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1870s

1870s

Events and Trends

Technology

- The invention of the telephone (1876) by Alexander Graham Bell.
- The light bulb was invented.
- The phonograph is invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison.

Science

- Ludwig Boltzmann's statistical definition of thermodynamic entropy

War, peace and politics

- Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) results in the collapse of the Second French Empire and in the formation of both the French Third Republic and the German Empire
- Continuing expansion of the British Empire; beginning of the New Imperialism
- Bulgaria and Romania declare independence following war against Turkey

Other

- In the United States, continuation of post-Civil War reconstruction until its conclusion under President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877

World Leaders

- Emperor Franz Josef (Austria-Hungary)
- Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada)
- Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie (Canada)
- Tongzhi Emperor (China)
- Guangxu Emperor (China)
- Emperor Wilhelm I (Germany)
- Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Germany)
- King Victor Emmanuel II (Italy)
- King Umberto I (Italy)
- Emperor Meiji (Japan)
- Pope Pius IX
- Pope Leo XIII
- Emperor Alexander II (Russia)
- Queen Victoria (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (United Kingdom)
- Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (United Kingdom)
- President Ulysses S. Grant (United States)
- President Rutherford B. Hayes (United States) Category:1870s ja:1870年代

Telephone

The telephone or phone (Greek: tele = far away and phone = voice) is a telecommunications device which is used to transmit and receive sound (most commonly voice and speech) across distance. Most telephones operate through transmission of electric signals over a complex telephone network which allows almost any phone user to communicate with almost any other. telephone network

Introduction

telephone network]] There are four principal means by which an end user using a telephone handset may connect to a telephone network: a traditional fixed phone "landline", which uses dedicated physical wire connections connected to a single location; wireless and radio telephones, which use either analog or digital radio signals; satellite telephones, which utilize telecommunications satellites; and voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephones, which use broadband internet connections. Between end users, transmissions across a network may be carried by fiber optic cable, point to point microwave or satellite relay. Until relatively recently, a "telephone" generally referred only to landlines. Cordless and mobile phones are now common in many places around the world, with mobile phones expected to gradually displace the conventional landline telephone. Unlike a mobile phone, a cordless telephone is considered to be landline because it is only useable within a short distance of a small personal or domestic base station connected to a fixed phone line. The identity of the inventor of the electric telephone remains in dispute. Antonio Meucci, Philip Reis, and Alexander Graham Bell, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention.

History

invention] The very early history of the telephone is a confusing morass of claim and counterclaim, which was not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits which hoped to resolve the patent claims of individuals. There was a lot of money involved, particularly in the Bell Telephone companies, and the aggressive defense of the Bell patents resulted in much confusion. Additionally, the earliest investigators preferred publication in the popular press and demonstration to investors instead of scientific publication and demonstration to fellow scientists. It is important to note that there is probably no single "inventor of the telephone". The modern telephone is the result of work done by many hands, all worthy of recognition of their addition to the field.

Early development

The following is a brief summary of the history of the invention of the telephone:
- 1849 Antonio Meucci, an Italian living in Havana, demonstrates a device later called a telephone. (The demonstration involves direct electrical connections to people. See Physiophony)
- 1854 Charles Bourseul publishes a description of a make-break telephone transmitter and receiver but does not construct a working instrument.
- 1854 Meucci demonstrates an electric telephone in New York. [http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/meucci.html]
- 1860 Johann Philipp Reis demonstrates a make-break transmitter after the design of Bourseul.
- 1860 Meucci supposedly demonstrates his telephone on Staten Island.
- 1861 Reis manages to transfer voice electrically over a distance of 340 feet, see Reis' telephone.
- 1871 Meucci files a patent caveat (a statement of intention to patent).
- 1872 Elisha Gray founds Western Electric Manufacturing Company.
- July 1873 Thomas Alva Edison notes variable resistance in carbon grains due to pressure, but shelves the discovery.
- 1874 Gray demonstrates his liquid transmitter telephone at the Highland Park Presbyterian Church.
- 2 June 1875 Alexander Graham Bell first transmits voice.
- 1 July 1875 Bell first uses a bi-directional capable telephone (Both the transmitter and the receiver were identical membrane instruments.)
- 14 February 1876 Bell files his first patent on the telephone.
- Two hours later Gray files his patent caveat.
- 30 January 1877 Bell patents the electro-dynamic transmitter, receiver telephone telephone

Later history

1877 The history of additional inventions and improvements of the electrical telephone includes the carbon microphone (later replaced by the electret microphone now used in almost all telephone transmitters), the manual switchboard, the rotary dial, the automatic telephone exchange, the computerized telephone switch, Touch Tone® dialing (DTMF), and the digitization of sound using different coding techniques including pulse code modulation or PCM (which is also used for .WAV files and compact discs). Newer systems include IP telephony, ISDN, DSL, mobile cellular phone systems, cordless telephones, and the third generation cell phone systems that promise to include high-speed packet data transfer. The industry has divided into telephone equipment manufacturers and telephone network operators (telcos). Operating companies often hold a national monopoly. In the United States, the Bell System was vertically integrated. It fully or partially owned the telephone companies that provided service to about 80% of the telephones in the country and also owned Western Electric, which manufactured or purchased virtually all the equipment and supplies used by the local telephone companies. The Bell System divested itself of the local telephone companies in 1984 in order to settle an antitrust suit brought against it by the United States Department of Justice. In 1926 Bell Labs and the British Post Office engineered the first two-way conversation across the Atlantic. The first commercial transatlantic telephone call was between New York City and London and occurred on January 7, 1927.

Digital Telephony

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) has gradually evolved towards digital telephony which has improved the capacity and quality of the network. End-to-end analog telephone networks were first modified in the 1970s by upgrading long-haul transmission networks with SONET technology and fiber optic transmission methods. Digital transmission made it possible to carry multiple digitized switched circuits on a single transmission medium (known as multiplexing). While today the end instrument remains analog, the analog signals reaching the aggregation point (Serving Area Interface (SAI) or the central office (CO) ) are typically converted to digital signals. Digital loop carriers (DLC) are often used, placing the digital network ever closer to the customer premises, relegating the analog local loop to legacy status.

Wireless phone systems

While the term "wireless" means radio and can refer to any telephone that uses radio waves it is primarily used for cell phones. In the United States wireless companies tend to use the term wireless to refer to a wide range of services while the cell phone itself is called a mobile phone, mobile, cell phone or simply cell with the trend now moving towards mobile. The changes in terminology is partially due to providers using different terms in marketing to differentiate newer digital services from older analog systems and services of one company from another.

Cordless telephone

marketing Cordless telephones, first invented by Teri Pall in 1965, consist of a base unit that connects to the land-line system and also communicates with remote handsets by low power radio. This permits use of the handset from any location within range of the base. Because of the power required to transmit to the handset, the base station is powered with an electronic power supply. Thus, cordless phones typically do not function during power outages. Initially, cordless phones used the 1.7 MHz frequency range to communicate between base and handset. Because of quality and range problems, these units were soon superseded by systems that used frequency modulation (FM) at higher frequency ranges (49 MHz, 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz). The 2.4 GHz cordless phones can interfere with certain wireless LAN protocols (802.11b/g) due to the usage of the same frequencies. On the 2.4 GHz band, several "channels" are utilized in an attempt to guard against degradation in the quality of the voice signal due to crowding. The range of modern cordless phones is normally on the order of a few hundred meters.

Cellular phone

Modern mobile phone systems are cell-structured. Radio is used to communicate between a handset and nearby cell sites. When a handset gets too far from a cell site, a computer system commands the handset and a closer cell site to take up the communications on a different channel without interrupting the call. Radio frequencies are a limited, shared resource. The higher frequencies used by cell phones have advantages over short distances. Connection distance is somewhat predictable and can be controlled by adjusting the power level. By only using enough power to connect to the "nearest" cell site phones using one cell site will cause almost no interference with phones using the same frequencies on another cell site. The higher frequencies also work well with various forms of multiplexing which allows more than one phone to connect to the same tower with the same set of frequencies.

Cordless/mobile phone

There are phones that work as a cordless phone when near their corresponding base station (and sometimes other base stations) and work as a wireless phone when in other locations but for a variety of reasons did not become popular. Some kinds of cordless phones work like cellular phones but only within a small private network covering a building or group of buildings. These kinds of systems using VoIP are popular in hospitals and factories where the same wireless network can be used for both data and voice.

VoIP Telephony

VoIP phone]] Also known as Internet telephony or Voice over IP (VoIP), digital telephony is a disruptive technology that is rapidly replacing traditional telephone networks. In Japan and Korea up to 10% of subscribers, as of January 2005, have switched from analog to digital telephone service. A recent Newsweek article suggested that Internet telephony may be "the next big thing." [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6831938/site/newsweek/] Digital telephones use a broadband Internet connection to transmit conversations as data packets. In addition to replacing the PSTN, digital telephony is also competing with mobile phone networks by offering free or lower cost connections via WiFi hotspots. As mentioned above VoIP is also used on private wireless networks which may or may not have a connection to the outside telephone network.

Telephone equipment research labs

Bell Labs is a noted telephone equipment research laboratory, amongst its other research fields.

Telephone operating companies

In some countries, many telephone operating companies (commonly abbreviated to telco) are in competition to provide telephone services. Some of them include those in the following list. However, the list only includes providers of copper wires from the exchange to the user, not those who only supply "Voice over IP" or only transport voice signals between exchanges. See also: List of telephone operating companies

Trivia

- The modern handset came into existence when a Swedish lineman tied a microphone and earphone to a stick so he could keep a hand free.
- The folding portable phone was an intentional copy of the fictional futuristic communicators (which in use actually more closely resembled walkie-talkies, Nextel-style) used in the television show Star Trek.

Patents

- [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=174465.WKU.&OS=PN/174465&RS=PN/174465 US174465] -- Telegraph -- A. G. Bell

References

- Huurdeman, Anton A. (2003). The Worldwide History of Telecommunications, IEEE Press and J. Wiley & Sons, 2003. ISBN 0471205052 Category:Telephony Category:Office equipment ja:電話 ms:Telefon simple:Telephone th:โทรศัพท์

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-American scientist and inventor. He was, until recently, widely considered to be the inventor of the telephone, although this matter has become controversial, with a number of people claiming that Antonio Meucci was the 'real' inventor. In addition to his work in telecommunications technology, he was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology.

Biography

Born Alexander Bell in Edinburgh, Scotland, he later adopted the middle name Graham out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a family friend. His family was associated with the teaching of elocution: his grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Alexander Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The latter has published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in Edinburgh in 1868. In this he explains his method of instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions of their lips. Alexander Graham Bell was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh, from which he graduated at the age of 13. At the age of 16 he secured a position as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. The next year he spent at the University of Edinburgh. From 1866 to 1867, he was an instructor at Somersetshire College at Bath, Somerset, England. While still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother. In 1870, at the age of 23, he immigrated with his family to Canada where they settled at Brantford. Before he left Scotland, Bell had turned his attention to telephony, and in Canada he continued an interest in communication machines. He designed a piano which could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. In 1873, he accompanied his father to Montreal, Canada, where he was employed in teaching the system of visible speech. The elder Bell was invited to introduce the system into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, but he declined the post in favor of his son, who became Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University's School of Oratory. At Boston University he continued his research in the same field, and endeavored to produce a telephone which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech. With financing from his American father-in-law, on March 7, 1876, the U.S. Patent Office granted him Patent Number 174,465 covering "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ... by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound", the telephone. After obtaining the patent for the telephone, Bell continued his many experiments in communication, which culminated in the invention of the photophone-transmission of sound on a beam of light — a precursor of today's optical fiber systems. He also worked in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the eighteen patents granted in his name alone and the twelve he shared with his collaborators. These included fourteen for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for hydroairplanes, and two for a selenium cell. Bell had many great ideas that he thought of that are now real inventions. During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record, as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the computer, and the CD-ROM. Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At Beinn Bhreagh, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses. In 1882, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1888, he was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society and became its second president. He was the recipient of many honors. The French Government conferred on him the decoration of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), the Académie française bestowed on him the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs, the Royal Society of Arts in London awarded him the Albert medal in 1902, and the University of Würzburg, Bavaria, granted him a Ph.D. He was awarded the AIEE's Edison Medal in 1914 for "For meritorious achievement in the invention of the telephone." Bell married Mabel Hubbard, who was one of his pupils at Boston University, as well as a deaf-mute, on July 11, 1877. His invention of the telephone was actually a device he was trying to create that would allow him to communicate with his wife and his deaf mother. He died at his estate at Beinn Bhreagh, Canada, near Baddeck, Canada, in 1922 and is buried alongside his wife atop Beinn Bhreagh Mountain overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by two of their four children. Bell was named among the "American Greats".

Bell and decibel

The bell is a unit of measurement invented by Bell Labs and named after Bell. The bell was too large for everyday use, so the decibel (dB), equal to 0.1 B, became more commonly used. The dB is commonly used as a unit for measuring sound intensity.

The photophone

Another of Bell's inventions was the photophone, a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light, which he developed together with Charles Sumner Tainter. The device employed light-sensitive cells of crystalline selenium, which has the property that its electrical resistance varies inversely with the illumination (i.e., the resistance is higher when the material is in the dark, and lower when it is lighted). The basic principle was to modulate a beam of light directed at a receiver made of crystalline selenium, to which a telephone was attached. The modulation was done either by means of a vibrating mirror, or a rotating disk periodically obscuring the light beam. This idea was by no means new. Selenium had been discovered by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1817, and the peculiar properties of crystalline or granulate selenium were discovered by Willoughby Smith in 1873. In 1878, one writer with the initials J.F.W. from Kew described such an arrangement in Nature in a column appearing on June 13, asking the readers whether any experiments in that direction had already been done. In his paper on the photophone, Bell credited one A. C. Browne of London with the independent discovery in 1878—the same year Bell became aware of the idea. Bell and Tainter, however, were apparently the first to perform a successful experiment, by no means any easy task, as they even had to produce the selenium cells with the desired resistance characteristics themselves. In one experiment in Washington, D.C. the sender and the receiver were placed on in different buildings some 700 feet (213 metres) apart. The sender consisted of a mirror directing sunlight onto the mouthpiece, where the light beam was modulated by a vibrating mirror, focused by a lens and directed at the receiver, which was simply a parabolic reflector with the selenium cells in the focus and the telephone attached. With this setup, Bell and Tainter succeeded to communicate clearly. The photophone was patented on December 18 1880, but the quality of communication remained poor and the research was not pursued by Bell.

Metal detector

Bell is also credited with the invention of the metal detector in 1881. The device was hurriedly put together in an attempt to find the bullet in the body of U.S. President James Garfield. The metal detector worked, but didn't find the bullet because the metal bedframe the President was lying on confused the instrument. Bell gave a full account of his experiments in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in August 1882.

Experimental aircraft

Bell was also interested in aircraft and was a supporter of aerospace engineering research through the Aerial Experiment Association. The Association was officially formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia in October 1907 at the suggestion of Mrs. Mabel Bell and with her financial support. It was headed by the inventor himself. The founding members were four young men, American Glenn H. Curtiss, a motorcycle manufacturer who would later be awarded the Scientific American Trophy for the first official one-kilometre flight in the Western hemisphere and later be world-renowned as an airplane manufacturer; Frederick W. "Casey" Baldwin, the first Canadian and first British subject to pilot a public flight in Hammondsport, New York; J.A.D. McCurdy; and Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, an official observer of the U.S. government. One of the project's inventions, the aileron, is a standard component of aircraft today. (Note that the aileron was also invented independently by Robert Esnault-Pelterie.) In 1909, Bell's Silver Dart made the first controlled powered flight in Canada. However, a series of Canadian flights failed to interest the Canadian military in developing the airplane.

The hydrofoil

The March 1906 Scientific American article by American hydrofoil pioneer William E. Meacham explained the basic principle of hydrofoils. Bell considered the invention of the hydroplane as a very significant achievement. Based on information gained from that article he began to sketch concepts of what is now called a hydrofoil boat. Bell and Casey Baldwin began hydrofoil experimentation in the summer of 1908 as a possible aid to airplane takeoff from water. Baldwin studied the work of the Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini and began testing models. This led him and Bell to the development of practical hydrofoil watercraft. During his world tour of 1910–1911 Bell and Baldwin met with Forlanini in Italy. They had rides in the Forlanini hydrofoil boat over Lake Maggiore. Baldwin described it was as smooth as flying. On returning to Baddeck a number of designs were tried culminating in the HD-4. Using Renault engines a top speed of 54 miles per hour was achieved accelerating rapidly, taking wave without difficulty, steering well, showing good stability. Bell's report to the navy permitted him to obtain two 350 horsepower (260 kW) engines in July 1919. On September 9 1919 the HD-4 set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour. This record stood for ten years.

Eugenics

Along with many very prominent thinkers and scientists of the time, Bell was connected with the eugenics movement in the United States. From 1912 until 1918 he was the chairman of the board of scientific advisors to the Eugenics Record Office associated with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and regularly attended meetings. In 1921 he was the honorary president of the Second International Congress of Eugenics held under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Organizations such as these advocated passing laws (with success in some states) that established the compulsory sterilization of people deemed to be, as Bell called them, a "defective variety of the human race". Much of his thoughts about people he considered defective centered on the deaf because of his long contact with them in relation to his work in deaf education. In addition to advocating sterilization of the deaf, Bell wished to prohibit deaf teachers from being allowed to teach in schools for the deaf, he worked to outlaw the marriage of deaf individuals to one another, and he was an ardent supporter of oralism over manualism. His avowed goal was to eradicate the language and culture of the deaf so as to force them to integrate into the hearing culture for their own long-term benefit and for the benefit of society at large. Although this attitude is widely seen as paternalistic and arrogant today, it was accepted in that era. Although he supported what many would consider harsh policies today, he was not unkind to deaf individuals. He was a personal and longtime friend of Helen Keller, and his wife Mabel, a former student of his, was deaf. Together they had children, none of whom were deaf. Bell was well known as a kindly father and loving family man who took great pleasure playing with his many grandchildren.

External links

- [http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=42027 Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online]
- [http://bell.uccb.ns.ca/ Alexander Graham Bell Institute]
- [http://www.bellhomestead.ca/ Bell Homestead, National Historic Site]
- [http://www.alexanderbell.com/ Alexander Bell.com - Telecom Pioneers by Phonebook of the World.com]
- [http://histv2.free.fr/bell/bell1.htm Bell's speech] before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on August 27, 1880, presenting the photophone. Very clear description. Published as "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light" in the American Journal of Sciences, Third Series, vol. XX, #118, October 1880, pp. 305 - 324; and as "Selenium and the Photophone" in Nature, September 1880.
- [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=174465.WKU.&OS=PN/174465&RS=PN/174465 United States Patent and Trademark Office], patent US174465 for the telephone.
- [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/bellhome.html Alexander Graham Bell family papers] Online version at the Library of Congress comprises a selection of 4,695 items (totaling about 51,500 images) containing correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research. Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham ja:アレクサンダー・グラハム・ベル simple:Alexander Graham Bell th:อเล็กซานเดอร์ เกรแฮม เบลล์

Phonograph

The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s.

Terminology

Usage of these terms is somewhat different in American English and British English; see usage note below. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable or record player. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the alternative term talking machine was sometimes used. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound. The term phonograph meaning "sound writer", is derived from the Greek words φωνη (meaning sound or voice and transliterated as phone) and γραφη (meaning writing or Scripture and transliterated as graphe). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the "-graph" root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words "phonographic" and "phonography," which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 the New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class," and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording.

History

The phonautograph

The earliest known invention of a phonographic recording device was the phonautograph, invented by Edouard-Leon Scott and patented on March 25, 1857. It could transcribe sound to a visible medium, but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded. The device consisted of a horn that focused sound waves onto a membrane to which a hog's bristle was attached, causing the bristle to move and enabling it to inscribe a visual medium. Initially, the phonautograph made recordings onto a lamp-blackened glass plate. A later version used a medium of lamp-blackened paper on a drum or cylinder—an arrangement to which Thomas Edison's later invention would bear striking resemblance. Other versions would draw a line representing the sound wave on to a roll of paper. The phonautograph was a laboratory curiosity for the study of acoustics. It was used to determine the vibrations per second for a musical pitch and to study sound and speech; it was not widely understood until after the development of the phonograph that the waveform recorded by the phonautograph was a record of the sound wavelength that needed only a playback mechanism to reproduce the sound.

Phonograph theory

Charles Cros, a French scientist, produced a theory (April 18 1877) concerning a phonograph. Cros's work was only a theory, though and he did not manufacture a model.

The first phonograph

1877.]] Thomas Alva Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (he patented it on February 19, 1878; US Pat. No. 200,521). Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a phonograph cylinder using an up-down (vertical) motion of the stylus. Edison's early patents show that he also considered the idea that sound could be recorded as a spiral onto a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more "scientifically correct". Edison's patent specified that the audio recording was embossed, and it was not until 1889 that engraved recordings were patented by Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. They named their version the Graphophone. .....

British and American language usage differences

In British English "gramophone" came to refer to any sound reproducing machine using disc records, as disc records were popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. The term "phonograph" is usually restricted to devices playing cylinder records. The term "gramophone" would generally be taken to refer to a wind-up machine, and from the 1960's onwards the more common term would be "record player" or "stereo" for a complete system (most systems were stereophonic by the mid-1960's), and "turntable" for an individual component of a system that played not only records but included other sources. In American English, "phonograph" was the most common generic term for any early sound reproducing machine. Emile Berliner's Gramophone was considered a type of phonograph. "Gramophone" was a brand name, and as such in the same category as "Victrola," "Zon-o-phone," "Graphophone" and "Graphonola" referring to specific brands of sound reproducing machines. The brand "Gramophone" was not used in the USA after 1901, and the word fell out of use there. In contemporary American usage "phonograph" most usually refers to disc record machines or turntables, the most common type of analogue recording from the 1910s on. The word has survived in America based on its nickname form, "Grammy", in the Grammy Awards. Strictly speaking, the gramophone is the machine reproducing sound from an engraved archive, whereas a phonograph is a machine that captures sound onto an engraved archive, i.e. a lathe.

Disc versus cylinder as a recording media

Disc recording is inherently neither better nor worse than cylinder recording in potential audio fidelity. Recordings made on a cylinder remain at a constant linear velocity for the entirety of the recording, while those made on a disc have a higher linear velocity at the outer portion of the groove compared to the inner portion. Edison's patented recording method recorded with vertical modulations in a groove. Berliner utilized a laterally modulated groove. Though Edison's recording technology was better than Berliner's, there were commercial advantages to a disc system:
- The disc could be easily mass produced by molding and stamping, and required less storage space for a collection of recordings.
- The heavy cast-iron turntable acted as a flywheel and helped to maintain a consistent rotational velocity. The cylinder machine, lacking this greater rotational inertia, was susceptible to musical pitch fluctuations, and required more mechanical adjustment and maintenance to avoid this impairment. Berliner successfully argued that his technology was different enough from Edison's that he did not need to pay royalties on it, which reduced his business expenses. Through experimentation, in 1892 Berliner began commercial production of his disc records, and "gramophones" or "talking-machines". His "gramophone record" was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (12.7 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (actual size: 17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. By 1901, ten-inch (actual size: 25.0 cm) records being sold by the Victor Talking Machine Company, and Berliner had sold his interests. By 1908, double sided disc recorded records became demanded by the public, and cylinders fell into disfavor. Edison felt the commercial pressure for disc records, and by 1912, though reluctant at first, his movement to disc records was in full swing. From the mid-1890s until the early 1920s both phonograph cylinder and disc recordings and machines to play them on were widely mass marketed and sold. The disc system gradually became more popular due to its cheaper price and better marketing by disc record companies. Edison ceased cylinder manufacture in the fall of 1929, and the history of disc and cylinder rivalry was concluded.

The dominance of the disc phonograph

Berliner's lateral disc record was the ancestor of the 78 rpm, 45 rpm, 33⅓ rpm, and all other analogue disc records popular for use in sound recording through the 20th century. See gramophone record and vinyl record. Christmas 1925 brought improved radio technology and radio sales, bringing many phonograph dealers to financial ruin. With efforts at improved audio fidelity, the big record companies succeeded in keeping business booming through the end of the decade, but the record sales plummeted during the Great Depression, with many companies merging or going out of business. Booms in record sales returned after World War II. World War II The turntable remained a common element of home audio systems well after the introduction of other media such as audio tape and even the early years of the compact disc. They were not uncommon in home audio systems into the early 1990s.

Turntable technology

Turntable drive systems

Most turntables employ an idler-wheel drive, belt drive or direct drive system to rotate the turntable platter:
- Idler-wheel drive system :Earlier designs used a rubberized idler-wheel drive system. However, non-linear wear and decomposition of the wheel introduced noise and speed variations into the desired audio. These systems generally used a synchronous motor which ran at a speed synchronized to the AC frequency of the power supply. Different speeds were obtained by bringing differing diameter wheels into position against the bottom or inside edge of the platter.
- Belt drive system :Belt drives brought improved motor and platter isolation compared to idler-wheel designs. Motor noise heard as low frequency rumble was much reduced. It is difficult to design multiple speed synchronous motors, consequently DC servomotors with electronics providing speed control, have gained favour. On the most sophisticated designs, optical sensors on the platter are used to ensure the speed of the platter remains stable. Many platters have a continuous series of strobe markings machined around their edge to provide these pulses. Viewing these markings in artificial light at mains frequency produces a stroboscopic effect, which can be used by the operator to verify rotational speed. DC servomotors rotate in steps rather than continuously. This is referred to as 'cogging', and can add noise during playback. Helical armature motors can be used to overcome this. Modern high fidelity applications favor the use of belt-driven systems, as these isolate the revolving platter from motor-induced vibrations. Problems with material instability and deterioration have largely been solved by use of modern elastic polymers.
- Direct drive system :Direct drive turntables drive the platter directly without utilizing intermediate wheels, belts, or gears as part of a drive train. The platter functions as a motor armature. This requires good engineering, with advanced electronics for acceleration and speed control. Matsushita's Technics division introduced the first commercially successful direct drive platter, model SP10, in 1969. The Technics SL-1200 turntable, introduced in 1972, was one of the most successful direct drive turntables ever produced. Its rapid acceleration up to speed, quartz locked speed control, electric braking system and its reliability made it a favourite with radio stations and disc jockeys right across the world. It was particularly popular with the disc jockeys who used it for beatmixing because it had a variable pitch control (first a knob and then a slider on the Mk 2), allowing variations of the rotational speed above and below the usual 33 and 45 rpm settings. The SL-1200 Mk2 turntable was still in production in the 1990s - a remarkable achievement in an increasingly digital world.

Pickup systems

Technics Another major component is the pickup or cartridge. Early electronic phonographs used a piezo-electric quartz crystal for pickup, where the mechanical movement of the stylus in the groove generates a proportional electrical voltage. Crystal pickups are relatively robust, and yield a good level of signal which requires only a modest amount of amplification. A crystal's output tends not to be very linear, that is, it introduces unwanted distortion. It is difficult to make a crystal pickup suitable for stereo reproduction, as the stiff coupling between the crystal and the stylus prevents close tracking of the needle to the groove modulations. This tends to increase wear on the record, and introduces distortion. In all high-fidelity systems, the crystal pickup has been replaced by the magnetic cartridge using either a moving magnet or moving coil. In the moving magnet system, the stylus carries a tiny permanent magnet, which is positioned between a series of fixed coils. As the magnet vibrates in response to the stylus following the record groove, it induces a tiny current in the coils. This current, now a weak alternating current representing the original sound wave from the recording session, is fed to an amplifier which boosts the signal, and then to a loudspeaker where it is converted to sound waves. Because the magnet is so light, and is not coupled mechanically to the coils, the stylus follows the groove far more gently and faithfully. Moving coil systems, are generally more expensive and are preferred by some audiophiles. Here a tiny coil is attached to the stylus, and moves within the field of a permanent magnet. Magnetic cartridges provide a much lower output than a crystal pickup, in the range of a few millivolts, thus requiring a preamplifier stage. Moving-coil cartridges generate an even smaller signal, of a few hundred microvolts, and require additionally a transformer or pre-preamplifier stage. Electrical noise induced by power lines or other EMI are attenuated by various methods, including electromagnetic shielding in the signal cables connecting the pickup to the amplifier. The stylus is typically a conical diamond tip on an aluminum tubular cantilever for a monophonic sound or rugged use, and an elliptical diamond tip for a stereo or binaural signal. Some very expensive styli have ruby, boron, or carbon fiber cantilevers chosen for their exceptional stiffness. DJs use the more rugged conical (sometimes inaccurately called spherical) styli due to the frequent reversals of direction involved in scratching. Phonograph recordings are made with high frequencies boosted. Then during playback the high frequencies are rescaled to the initial level, which reduces groove background noise including clicks or pops. This is accomplished in the amplifier with a 'PHONO' input that uses a standardized RIAA equalization curve.

Arm systems

RIAA equalization Basic arm design has changed relatively little. S-Type tone-arms can be found on even the 1925 Victor Orthophonic phonograph. Originally, even though the tone-arm was light for earlier electric pickup, the full weight rested on the record. Right through to the crystal pickup, this was required to create sufficient tracking force to follow the grooves adequately with the relatively stiff styli. Naturally, record wear was not given much consideration. With the advent of the better technologies, including more powerful rare-earth magnetic cartridges, far lighter tracking forces became possible, and a balanced arm came into use. Many use a counterweight to offset the weight of the arm. The addition of a calibrated dial on the weight, provides for quick change of stylus pressure. Stylus pressure of 1 to 2 grams are currently the standard. Two types of tracking error incident to a standard arm can affect the sound. As the tone arm tracks the groove, the stylus drags tangent to the disc surface and resistance along the arm combines to create a horizontal skating force towards the center of the disc. Modern arms provide a spring-loaded or hanging weight bias which offsets this force, so as to leave the net horizontal force near zero. The second error occurs as the arm sweeps in an arc across a disc recording, causing the angle between the cartridge head and groove direction to change slightly. A change in angle, albeit small, may have an audible effect by creating a differential force on the groove walls. Making the arm longer so as to reduce this angle is one solution. Some arms have been manufactured with an auxillary arm which pivots the cartridge head on the main arm to maintain a constant angle. tangent If the arm is not pivoted at a fixed point, but travels horizontally along a radius of the disc, there will be no skating force and no cartridge angle error. The arm is driven along a linear track using a servomechanism to position it properly. Bang & Olufsen developed the first practical system with its model Beogram 4000 in 1972. Early Edison phonographs had utilized similar but spring powered drives to carry the stylus across the record at a pre-determined rate. In practice the linear tracking system is not widely used today due to its complexity and attendant expense. However some of the most sophisticated systems do employ this technique.

Front-loading systems

A brief mention could be made of one attempt to make the use of records more convenient, in the dawning age of the compact disc. In the early 1980s, one manufacturer designed an upright (front loading) record playing music centre, in which the record was placed in a door which hinged downwards to accept it. The door retracted automatically and the record was spun in the vertical plane. A pair of linear-tracking arms traversed the disk, one on each side, meaning that the whole record could be played without stopping and turning it over. The whole system was mechanically and electronically exceedingly complex, and while it worked, the system as a whole was aimed at the mass market and had only mediocre sound quality. The large physical size of the hinged door made it vulnerable to damage, and the retraction motor was barely able to lift its weight, especially after some years of use.

The phonograph in the 21st century

Turntables continue to be manufactured and sold into the 21st century, although in small numbers. Whilst there are audiophiles who still prefer vinyl records played on record players compared to digital music sources such as compact disc or SACD for their perceived fidelity, these represent an enthusiastic minority of listeners. The quality of the available record players, tonearms, and cartridges has continued to improve, despite the diminishing market. Image:TurntablesWWOZ.jpg
Phonograph turntables at a radio station, 2003 Updates to the 1970s era Technics SL-1200, have remained an industry standard for DJs to the present day. Turntables and vinyl records remain popular in mixing (mostly dance-oriented) forms of electronic music, where they allow great latitude for physical manipulation of the music by the DJ. In hip hop music, the turntable is used as a musical instrument. Manipulation of a record as part of the music rather than for normal playback or mixing, is called turntablism. The basis of turntablism and its most well known technique is scratching, pioneered by Grand Wizard Theodore. It was not until Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" in 1983 that the turntablism movement was recognized in popular music outside of a hip hop context. See list of turntablists for more influential turntablist artists. The laser turntable, which uses a laser as the pickup instead of a stylus in physical contact with the disk, was conceived of in the late 1980s, although early prototypes were not of usable audio quality. Practical laser turntables are now being manufactured by ELPJ. They are favoured by record libraries and some audiophiles since they eliminate wear completely. The turntable remains the preferred sound source in some high end audio systems. Experimentation is in progress in retrieving the audio from old records by scanning the disc and analysing the scanned image, rather than using any sort of turntable, by Ofer Springer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

External links

- [http://www.grammophon.ch/ André's Talking Machines]
- [http://www.cylinder.de/ The Cylinder Archive]
- [http://www.ushistory.net/toc/phono.html Invention of the Phonograph]
- [http://www.todotango.com/english/biblioteca/cronicas/fonovsgra.html The Phonograph vs. the Gramophone]
- [http://www.enjoythemusic.com/tablehistory.htm Phonograph technology in 1958]
- [http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/ Record scanning] - Ofer Springer
- [http://www.phonautograph.com/ www.phonautograph.com]
- [http://www.musicangle.com musicangle]
- [http://www.grammophon.ch/ Swiss Phonograph Collection] category: audio engineering ja:蓄音機

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. "The Wizard of Menlo Park" was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention. Edison is considered the most prolific inventor, holding a record 1,093 patents in his name. Some of these inventions were not completely original but improvements of earlier patents, and were actually works of his numerous employees. Edison was sometimes criticized for not sharing the credit, but it was understood by his experimenters that all work was the property of their employer. Nevertheless, Edison received patents worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust).

Family background

Thomas Alva Edison's ancestors, the Dutch Edisons, emigrated to New Jersey in 1730. John Edison remained loyal to England when the colonies revolted (see United Empire Loyalists). That got him arrested and nearly hanged. He and his family fled to Nova Scotia, Canada, settling on land the colonial government gave those who had been loyal to Britain. In 1811, three generations of Edisons took up farming near Vienna, Ontario. Among them was Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804-1896), an erstwhile shingle maker, tailor, and tavern keeper from Marshalltown, Nova Scotia. He married Nancy Matthews Elliott, of Chenango County, New York. In 1837, Samuel Edison was a rebel in the MacKenzie Rebellion that sought land reform and autonomy from Great Britain. The revolt failed and, like his grandfather before him, Samuel Edison was forced to flee for his life. Unlike his grandfather, he went south across the American border instead of north. He settled first in Port Huron, Michigan, temporarily leaving his wife Nancy and children behind.

Birth

Thomas Edison was born on February 11,1847 in Milan, Ohio to Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810-1871). Thomas was their seventh child. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan.

Early years

Edison had a late start in his schooling due to childhood illness. His mind often wandered and shortly into his schooling, his teacher Alexander Crawford, was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three-months of formal schooling. His mother had been a school teacher in Canada and happily took over the job of schooling her son in his academics. She encouraged and taught him to read and experiment. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." http://www.nps.gov/edis/home_family/fam_album.htm. Many of his lessons came from reading R.G. Parker's School of natural philosophy'. Edison's life in Port Huron was bittersweet. Partially deaf since adolescence, he became a telegraph operator after he saved Jimmie Macenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Little Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan was so grateful that he took Edison under his wing and trained him as a telegraph operator. Edison's deafness aided him as it blocked out noises and prevented Edison from hearing the telegrapher sitting next to him. One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the then impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of his earliest inventions related to electrical telegraphy, including a stock ticker. Edison applied for his first patent, the electric vote recorder, on October 28, 1868.
First marriage
On December 25, 1871 he married Mary Stilwell (1855-1884), and they had three children:
- Marion Estelle Edison (1872-1965) who married Karl Oscar Oeser
- Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876-1935) who married Marie Louise Toohey and later married Beatrice Heyzer
- William Leslie Edison (1878-1937) who married Blanche Travers
Inventor
Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey with the automatic repeater and other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained Edison fame was the phonograph in 1877. While non-reproducible sound recording was first achieved by Leon Scott de Martinville (France, 1857), and scientists at the time (notably Charles Cros) were contemplating the notion that sound waves might be recorded and reproduced, Edison was the first to publicly demonstrate a device to do so. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" after the New Jersey town where he resided. His first phonograph recorded onto tinfoil cylinders that had low sound quality and destroyed the track during replay so that one could listen only once. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced at the Bell Laboratory by Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter; this was one factor which prompted Edison to resume work on his own "Perfected Phonograph". Both were marketed by the North American Phonograph Co, mainly for office dictation. The "gramophone", playing gramophone records, was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, but in the early years, the audio fidelity was worse than the phonograph cylinders marketed by Edison Records.
Second marriage
On February 24, 1886 he married Mina Miller (1865-1947) and had an additional three children:
- Madeleine Edison (1888-1979) who married John Eyre Sloane
- Charles Edison (1890-1969) who took over the company upon his father's death and married Carolyn Hawkins
- Theodore Edison (1898-1992) who married Ann Osterhout
Middle career

Menlo Park
Edison's major innovation was the Menlo Park research lab, which was built in New Jersey. It was the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison invented most of the inventions produced there, though he primarily supervised the operation and work of his employees. Most of Edison's patents were utility patents, with only about a dozen being design patents. Many of his inventions were not completely original, but improvements which allowed for mass production. For example, contrary to public perception, Edison did not invent the electric light bulb. Several designs had already been developed by earlier inventors including Moses G. Farmer (see)[http://www.eliotmaine.org\mosespage.htm], Joseph Swan, Henry Woodward, Mathew Evans, James Bowman Lindsay, William Sawyer, Humphrey Davey, and Heinrich Göbel. In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although English inventor Joseph Swan used the term prior to this. Edison took the features of these earlier designs and set his workers to the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. By 1879, he had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, Edison concentrated on commercial application and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a system for the generation and distribution of electricity. The Menlo Park research lab was made possible by the sale of the quadruplex telegraph that Edison invented in 1874. The quadruplex telegraph could send four simultaneous telegraph signals over the same wire. When Edison asked Western Union to make an offer, he was shocked at the unexpectedly large amount that Western Union offered; the patent rights were sold for $10,000. The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success.
Incandescent era
Western Union In 1878, Edison formed Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts. Edison made the first public demonstration of incandescent lighting on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. On January 27, 1880, he filed a patent in the United States for the electric incandescent lamp. On October 8, 1883, the U.S. patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to market the invention in Britain. In 1880, Edison patented an electric distribution system. The first investor-owned electric utility was the 1882 Pearl Street Station, New York City. On January 25, 1881, Edison and Alexander Graham Bell formed the Oriental Telephone Company. On September 4, 1882, Edison switched on the world's first electrical power distribution system, providing 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan, around his Pearl Street generating station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.
War of the Currents era
Roselle, New Jersey During the initial years of electricity distribution, Edison's DC was the standard for the United States, and Edison had an interest in protecting the large investments made in equipment. During the "War of the Currents" era, George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries due to Edison's promotion of DC for electric power distribution over the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) advocated by Tesla, who patented AC devices in Graz, Austria. (AC could be "stepped-up" to very high voltages with inexpensive transformers, then sent over much thinner wires than DC & "stepped-down" again at the destination, for distribution to users) . Popular myth has it that Edison invented the electric chair, despite being against capital punishment, solely as a means of impressing the public that AC was more dangerous than DC. In fact, the chair was primarily invented Harold P. Brown, who was allowed to use the Edison facilities in West Orange, NJ. [http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa102497.htm] Edison went on to carry out a brief campaign to discredit and discourage the use of AC. It should be noted that, at the time, there was neither an AC motor nor an AC meter, and that many people WERE, in fact, killed by AC. For a time, the annual death rate of electric linemen approached 50% . Widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor to AC. AC distribution systems replaced DC, extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Since the 1950s, high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems have become more common in certain situations.
Work relations
Frank J. Sprague, a former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson, and joined the Edison organization in 1883. Sprague was a good mathematician, and one of Sprague's significant contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was the introduction of mathematical methods. Prior to his arrival, Edison conducted many costly trial-and-error experiments. Sprague's approach was to calculate the optimum parameters and thus save much needless tinkering. He did important work for Edison, including correcting Edison's system of mains and feeders for central station distribution. In 1884, Sprague decided his interests in the exploitation of electricity lay elsewhere, and he left Edison to found the Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company. However, Sprague, who later developed many electrical innovations, always credited Edison for their work together.
Media inventions
The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison holds the patent for the motion picture camera, developed at the West Orange lab. Edison established the standard of using 35 mm (then 1 and 3/8 inches) film that allowed film to emerge as a mass medium. The film included four perforations on the edge of each frame to enable the projector to advance the film properly. He built what has been called the first movie studio, the Black Maria, in New Jersey. There, he made the first copyrighted film, Fred Ott's Sneeze. In 1902, a US court rejected Edison's claim that he be granted sole rights over all aspects of movie production in the case "Edison v. American Mutoscope Company" [http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/edison_mutoscope.cfm], but a syndicate of patent-holders was later formed, to properly protect the group of inventors who made motion pictures possible. In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. In 1894, Edison experimented with synchronizing audio with film; the Kinetophone loosely synchronized a Kinetoscope image with a cylinder phonograph. This was especially important to Thomas Edison because he had been searching for a way to entertain customers that were listening to music on his phonograph. Now, people could go to a penny arcade, put in a coin, put on eartubes, and watch a film through the peep-hole. On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April of 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory & marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City.
Homes
In the 1880s, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida and built (Seminole Lodge) as a winter retreat. Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived across the street at his winter retreat (The Mangoes). Edison even contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends until Edison died. The Edison and Ford Winter Estates are now open to the public.
Trivia

- Thomas Edison was a freethinker, and was most likely a deist, claiming he did not believe in "the God of the theologians," but did not doubt that "there is a Supreme Intelligence." However, he rejected the idea of the supernatural, along with such ideas as the soul, immortality, and a personal God. "Nature," he said, "is not merciful and loving, but wholly merciless, indifferent."[http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/edison.htm 5]
- He purchased a home known as Glenmont in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. The remains of Thomas and Mina Edison are now buried there. The 13.5 acre (55,000 m²) property is maintained by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site.
- His contributions to technology benefitted people world-wide, and in 1878 he was named Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur of France, and in 1889 was made a Commander in the Legion of Honor.
List of contributions

- Phonograph
- Kinetoscope
- Dictaphone
- Edison provided financial backing for Guglielmo Marconi's work on Radio transmission, and obtained several related patents
- Tattoo gun (Based on the Electric Pen, used to make mimeograph copies )
- Incandescent light bulb
Improvements of Edison's work

- Lewis Latimer patented an improved method of producing the filament in light bulbs (there is no evidence that this was ever used by an Edison company)
- Nikola Tesla developed alternating current distribution, which could be used to transmit electricity over longer distance than Edison's direct current due to the ability to transform the voltage.
- Emil Berliner developed the gramophone, which is essentially an improved phonograph, with the main difference being the use of flat records with spiral grooves.
- Edward H. Johnson had light bulbs specially made, hand-wired, and displayed at his home on Fifth Avenue in New York City on the first electrically-illuminated Christmas tree on December 22, 1882.
Tributes
The town of Edison, New Jersey, and Thomas Edison State College, a nationally-known college for adult learners in Trenton, New Jersey, are named for the inventor. There is a Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum in the town of Edison. The Edison Medal was created on 11 February 1904 by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu Thomson, and surprisingly to Tesla in 1917. The Edison Medal is the oldest award in the area of electrical and electronics engineering, and presented annually "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts." Life (magazine) (USA), in a special double issue, placed Edison first in the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years," noting that his light bulb "lit up the world." He was ranked #35 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history. The City Hotel, in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was renamed The Hotel Edison, and retains that name today. The Port Huron Museums, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The depot is appropriately been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum. The town has many Edison historical landmarks including the gravesites of Edison's parents. The United States Navy named the USS Edison (DD-439), a Gleaves-class destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The vessel was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II. In recognition of the enormous contribution inventors make to the nation and the world, the Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 140 (Public Law 97 - 198), has designated February 11, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison, as National Inventor's Day
External links

-
Biography

-
- Dyer, Frank Lewis, "[http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/hst/biography/Edison/toc.html Edison, His Life And Inventions]." (Worldwideschool.org)
- Beals, Gerry, "[http://www.thomasedison.com/ Thomas Edison]"
- Murphy, John Patrick Michael, "[http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/john_murphy/edison.html Thomas Alva Edison]"
Historic sites

- [http://www.tomedison.org/ Edison Birthplace Museum]
- [http://www.edisonhouse.org/ Thomas Edison House]
- [http://www.nps.gov/edis/ Edison National Historic Site]
- [http://www.edisonnj.org/menlopark/ Menlo Park]
- [http://www.phmuseum.org/depot/depot.htm Edison Depot Museum]
- [http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/edison/ Edison exhibit and Menlo Park Laboratory at Henry Ford Museum]
- [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1630&pt=%3Cb%3EThomas%3C/b%3E%20Edison Edison's Grave]
Archives

- [http://edison.rutgers.edu Rutgers: Edison Papers]
- [http://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm Rutgers: Edison Patents]
- [http://www.edisonian.com/ Edisonian Museum Antique Electrics]
- [http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/edison/aa_edison_subj_e.html Thomas A. Edison in his laboratory in New Jersey, 1901]
- "[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/edison/ Edison's Miracle of Light]." American Experience, PBS.
Relations

- [http://www.flyingmoose.org/truthfic/tesla.htm One Story of Nikola Tesla] : Anecdotes concerning the relationship of Tesla and Edison.
Writings and speech

- Edison, Thomas A., [http://www.aldeism.com/paine.html The Philosophy of Thomas Paine]. June 7, 1925. (essay)
Cross references in popular culture

- [http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/edisons%20conquest%20of%20Mars.htm Edison's conquest of Mars] : How Thomas Edison became involved in a sequel to The War Of The Worlds
Timeline

- 1847 Birth in Ohio
- 1854 Went to school first time
- 1855 Had scarlet Fever
- 1869 Moved to New York
- 1871 Marriage to Mary Stilwell (1855-1884)
- 1880 US Census in Raritan, New Jersey
- 1884 Death of Mary Stilwell, his wife
- 1886 (circa) Marriage to Mina Miller (1865-1947)
- 1900 US Census in West Orange, New Jersey
- 1910 US Census in West Orange, New Jersey
- 1920 US Census in West Orange, New Jersey
- 1928 Won an award
- 1930 US Census in West Orange, New Jersey
- 1930 US Census in Fort Myers, Florida
- 1931 Death of Edison Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison, Thomas ms:Thomas Edison ja:トーマス・エジソン simple:Thomas Alva Edison

1870s

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Telephone

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See also

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Phonograph

Terminology

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The phonautograph

Phonograph theory

The first phonograph

British and American language usage differences

Disc versus cylinder as a recording media

The dominance of the disc phonograph

Turntable technology

Turntable drive systems

Pickup systems

Arm systems

Front-loading systems

The phonograph in the 21st century

See also

External links

Thomas Edison

Family background

Birth

Early years

First marriage

Inventor

Second marriage

Middle career

Menlo Park

Incandescent era

War of the Currents era

Work relations

Media inventions

Homes

Trivia

List of contributions

Improvements of Edison's work

Tributes

External links

Biography