Re: [ARSCLIST] NY Times: Researchers Play Tune Recorded before Edison

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Friedman" <hsf318@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> And I just read somewhere that the Supreme Court back in the 2nd or 3rd decade
of the last century credited Emile Berliner (you know, that German Jewish guy!)
with many of the inventions usually attributed to Thomas A. and other WASPs.
>
What Emile Berliner perfected...to be exact...was the lateral-cut flat
disc record/player...! Edison had apparently experimented with both,
but being a perfectionist, figured out that the fidelity of a flat
record would vary slightly between first and last turn of the spiral...
while a cylinder record would play at the same rate from first to last
turn (especially if the reproducer was driven across the cylinder by
a feedscrew...!). The difference was that flat disc records could be
stamped out in quantity, while cylinders were not moulded until early
in the 20th century...!

Of course, Edison DID eventually produce disc records...but when he
did, they were 1/4" thick and the reproducer was feedscrew-driven!
In the meantime, Berliner wound up driven into a corner by the
usual phalanx of lawyers, and packed up and moved to Montreal...?!

Steven C. Barr