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Re: [ARSCLIST] Early Stereo 1881 and 1931 (Was - Dynadoodoo
You might find interesting the "Appendix A" to my Instrument of Gift to the Library of Congress, regarding what I believe to be the earliest known Bell Labs experiment by Dr. Arthur Keller regarding 33 1/3 LP high fidelity stereo sound. Rather than attach it, I am reprinting it below.
Alex Kogan
Films Around The World, Inc.
------------------------------
Re: Instrument of Gift of Keller Recordings
APPENDIX A
THE ARTHUR C. KELLER BELL LABORATORIES DISCS
In early 2006 in the course of an informal discussion with Timothy Sugrue, my daughter Suzanne’s father-in-law, he mentioned that he had been storing in his basement a number of metal discs that looked like long-play records; I immediately expressed interest, thinking that they might have been some kind of pressing masters. He related that when he retired as a principal in the New York City School System in 1980, he and his wife Regina began dealing in antiques. In the course of clearing out a home in Bronxville owned by the late Arthur Keller and his wife at the request of their daughter, they came across a quantity of early records, mostly 78 rpm, and the metal discs which comprise the Collection. Mr. Keller had been a senior engineer at Bell Laboratories, reputedly in the genius category. The Sugrues sold the records to various collectors but nobody was interested in the discs; they stored them in their home in Riverdale for more than 20 years. They were given to me by Mr. Sugrue in early May 2006. I examined them, and saw that they were in sleeves made from cardboard, which were mostly identified as “BTL;” two discs that turned out to be nickel on copper, had a very faint “Bell Laboratories” on the nickel-plated side.
I telephoned Jane Klain, the head of research at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City; she immediately thought that they could have been very early record masters, and that there was a very early recording of a Broadway show with Fred and Adele Astaire, and that these might be either a contemporaneous recording of another show or performance, or might be the masters for the Astaire recordings. She contacted a producer of musical television programs for Sony, Didier Deutsch, who was particularly knowledgeable about such early recordings. He expressed great interest in them, and asked that I speak with him.. I did so, and after I described generally what I had found, he arranged to have the discs played for at Sony Music Studios, at 460 West 54th Street, Manhattan, at 10AM on May 25, 2006.
I met with Didier and Matt Cavaluzzo, Sony’s audio expert. He immediately recognized the discs as “negatives” – i.e., master recordings that could be glued to a machine which would press them into wax or vinyl to make records. All but the last of them seemed to have residue of a glue on them, indicating that they had been used to press records. He explained that they were the reverse of the records – whereas the sound on a record is in a groove which has striations along its sides, the sound on the negative is on a pyramid band, with the striations along the sides of the pyramid. To hear the sound, you either had to make a record, or play the negative on a reverse turntable – i.e., it would rotate counterclockwise, as opposed to the clockwise rotation of a phonograph player. While a record stylus would have a single point, the stylus required to play a negative is shaped like a “W”, so that both sides of the pyramid could be “read” by the stylus. Matt experimented with a number of different styli and weights.
The sound on the first disc was clearly that of two women’s voices reading some kind of text; they were so garbled that it was impossible to understand what they were saying. However, the copper disc was etched in reverse lettering “6/1/31" and “33 1/3" indicating clearly that it was well before any previously known 33 1/3 rpm discs. A second disc sounded as if the Bell scientists had simply recorded the sound of rain, punctuated occasionally by thunderclaps. Another disc had only audio tones on it. It was all quite disappointing, until we got to the last disc.
By this time, we had been joined by Glen Corman, Sony’s head archivist, who had heard of the discovery of the discs, and wanted to see what had been found. The sound remained somewhat garbled from disc to disc, but Matt changed turntables, fiddled some more with the stylus and electronic controls, and all of a sudden, in shockingly high-fidelity, the sound became clear, especially for the last disc. We listened raptly to the voices of Mr. Keller, Mr. Collins, and Mr. Henning describe how they were using two microphones placed in front of speakers in “Room 1077" to see if they could record in stereo. They then recorded a brief classical music piece played on the piano, what seems to be have been a tambourine, a bell, and so on.
At this point, Matt went to the computer, “Googled” “Bell Laboratories Stereo Sound Research” and immediately came up with (at http:history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/bell-labs.html) a three page summary of “Sound Recording Research at Bell Labs.” The entry for 1928 indicated that E.C. Wente (developer in 1916 of the condenser microphone to translate soundwaves into electrical waves that could be transmitted by the vacuum tube amplifier, and the developer in 1926 of the moving coil speaker) and A.C. Thuras had developed a moving coil, or “dynamic” microphone; the next entry, for April 1931, stated that “Leopold Stokowski invited Bell Labs to begin sound recording experiments with his Philadelphia Orchestra.” The 1930-1931 radio broadcasts by NBC of his orchestra were “disappointing”; he then helped Bell Labs set up a test room at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. “Arthur C. Keller installed a vertical-cut recorder equipped with a new moving coil pickup with sapphire stylus that extended the dynamic range to 10,000 cycles. Surface noise was reduced by coating the wax master with gold film and a layer of electropated [sic] copper, and making the duplicate release copies pressed on cellulose acetate rather than shellac. In December [1931] the first electrical recordings were made and continued throughout the 1931-32 concert season. 125 of these test recordings have been preserved.”
One of the speakers had a very deep, quite loud, distinctive voice; whenever he began speaking, the stylus jumped, and Matt had to reposition it by hand.
The consensus of those present was that the discs constitute an audible chronicle of Arthur C. Keller’s experiments in early 1931, culminating in the negative that records what was probably the final step in the early technical development of 33 1/3 rpm stereo high fidelity recording.
Matt then fed all of the audio being picked up from the last disc, into his computer; when we left an hour later, he was busy editing out the bad and stringing together the good, so that he would be able to make three CD recordings of the output – one for me, one for Mr. Brylaski at the Library of Congress so he could determine if the discs should be in their collection, and one for Didier and Sony.
The information on the sleeves and discs:
1. BTL 1485 6/1/31 brass negative 3 bands
2. BTL 5443 - test tones 500 to 9000 hz
3. Single nickle plated disc in sleeve labeled BTL 850 V105
4. Cabinet #4 BTL 1000 M 152 - test tones
5. Two nickle plated discs in sleeve labeled 3227 - 3273
A. BTL 5323 seems to be a recording of the outdoors, with faint sound of a bird, faint voices, rain, and thunderclaps, and a test tone
B. BTL 5308 - tone, ambient noise
6. BTL 3383-1 This is the final step, with the voices of Mr. [Arthur C.] Keller, Mr. Collins,
and Mr. Henning, in “Room 1077,” with two microphones, etc.
May 25, 2006
______________________________
Alexander W. Kogan, Jr. Tel: (631) 324-8589
15 Ely Brook Road alexjr@xxxxxxxxxxxx
East Hampton, NY 11937
Other Information:
Didier C. Deutsch, Producer Home Tel: (212) 684-0688
155 East 34th Street Mobile: (917) 797-0479
New York, NY 10016 sonydids@xxxxxxx
Jane Klain (212) 621-6631
Museum of Television and Radio
25 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019
-----Original Message-----
>From: "joe@xxxxxxxxxxx" <jsalerno@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Mar 19, 2008 9:35 AM
>To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early Stereo 1881 and 1931 (Was - Dynadoodoo
>
>it may be more difficult than it seems
>
>those machines were spring driven, assuming any kind of speed stability
>is probably going to be an exercise in frustration - unless you can
>write a computer progarm that will modify one "track" to conform to the
>other. Instability will be randon and unpredictable I would say
>
>you may have 2 records playing simultaneously, but creating a stereo
>image requires maintaining very tight sync, as in a tolerance of miliseconds
>
>it seems we have discussed this on this list or 78-L in the past
>
>joe salerno
>
>Steven C. Barr(x) wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Robert J Hodge" <rjhodge@xxxxxxx>
>>> The Columbia Multiplex Grand Graphophone of 1900 used a single wax
>>> cylinder which contained three tracks designed to be played back
>>> simultaneously with three reproducers through three horns.
>>> If the three tracks were recorded with three horns and 3 recorders, then
>>> this could easily be one of the first stereophonic machines.
>>>
>> Well...IF one could find multiple copies of any early cylinders made
>> before the emergence of duplicates by moulding (that is, when multiple
>> copies were made by positioning the artist in front of an array of
>> machines...!)...it MIGHT be possible to find two copies which came
>> from the two machines at each end of the array...which would enable
>> the reconstruction of a "stereo" version...?!
>>
>> Steven C. Barr
>>