Word: styluses
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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...
...laser can even pass noiselessly over deep scratches that would cause a stylus to make a clicking sound and perhaps get stuck. When the light encounters a blemish, the microcomputer instantly uses the material stored just before and after the scratch to cover up the missing part...
Voters used a stylus-like instrument to punch out boxes for as many as 235 candidates or referenda. After the polls closed, the cards were taken to OIT where they were fed into a card reader that tabulated the votes...
...audio consultant: "The instructions are written in Japan, translated in Japan and printed in Japan, and sometimes the intention of making it clear to people in English does not come through." For example, the directions for one Japanese-made turntable cartridge advise, "Furthermore, cantilever would be damaged when the stylus guard is touched and detouched." Even simple points about simple products can get lost in translation. The instructions for Swimotor, a Hong Kong-made toy that pulls children through water, warn that "the user must every time pay attention especially to the time used with this machine...
Until digital, record technology had not changed much in principle since the Edison cylinder. On conventional LPs, called analog recordings, images of sound waves picked up by a microphone are traced into vinyl grooves; a kind of aural photograph is "developed" when a stylus retraces the grooves and re-creates the sonic vibrations. Digital recordings are akin to the computer-assisted cameras used in space, which translate images into a series of binary numbers that are later reassembled into pictures back on earth. In digital recording a computer takes 44,000 impressions of sound per sec. and assigns each...