THE Audio Timeline

By: THE James Tidwell THE January 8th, 2013

1877

•Thomas Edison invents the phonograph when he recovers Mary Little Lamb from a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a spinning cylinder.

1878

•Yankee Doodle by Jules Levy is the first music put on record.

1887

•Emile Berliner patents a flat disk gramophone, which makes production of multiple copies easier.

1888

•Thomas Edison invents an electric motor-driven phonograph.

1895

•Marconi successfully uses his wireless telegraph system in Italy. Which leads to the first signals across the Atlantic from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901.

1898

•Valdemar Poulsen invents the Telegraphone, which records magnetically on steel wire.

1901

•Victor Talking Machine Company is founded by Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson.

1906

•Lee DeForest invents the triode vacuum tube, which is the first electronic signal amplifier.

1912

•Major Edwin F. Armstrong invents the regenerative circuit, which allows radio reception to be easier and practical.

1913

•The first talking movie is done by Thomas Edison using his Kinetophone process, a cylinder player mechanically synchronized to a film projector.

1916

•The Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) is founded.

1917

•The Scully disk recording lathe is introduced.

1921

•The first am commercial radio is broadcasted in Pittsburgh PA. by KDKA.

1925

•The first electrically recorded 78 rpm disks appear.

1926

•O'Neill invents the iron oxide-coated paper tape.

1927

•"The Jazz Singer" is released , it is the first commercial talking picture. It uses the Vitaphone sound on disks which is synchronized with the film.

1929

•The "Blattnerphone" is developed for use as a magnetic recorder using steel tape.

1933

•Magnetic recording on steel wire is developed commercially.

1938

•RCA develops the first column loudspeaker array.

1940

•Walt Disney's "Fantasia" is released, with eight-track stereophonic sound.

1947

•Ampex produces its first tape recorder, the Model 200.

1950

•IBM develops a commercial magnetic drum memory.

1958

•The first commercial stereo disk recordings appear.

1963

•Philips introduces the Compact Cassette tape format, and offers licenses worldwide.

1975

•Digital tape recording begins to take hold in professional audio studios.

1981

•Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc (CD).

1984

•The Apple Corporation markets the Macintosh computer.

1985

•Dolby introduces the "SR" Spectral Recording system.

1990

•The write-once CD-R becomes a commercial reality.

1997

•DVD videodiscs and players are introduced.

1998

•Hutch Tidwell’s Birthday

•MP-3 players for downloaded Internet audio appear.