"Schalldruck": Another Experimental Berliner Gramophone Recording From 1889
In April 2010, my optical film sound track method first retrieved sound from a spiral—a paper print of a Berliner gramophone disc recorded on December 14, 1889. I'm now pleased to offer a sound file created from an even older, longer, and more elaborate gramophone recording.
This paper print of a seven-inch disc is located in a "gramophone scrapbook" among the Emile Berliner papers at the Library of Congress and was brought to light by Stephan Puille in his article "E. Berliner's Grammophon: The Beginning of the German Talking Machine Industry (Part 1)," published in the June 2010 issue of The Sound Box. At 50 rpm, the total duration is just under two and a half minutes.
The date is announced in the recording itself, in German, as November 11, 1889. A detailed analysis of this recording and its historical context will soon appear in print, but in the meantime, feel free to listen
—or download the mp3 here.
Techniques such as playing recordings backwards, superimposing them, excerpting and rearranging bits of them, altering playback speeds, and so forth were more widespread in early phonography than is generally thought. I'm just finishing up a new article that surveys this little-explored territory. In the meantime, here's a fun image from one of my sources—a Strand Magazine article of 1915—captioned "Playing a Gramophone Record Backwards":
I'm your host, Patrick Feaster. My main research interest is the culture of early phonography—usually called the "recording and reproduction of sound." I received my Ph.D. in April 2007 from the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, Bloomington, and am currently on the academic job market.
My Latest and Forthcoming Publications
"Les débuts de la phonographie et le son théâtral,"Theâtre/Publique (forthcoming October 2010).
"Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville: An Annotated Discography,"ARSC Journal 41:1 (Spring 2010), 43-82.
"Nathaniel Smith and 'The Song That Reached My Heart,'" The Sound Box: The Journal of the California Antique Phonograph Society 28:1 (March 2010), 13-18.
Original content copyright (c) 2010, Patrick Feaster. "Phonozoic," "The Life of Sound," and the pterodactyl logo are trademarks of Patrick Feaster and Phonozoic Records.
