Word: phonographers
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...ever get tired of listening to your Bruce Springsteen records, Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library has something a little different for you: tapes of 81 World War II-era phonograph records advertising Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound...
Before compact disks came along, the method of capturing and replaying music had changed little since Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Conventional records store sound in the form of tiny waves cut into vinyl grooves. When a diamond or sapphire stylus passes over them, its vibrations create a tiny electrical current that is converted back into sound. Tape players work in a similar way, reading sound from magnetized particles on plastic ribbon. Both methods involve a process known as analog recording, in which the music is represented as a physical replica, or analog, of the original sound...
Experience should also make us wary of dramatic claims for the impact of the new technology. Thomas Edison was clearly wrong in declaring that the phonograph would revolutionize education. Radio could nor make a lasting impact on the public schools even though foundations gave generous subsidies to bring programs into the classroom. Television met a similar fate of glowing predictions heralding its powers to improve learning...
...evidence is impressive. "Everything that can be invented has been invented," said the head of the U.S. Patent Office in 1899. Declared Wilbur Wright in 1901: "Man will not fly for 50 years." Thomas Edison, circa 1880: "The phonograph . . . is not of any commercial value." Albert Einstein, 1932: "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear] energy will ever be obtainable." Richard Wooley, then Britain's Astronomer Royal, 1956: "Space travel is utter bilge...
Manhattan, 1921. A lovely, dark-haired girl, just approaching her teens, dances alone to the torpid ecstasy of a phonograph record in the back room of a Lower East Side tavern. Through a crack in the wall, a boy about the same age watches, transfixed. The dance over, Deborah (Jennifer Connelly) turns her back to the boy and slips out of her white chiffon dress, displaying herself in a vision that the young Noodles Aaronson will carry throughout his long, violent life. This is the first scene of the Ladd Co.'s Once upon a Time in America...