History of Recording Media

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Recording plays a significant role in preserving music. Thorough the history of mankind valuable musical works has been lost and destroyed. The reproduction or recording of musical sounds, singing voices, and spoken voices traced back to 1859 when Mr. Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville made the first intent of what we called modern sound recording. The changing of the media manufacturing industry has had many stages. The first recording of music was done in the 9th century when the Banu Musa brothers invented a hydropowered organ and later on also invented an automatic flute. In the 14th century Flanders invented a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by rotating cylinder, which later were used in musical clocks, barrel pianos and music boxes. All of these instruments played music but couldn’t play it back. The first instrument that was capable of recording music was the phonautograph by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville. In 1876 the player piano was invented; this piano had a punched paper with fifty eight holes which moved over a tracker ball. This instrument was the first one used to store music that could be produced in large amount. Unfortunately, these pianos were too costly for personal use and people only heard them played at bars, theaters or expensive restaurants. According to records from the U.S. Supreme Court, there were thousands or piano rolls and pianos manufactured for mass entertainment. In 1877, Tomas Edison invented the phonograph cylinder which quickly expanded and gave birth to commercial recording. Cylinder records were developed and dominated the market from 1880s until 1910. Gramophone disc were invented by Emile Berliner around 1889. They were small, easy to manufacture and transport because they were very light in weight. The main attribute that they had was that they were loud much more than cylinder records developed

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