's talk about how the people reacted to them. You know, it's a fascinating thing. What was the public's reception? What's the social history? You know, if you think about it with the phonograph, and how did it affect us? You've got to look at it this way. First off, anyone alive today, we cannot imagine our world without sound recording. It's as natural to us today as breathing, if you think about it. We don't think about it. It's there. You go into a mall, you go into a store, you go into this, that, and everything else is sound recording. But how it started was really rather shocking, you know. As we talked about in our last thing, that Edison, of course, understands theater, and he introduced the tinfoil phonograph in the offices of Scientific American, got everybody excited. So many people poured into that office, by the way, they were afraid the floor was going to give up. And as soon as that happened and everyone started to write about it, public started to react. And they reacted in various ways. I mean, first off, they said, it's impossible. And professors at various universities said recording sounds impossible. It's of the ether, it's of the air, it's not tangible. And they understood physics. The problem was that Edison didn't. And of course, Edison just did what he did by observation. And of course, once it was proven that he could record it, people didn't believe it really worked. They thought there might be a ventriloquist, there might be someone behind a curtain, and of all things, the one thing that was mentioned quite often was it's an American machine. Therefore, it only understands English. And so what would happen, many people would come in and challenge the phonograph and speak to it in Latin, or speak to it in German, or just do some silly stuff that only they were able to do. You know, Bishop Vincent and Miller from Chautauqua came to visit Edison to prove him a fraud. And Bishop Vincent was very famous for his rapid patter biblical verse. And so they came and they said, We do not believe you to be real, Mr. Edison, with the phonograph. We believe you a fraud. Demonstrate it to us. And he said, No, why don't you record on it? And they had Bishop Vincent do his rapid fire biblical recitation. And all the begots were in the right order, everything was all set, and they walked away with their tail between the legs. They had been totally gobsmacked, you might say, by what Edison had just done. Once again, theater. He understood it. And these folks were totally, totally um destroyed in their mission. Interesting thing that Miller, of course, was the father of his second wife, Mina Miller. And, you know, ten years after this, Edison would marry her. Kind of an interesting thing. And he tried to prove Edison a fraud. And of course, everyone around the world was trying to figure it out. People would talk to it in different languages and it would talk back. They couldn't figure that out at all. It didn't make any sense. And the whole world, as we know, was talking about it, but within a year, the bubble burst because there wasn't much to do with the phonograph. You could make a recording on foil, and then what do you do with it? And so it kind of went into a hiatus, you might say, that by an 80, the tinfoil phonograph was pretty much dead.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Well, not even the not even Edison knew what to do with it, right? His ideas were.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

But you also got to remember, yeah. Also you got to remember that at this point he's very immersed in incandescent lighting. Right. And so the phonograph has been put on the shelf, and he could care less about it at this point. Very focused on what he was doing. And also the money was coming in from JP Morgan to do this, so he wasn't going to do anything to upset the Apple cart. By the way, speaking of social interactions, Edison and JP Morgan got along famously. Both of them loved to giggle, tell jokes, like to dance, and they entertained each other. Edison would always wear a sombrero hat sometimes and dance around the room, and JP Morgan was famous for doing sailors' hornpipes. I mean, this is a match made in heaven with these two. And so they got along rather famously. And so JP Morgan was very, very happy to support Edison in his work. Of course, there were problems, you know, there were arguments and questions and whatever, but you gotta remember the first lighting of New York City was where J.P. Morgan wanted it, right on Pearl Street, right by its offices. So, I mean, it was it was done in that matter, the Pearl Street station. But

Wax Grooves Spark A Recording War

SPEAKER_03 7:02

once Edison kind of lets the phonograph rest a little bit, Jay uh the Bell Tainter crowd gets together. They take a tinfoil, put wax in the grooves, and they recite Shakespeare, which we mentioned before. They said they didn't want to mention a silly nursery rhyme. And as soon as that starts, they use wax. That spurs Edison into action, and he tells them he'll develop the phonograph in spite of them. Because they actually came to him and said, let's work together. And he said, To hell with you, I'm gonna do it on my own. And so war was declared between the Bell Tainter group and and the Edison group. And of course, Edison develops his machine and uses some theater as well. I mean, you see the photograph of Edison looking totally exhausted right by the phonograph after working it on for three days straight. Of course, there's another photograph taken about a half an hour later where he's sitting there pretty happy with the whole crowd, but that's that's something else. And so once the phonograph becomes part of our existence. And and it's interesting to note that it all started by the Columbia Phonograph Division of Edison's company. They started issuing musical cylinders instead of business, because they had the the uh National Phonograph Company thing that they were doing. I don't think it was called National Phonograph. I can't think of the name of it right now. Someone will correct me uh when they're watching this. With Jesse Lippincott, Edison and Jesse Lippincott got together and created a whole series of districts to do business machines. And the one district that was a little bit of a renegade was the Washington, D.C., District of Columbia district. And that was headed by Edward Easton, and they were renegades, and they started putting out musical cylinders. And eventually, that is the group that broke from the Edison group and formed the Columbia Phonograph Company. And eventually they merged with Bell and Tainter, which had created the Graphophone Company. And collectively they became the Columbia Graphophone. And of course, at that point, once we start having musical cylinders, it becomes something that's used in the home. And people would hear music. It wouldn't sound that good. In fact, I remember talking to people when I was young and starting this that were around in the east, and they would talk about how their parents would react to the phonograph. And what they would often say, it said they would say, it sounds better in the next room. It took on the room resonance, perhaps, and it didn't sound so tinny and and kind of nasty. But that's that's a comment that was made by someone in the 18 on the early phonograph. And so you had music starting and all kinds of stuff like that, and that started a whole new genre where people would collect recordings of perhaps popular, operatic, classical, spoken word, and they would start to put these in the house and display them sort of almost like fancy books. You had your photograph, which is an extremely expensive expense uh expense in those days, and you had your cylinders, and eventually you had the Berliner disc. And all of these devices started to become a feature within the home, and it would influence how the home worked and how people understood music. You know, you got to think about it. Years ago, a home entertainment system was your mother at a piano. I mean, that was about it. And so all of a sudden, you could listen to music from an opera, or listening to something from a classical waltz, or hear the spoken word of something from a Broadway show.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

I mean Right, because at that at that time, only affluent people could afford to go to Broadway shows or could go to the opera. Oh, yeah. The common man, especially in rural areas, never had heard an opera.

SPEAKER_03 11:44

Yeah, that's true. Only with a traveling show, and a lot of time you didn't get that kind of quality. You had to go to a vaudeville house in those days, and you would see the eight shows, and they usually had one person doing classical, and they usually weren't of the highest order, and you didn't get to hear the quality singers. And to be honest, on the phonograph, you didn't get to that point either, in many respects. It wasn't until the 20th century, you know, and with the gramophone and typewriter were the really strong advocates of recording operatic and classical voices, ahead of just about everybody else. In

Music Moves Into The Home

SPEAKER_03 12:26

in the United States, we were doing band music, coon songs, and of the like. That was it was very light fair, and occasionally some classical music. GT, which incidentally introduced that image of Nipper looking into the gramophone, which was taken from a, what was it, an Edison Bell cylinder machine initially. That eventually became a copyrighted image for the Victor Company. Interesting thing, how that came about is that Berliner copyrighted that image while he was still in business in the United States. And of course, once he joined Eldridge Johnson and creating the Victor Talking Machine Company on October 3rd, 1901, that image was made part of Victor. And it became the most well-known image in the world. You know, for many years until well into the 20th century, Nipper looking into the gramophone was probably one of the ten most well-known advertising images known, you know, with Coca-Cola and stuff like that. So just to mention the fact with social history, of course, is all of these various things and all of these expensive recordings, as it was said by people back then that they have in a way replaced Dickens and Thoreau and many other great writers on the shelves. There would be the books of the Red Seal Records that cost a small fortune. You know, you could buy a Caruso recording, but it was going to set you back three dollars. That's a hell of a lot of money back in, you know, the first decade of the twentieth century. You know, when the average salary was about five dollars a week. And uh it also led to some social humor too, when the first Lucia Sextet was recorded in 1908, I believe. Um its English translation was what restrains me? And the answer was seven dollars. And that was the price of the record. It was a seven dollar record. So Lutias Extet, what restrains me? And that was a standing joke for a long, long time, right from the Victor catalog. Victor had a very interesting philosophy when it came to recordings. If you got one great singer, it was three dollars. If you got two, it was four. If you got three, it was like five or six, and then if you got four or more, it was seven. And think about that, seven dollars. That's an amazing amount of money. And there was interoffice letters going back and forth in Victor and everyone saying, Don't you think that's a little high? And he said, No, this will attract them like crazy. And it did. People saved up and bought these seven dollar records, you know, three and a half minutes of entertainment uh at the cost of a week's salary plus. That's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

So the were there machines, were they giving away some certain machines at that time when you bought music, or is that more cylinders that the No, there was a Victor had their premium machine.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

It was a Victor P. Yeah, I have a lot of people. And if you went to a dealer, or if you were spending a lot of money in in one thing or another, a company could present you with a machine, or Victor could present you with a machine, or a dealer could present you with a machine. And and there again, I mean, usually the people, if they were buying lots and lots of records, they had a machine already. And the premium machine was, you know, kind of a simple little thing. Um, but that was something that could be done. But you gotta think about the price of these records. That was an awful lot of money. And here's some stuff I wanted to share with you. And I would love questions. If you've got questions, it would be great. Uh makes it easier to toss some stuff back at you.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Well, it was the premium, was the O as well, the O of freebie, or no? No, no, it's just the P. Just a P. And there were a few different versions. I don't know there were P. I think there was three three different versions, I think. Yeah, I think you have one, I have one, and ours is if you compare them, they're like, I think we have, they're like totally different.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Yeah. Um mine is is is right from the very beginning of it. Uh what was the number of it? It was uh 634. 634 just the P, it's the first one. It's right at the very beginning. I there's a handful of machines that are older than that, but it's right at the beginning, as far as I know. But

Victor Branding And Record Sticker Shock

SPEAKER_03 17:52

but you know, think about a couple of things just to throw at you real quick is the Victor Company was really savvy in getting the public involved. You know, they really realized that the way to sell stuff, the way to get people involved was to look at it in a social manner. And they started doing things like creating the Victor Book of the Opera and what we hear in various types of music, and this type of music and educational programs. All of these things to get people involved in recording. This is one of the more unusual ones that you don't see very often.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Um, this one here. Move it a little bit the other way. No, move it the other way. You're okay in in the center a little bit. Just a move there you go.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

This is uh Victorla in correlation with English and American literature. That's really quite a stretch. But uh this I mean, this is examples of the stuff that they did. This is one of the more unusual sides of it. Um because they had to challenge all the battles that were going against the recording industry. Perhaps one of the loudest critics was John Philip Sousa. Interestingly enough. I mean, he goes back with that term can music. And then something absolutely devastating happened. Jazz started coming out on records, which he hated. I'm sure he did. God did he hate it. And he wrote articles for magazines where he was talking about those moaning saxophones, and people dancing and swaying in dangerous ways, and a woman going to a dance wearing a corset is called old ironsides and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I mean, I know I have a cylinder that even before when they were calling it jazz, they were calling it jazz, J A S.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

J A S S. There was a term for jazz, by the way. There was. Yeah, it was used by a lot of musicians years ago as a as kind of a catchphrase of gonna have some fun tonight, gonna get jazz.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

And and polite society got a little upset about that. And uh soon became jazz. But yeah, it started out with jazz, and there was different spellings of it, J-A-S, J-A-S-S, and J-A-Z-Z, whichever area you were from. And of course that had a profound effect. And and Sousa used to commiserate with Thomas Edison, and they could both sit there and fume over the whole world of jazz surrounding them. That must have been fascinating conversations. You know, 'cause Edison Edison was not an ardent fan of jazz either. But he understood that to be successful in the biz, as he liked to call it, you had to let some of that music come in. And so he started listening to it. And it's hilarious to read his comments because he says, Wow, this has got bass. This has got snap. This is good. And you hear another one, he said, This has too much bass. I put the record on, it started dancing across the floor and took off. Or another time he listened to it and said, This is great stuff. Flappers will like this. And perhaps my favorite comment by Thomas Edison listening to a song, he said, How do you dance to this? And one has this image of Edison and his bunny slippers and listening to the music, trying to figure out how to kind. And so I can kind of imagine that stuff. It was fascinating when I was reading through some of that stuff. And he said, you know, the saxophone was never made for jazz. He was an expert on the issue, of course, as we know. And and of course, the public decided what was popular, what was good. Social, social response. And the phonograph would, as time would go on, inspire, influence, change, and totally color uh life. Because life would be changed by what was recorded. And people could change how life was by recording certain types of music, certain types of singers. It totally changed the fabric of the world. It's really quite profound, you know, what happened with sound recording, how it basically was invented and was basically a toy, but eventually it became something that could convey ideas, images, thought, and of course, most importantly, entertainment. And that would I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Well, you had this time period.

Jazz Backlash And Social Change

SPEAKER_01 23:28

You think about the time period at the beginning of the ninth uh of the 1900s, that this jazz is coming in, you know, New Orleans kind of music, and it's a little different. And of course, New Orleans predominantly French, but I mean, even the country, even the state's still set up differently than all the other states. The other ones are almost like a common law district, and uh Louisiana tends to be more French, which is more of a codification system. And at that time you have this great migration, right? Sure. You have you have Jim Crow laws through laws that gets that get substantiated by a case in the United States Supreme Court called Plessy versus Ferguson, which is separate but equal. It becomes the law of the land, right? So now Supreme Court says, you know, you do have to sit in the back of the bus. So everybody starts migrating north, right? Yeah. Where these things it is. And with them comes jazz to Chicago. With them comes jazz to New York. And now it spreads. Affluent people are now seeing, you know, affluent people that happen to be white are now seeing these clubs and going to these clubs that they never have been before.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

That's true. It's interesting to note with that early jazz that the African American community is more or less left out of the recording industry. Like the original Dixieland jazz band is is is is is uh basically New Orleans jazz, but they're all white musicians copying what they heard by a lot of the African American community. However, soon you have WC Handy starts recording and Noble and Sissel. You know, I I got to talk to UB Blake. And no, Noble Sissel and UB Blake started in the in the teens, and I got to talk to UB Blake in the early 90s, and he was fascinating to talk to. Talk to him on the phone. And uh the interesting thing was he mentioned that much of his work in his early days was playing piano in houses of ill repute, as he put it. And and of course, they did that uh a lot of music and and and that whole Broadway show, which I can't think of the name of right off the top of my head, but it was Noble and Noble and Blake, or Sicil and Blake, excuse me. And they did their first Broadway show, which became a big, big, big hit. And of course, UB Blake, of course, would live until 1983. Actually, he and and Sissel made a recording for Edison. And the other thing that's kind of interesting about that is that the African-American community would start to become a part of the industry. You had race records with some, but also what is very interesting, you had a lot of small independent labels, you know, Black Swan and things like that, that would record a lot of these great, great jazz performances, you know, and a lot of the torch singers of the 20, a lot of them in Chicago. A lot of this was all in Chicago. Um, because that was one of the jazz centers of uh that movement with a lot of the African American community.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

It's funny, it's so similar to what happened with rock and roll. Sure. It all came from the South and all came up, and there were these Cadillac Records and you know, Sun Records, which is in the South, but Cadillac, I believe, was in Chicago. And they all did did about the same same type of things where people migrated and then obviously white people started copying how they played and how they how they wrote their songs.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Yeah, so that's so true. It's it's very true because And you have to remember that there were so many barriers to individuals to make recordings or to even be heard by you know the talent agents looking for people.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Even in the North. It wasn't just the South. Yes, very much so. Yeah. So, you know, you may not have had to sit in the back of the bus in Chicago. Still the opportunities were not available. Certainly, certainly, certainly.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

Very, very true.

Edison Marketing Tests And Collector Lore

SPEAKER_03 28:10

You know, another thing that was kind of interesting as well is the Edison company tried a lot of things to garner an understanding with the public and to share the phonograph to try to find ways of selling things. And Edison came up with an idea, and it was in his notebooks. It was going to be they would send a Edison Diamond Disc phonograph to barbershops all over the country. And he said, Where do people hang out and talk? In the barbershop. And so they worked out these deals where they would send the phonographs to the barber shops. And the unfortunate thing that happened is the phonographs rarely got played. They were too busy talking to each other, and that died pretty quick. And of course, we had the tone tests, and they also had something else that's very, very unique, and it was called the Edison Realism Test. And how this worked is they would get people off the street and bring you into a dealer, let's say, and then they would give you this, which you can't see here. But I'll read this to you because it's really quite fascinating. Thank you. The realism test was this they would sit you with the back, with your back to the phonograph. You couldn't see what was happening with the phonograph. And then they would ask you some questions. Number one, state the kind of voice, soprano, tenor, etc., or kind of musical instrument you wish to hear. Number two, sit with your back toward the instrument as mentioned. Three. Spend two minutes looking through the scrapbook, which will be handed to you by the demonstrator. Now they had this wonderful scrapbook that had all kinds of newspaper articles about the great singers and the great entertainers and the great this and that that were recording for Edison and a lot of the tone tests and whatever. And so this was all put together carefully so people would look at it and get a sense of how important Edison recordings were. So it says then select one of the clippings at random and read it carefully. Five. Having read the clipping, recall the last time you heard the kind of voice or instrument in which you were asked to hear. Picture the scene. When it is clearly in your mind, say to the demonstrator I am ready. Then number six. After about forty five seconds after the music begins, close your eyes slowly and keep them closed for a minute or more. Then open your eyes for fifteen seconds, but do not gaze at your surroundings. After this, close your eyes again and keep them closed until the end of the selection. This is some pretty wild instructions. And then the result. Are you ready? The result is you should get the same emotional reaction experienced when you last heard the same kind of voice or instrument. If you did not obtain this reaction at the first test, it is due to the fact that you have not totally shaken off the influence of your surroundings. In that case, you should repeat the test until you are no longer influenced by your surroundings. I want you to get lost in the moment. Yeah. This is your instruction manual. This was given to me by a wonderful collector. He's long gone now. His name was Dave Heights. And Dave Heights had his own museum building in his yard. It was a big barn, two floors, filled with every kind of machine you can imagine. And uh he had the scrapbooks. He had everything. It was amazing. I mean, he was a pharmacist who had developed some patents, so he he was able to purchase quite a bit of stuff, and he created a massive collection, like right from the get-go. And I used to work with him sometimes, and we were thinking of doing a book together. Uh and so I would go up there and we'd just sit down and start going through stuff, and every once in a while he'd say, Here, take this. You you should have one of these. And I said, Thank you. And he used to share some of the stuff that he had with me. And uh unfortunately he got ill and passed away 20 years ago. He was quite young, he was like 60 years of age at the time.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

Yeah, unfortunately. There's so much, and I said this to someone the other day. There's so much of this hobby, is the oral tradition. Because money is, even though there's books and things, it's really from one collector or one observer to the next. Sure. There's so much of it that hasn't been deposited down. I and so much of it we're not sure if it's what is true and what's not, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

That's the that's the unfortunate problem with a lot of history, really, if you think about it. Sure. History, history is relative sometimes. But you know, something there is some of the stuff. Like, like this, this is something that's not really talked about much at all. And it's a fascinating chapter in sound recording. I mean, the editing realism.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

I'm sorry. So when when that was that I wanted to ask you about

Diamond Discs And Edisons Total Control

SPEAKER_01 34:36

that. So was that done with diamond discs? Yes or with everything? Diamond discs. Diamond discs.

SPEAKER_03 34:42

The cylinder never was used in that kind of fashion. For for several reasons. First off, Edison was not really that involved with the cylinder. You know, he was busy doing so many different things. Uh, let's say, from 1895, let's say, to like 1910. You know, think of Edison Cement, you know, and there was so much going on with cement. Cement was one of the biggest products of the Edison Company and probably the least talked about. Um the Panama Canal was partially made of Edison cement.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Right. But what about he did pick the music though, didn't he? For cylinders, or no? Did someone else do?

SPEAKER_03 35:35

No. That's the interesting thing. A lot of the music for the cylinders he didn't. He had people that were picking a lot of the music. There were times he did. He had Victor Herbert working for him for a short while. And Victor Herbert, of course, was a composer, musician of the highest order. And he worked with Edison for a very short time. And Herbert couldn't tolerate Edison because Edison's views on music drove Herbert nuts. And eventually Herbert told Edison what to do with his ideas about music and left and refused to ever deal with Edison again. But with the disc, it was something totally different because the cylinder industry, the cylinder biz, as Edison liked to call it, its biggest moments were in that period of time, 1895 to 1910. That was the major time of the cylinder. The cylinder was starting to die after like 1908 with the introduction of the four-minute cylinder. It wasn't dying fast, but it was dying. It was a slow progression. When the disc finally starts, it's at the end of this period. Edison's in his 60s. He's not in his 40s, he's not at that busy point in his life. And also, his health has taken a slight turn. And, you know, as I mentioned before, he's a diabetic. And Mrs. Edison kind of reads him the Riot Act and said, we're going to slow down. And so he finds out that there are experiments going on with disc records. Because everybody in the company is saying we're dealing with a dying animal here, the cylinder. We need to get to the disc industry. He could have purchased interest, deciding interest in the Columbia Phonograph Company. It was offered to him, and he turned it down, which would have given access to a disc industry and a cylinder industry, if you think about it. But when he discovers that there is interest and some experimentation, he announces to everyone that I am ready to do the disc and I'm going to head the project. Which too many, they said, well, you know, don't you want to look at some cement? You know.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

And so he takes over. And when you look at the diamond discs, and I don't know how many I have, probably five or six hundred. When you look at them, you could see where he was, and maybe somebody else started taking control.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

Oh, well, you know, the interesting thing about the diamond discs is a composite record, of course. Right. Much of it was developed by Jonas Ellsworth, which is a name we don't hear very often. That was Edison's chemist. Allsworth developed a lot of all the chemical variations for Edison. He dies, I think, around 1914 or so, 1915. And it's a big loss for Edison. But he develops the condensite, that whole plastic. Very much like bakelite. I mean, and so much like bakelite that bakelite and the condensite company are suing each other like crazy. Because they're basically developed around the same time and basically the same kind of thing. And what's really fascinating, they're about eight miles apart. Theodore Bakelin is in Newark, New Jersey, and Edison and is in West Orange, New Jersey. I mean, they're they're practically close enough to wave at each other. And the uh battle goes on and on and on between bakelite and cadensite. What's really interesting, just to jump way past this, is once Edison's done with the phonograph and it's all left to go, the Dow Chemical Company purchases not only bakelite, but also cadensite. So the cadensite company is under the umbrella of the Dow Company today. Which is kind of an interesting thing. But to go back, that diamond disc took a lot of research, practice, and experimentation to to make it what it was. I mean, it is perhaps the most phenomenal acoustic system developed. And that is due a lot to Edison. I mean, Edison was his anal with this with this disc, and he just focused. And I went through tons and tons of his notebooks and and reading the stuff that he would just go through and they would they would experiment on one little thing and it would be an entire book focused on that one little issue. And then this and that and everything else. And the quality of sound's incredible. What was on the record sometimes is a little debatable because as Edison ran everything and did pick the music, at this point he is judge, jury, executor, I should say. He he has complete control over the phonograph. And if anyone goes against his views, look out. Because he would pick the music. There was a music book, and that would be the allowable music. Nobody could come and make a record of their greatest hit. They had to see if the music was in the music book. And if it wasn't, they would try to convince that singer, that instrumentalist, that whatever, to do something that Edison liked. And that led to a lot of problems. One other thing, real quick, to mention about that, he didn't think you needed the name of the artist on the record. Now, if you want to talk about understanding the star system, which Edison did for himself, he should have known that you need the name of the artist. I mean, if you're gonna sell a recording by a famous singer, put their name on it. You know, you don't want to see tenor with orchestra, bass with orchestra, violinist, string quartet. Well, who are they? That's insane. But for a while, the Edison discs, and I'm sure you see that on your Edison discs, there's no name. It just says what it is. And it could be anybody.

SPEAKER_01 42:56

You have to look at the matrix number and then go back to the database and then look up the matrix, and then you find out. And then very interesting. Yeah, it's so simple. That it well, if we didn't have the database, it would would be even less simple. And what's interesting is that you go and you see the same matrix recording matrix, the same recordings, and see where the same recordings were used over and over again by different companies and different um Yeah, you'll see the same matrix that was on a was on a four minute amberola, and now it's on a Diamond Desk. It's interesting, the same recordings are used over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 43:40

Well, yeah. It was a very confusing period of time. And once they got over that mess, and Edison finally was convinced you know something, you should put their name on the record. World War I starts.

War Shortages Factory Fire And Lasting Impact

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Right.

unknown 43:59

And

SPEAKER_03 44:00

And those records used a lot of chemicals from Germany. And suddenly the chemicals weren't coming anymore. And so they tried to make their own copies of the chemicals, and it they they worked, but they weren't great. And if you notice, there's a great, great deal of uh noise. Those those records made like 1917, 1918, they're they're they're noisier than hell. And even on that recording called Greetings from from the group at Orange or the Gang at Orange, there's someone that's on that record says, I was not responsible for the black-labeled records.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Well, you know, a lot of the chemicals from in Germany, you know, you bring the war were owned by companies in America, right? The DuPonts tried to sue the United States for destroying their chemical plants during the war. Oh, yeah. So, and then somebody said you better knock it off.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

That same thing happened in World War II with Henry Ford.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:13

But the Edison Company was doing all that. And then speaking of World War I, there was also another issue, the entire factory complex burned down.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Right. And everything everybody had a fire, right? Victor had a fire, Edison had a fire. And that's just the nature of the way factories were in those days, unsafe.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Sure, I would say so. I mean, Victor had a number of fires, actually, but none were as spectacular as the Edison fire, because in fact, Edison was on top of his battery building, which is the one building that didn't get damaged. I think the uh administrative building wasn't damaged either. But he was on the roof and he was talking to Charles, his son, and said, Go get your mother. She's never going to see a fire like that. And because it was every color in the rainbow, because now there was every chemical, all those phenol plastics, you know, and the film and and the nitrates and everything else there. So the people, the companies, they all kind of worked together. They could all kind of shared ideas. People the companies would listen to what the public liked and try to satisfy it. Sometimes the public didn't hear what it liked and it would complain, or they wouldn't buy their records, or they didn't like the way they were done. It's it's interesting how all of that happened. How people dislike certain types of music, some people like this, that, and everything else. But nonetheless, as you look at it all, the phonograph recorded sound transformed humanity. We'll never be the same as we were before 1877. Totally became a different animal after that event. It totally changed the way we look at everything and how we listen to everything.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

True. Thank you. It seems like a good place to leave it if you want.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

I think it's a good place to stop. Great. Thank you again for coming. Sure. We look forward to having you again. I know you're busy on the show. I'm sorry. Some other I know you're gonna be busy, right? You have a project coming up?

SPEAKER_03 47:43

Yeah, we're gonna be doing this thing with Lincoln's uh funeral. Um I have the the sheet music for his uh funeral, uh his funeral march, and Gavin Rice is orchestrating it, and we're gonna do a little documentary thing on it. I also have, you know, it's kind of a fun thing. I got it right here next to me so I can share it with you.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Oh, you know something? I don't know where it is.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

I have I have the uh the Lincoln funeral programs. That's great. I thought I had them here, but I don't. They're in another shelf somewhere. But we're gonna do that whole thing on the Lincoln Funeral. It's the 160th anniversary. People love O's and Fives with anniversaries. So we're gonna we're gonna have that funeral march, and Gavin's gonna have that all put together. And I haven't talked to to Wyatt, but I thought this would be a great thing to record on Cylinder. I agree. I think that would be kind of a cool thing to do. But maybe Wyatt will see that before I get to talk to him. But nonetheless, it's a pleasure joining you again and look forward to joining us some more.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Yes, it is great. Everyone's gonna love it. I thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Please like and subscribe our site, and uh thank you, Jack, again, for just a great hour of great stories and and significant facts we all need to remember. So thank you. Thank you so much. All right, take care. Bye everybody.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Bye bye. Bye.