vintage cylinder phonograph Thomas Edison

$

38

You Are Bidding On Seven (7) Thomas Edison Cylinder Phonographs (Vintage Records).

Well, today (tuesday) I went to an estate auction in upper ohio.

I bought four boxes of mostly vintage atifacts. Some are really old, some I cant really make out the dates. Such as tins, some vintage, bottles (vintage), etc....

So, again keep an eye out for my other auctions. You might see somthing thats vintage; but that I posted as a regular auction

Advantages of cylinders

The cylinder system had certain advantages. As noted, wax cylinders could be used for home recordings, and "indestructible" types could be played over and over many more times than the disc. Cylinders usually rotated twice as fast as contemporary discs, but the linear velocity was comparable to the inner most grooves of the disc. In theory, this would provide generally poorer audio fidelity. Furthermore, since constant angular velocity translates into constant linear velocity (the radius of the helical track is constant), cylinders were also free from inner groove problems suffered by disc recordings. Around 1900, cylinders on average were indeed of notably higher audio quality than contemporary discs, but as disc makers improved their technology by 1910 the fidelity differences between better discs and cylinders became minimal.

Cylinder phonographs generally used a worm gear to move the stylus in synchronization with the grooves of the recording, whereas most disc machines relied on the grooves to pull the stylus along. This resulted in cylinder records played a number of times having less degradation than discs, but this added mechanism made cylinder machines more expensive.

Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1888–1915), these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was played on a mechanical phonograph. The competing disc-shaped gramophone record system triumphed in the market place to become the dominant commercial audio medium in the 1910s, and commercial mass production of phonograph cylinders ended in 1929.

The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison on 18 July 1877 . His first test using tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked cylinder.[1] Tin foil was not a practical recording medium for everyday use and commercial production. Within a few years Edison developed wax cylinders licensed by Charles Sumner Tainter, Alexander Graham Bell, and Chichester Bell, as the American Graphophone Co. - Later absorbed by the Columbia phonograph Co.

By the 1880s wax cylinders were mass marketed. These had sound recordings in the grooves on the outside of hollow cylinders of wax. These cylinders could easily be removed and replaced on the mandrel of the machine which played them. Early cylinder records would commonly wear out after they were played a few hundred times. The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surface shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them. In 1890 Charles Tainter patented the use of hard carnauba wax as a replacement for the common mixture of paraffin and beeswax used on phonograph cylinders.

Early cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were often sold with recording attachments. The ability to record as well as play back sound was an advantage to cylinder phonographs over the competition from cheaper disc record phonographs which began to be mass marketed at the end of the 1890s, as the disc system machines could be used only to play back pre-recorded sound.

In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing various competing incompatible types of cylinder recordings were made. A standard system was decided upon by Edison Records, Columbia Phonograph, and other companies in the late 1880s. The standard cylinders were about 4 inches (10 cm) long, 2¼ inches in diameter, and played about two minutes of music or other sound.

Over the years the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened so that cylinders could be played over 100 times. In 1902 Edison Records launched a line of improved hard wax cylinders marketed as "Edison Gold Moulded Records".

Cylinders were sold in cardboard tubes, with cardboard lids at each end. These containers helped to protect the recordings. These containers and the shape of the cylinders (together with the "tinny" sound of early records compared to live music) prompted bandleader John Philip Sousa to deride the records as canned music (though that did not stop him recording on cylinders). Record companies usually had a generic printed label on the outside of the cylinder package, with no indication of the identity of the individual recording inside. Early on such information would be written on the labels by hand, one at a time. Slightly later, the record number would be stamped on the top lid, then a bit later the title and artist of the recording would be printed on to labels on the lid. Shortly after the start of the 20th century, an abbreviated version of this information (together with the name of the record company) would be printed or impressed on to one edge of the cylinder itself. Previously, the actual cylinders had no such visual identification (though they would have a spoken announcement of the song or performance title, recording artist, and record company recorded on to the beginning of the recording.)

A few of the tubes are in fair condition for this auction, while most of the sleves and a couple of tubes are worn, and a few are chipped

This auction "as is"

Small paper inserts with the recording information were placed inside the package with the cylinders. At first this was hand written or typed on each slip, but printed versions became more common once cylinders of certain songs were sold in large enough quantities to make this economically practical. Note that in the example in the image below, from Edison Records, 1902, the consumer is invited to cut out the circle with printed information. This paper circle could then be pasted either to the lid of the cylinder container, or (as this example prompts) to a spindle for this cylinder in specially built cabinets for holding cylinder records which were marketed by record companies. Only a minority of cylinder record customers purchased such cabinets, however.

In 1906 the Indestructible Record Company began mass marketing cylinder records made of celluloid, an early hard plastic, that would not break if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out. This hard inflexible material could not be shaved and recorded over like wax cylinders, but had the advantage of being a nearly permanent record. (Such "Indestructible" style cylinders are arguably the most durable form of sound recording produced in the entire era of analogue audio before the introduction of digital audio; they can withstand a great number more playbacks before wearing out than such later media as the vinyl record or audio tape.) This superior technology was purchased by the Columbia Phonograph Company. The Edison company then developed their own type of long lasting cylinder, consisting of a type of plastic called Amberol (which was blue in color) around a plaster core;(the plastic was a phenolic resin, similar to the contemporary "Bakelite") these were called Blue Amberol cylinders, the earlier Amberols being made of wax. Around the same time Edison introduced 4 minute cylinders, having twice the playing time of standard cylinders, achieved simply by shrinking the groove size and spacing them twice as close together in the spiral around the cylinder. Amberol cylinders are of the four-minute variety. Edison made several designs of phonographs both with internal and external horns for playing these improved cylinder records. The internal horned models were called Amberolas. Edison also marketed its "Fireside" model phonograph with a gearshift and a reproducer with two styli that allowed it to play both 2 minute and 4 minute cylinders.