The Evolution of AudioBy-Deshen Villa

1877

Thomas Alva Edison, working in his lab, succeeds in recovering Mary's Little Lamb from a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a

spinning cylinder

1878

• The first music is put on record: cornetist Jules Levy plays "Yankee Doodle

1881

• Clement Ader, using carbon microphones and armature headphones, accidentally produces a stereo effect when listeners outside the hall monitor adjacent telephone lines linked to stage mikes at the Paris Opera.

1887

• Emile Berliner is granted a patent on a flat-disc gramophone, making the production of multiple copies practical.

1888

• Edison introduces an electric motor-driven phonograph.

1895

• Marconi successfully experiments with his wireless telegraphy system in Italy, leading to the first transatlantic signals from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901.

1898

• Valdemar Poulsen patents his "Telegraphone," recording magnetically on steel wire.

1900

• Poulsen unveils his invention to the public at the Paris Exposition. Austria's Emperor Franz Josef records his congratulations.

1901

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

• Experimental optical recordings are made on motion picture film.

1906

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

1910

• Enrico Caruso is heard in the first live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, NYC.

1912

• Major Edwin F. Armstrong is issued a patent for a regenerative circuit, making radio reception practical.

1913

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

1916

• A patent for the superheterodyne circuit is issued to Armstrong.

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

• Edison does live-versus-recorded demonstrations in Carnegie Hall, NYC

1917

• The Scully disk recording lathe is introduced. • E. C. Wente of Bell Telephone Laboratories

publishes a paper in Physical Review describing a "uniformly sensitive instrument for the absolute measurement of sound intensity" -- the condenser microphone.

1919

• The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is founded. It is owned in part by United Fruit.

1921

• The first commercial AM radio broadcast is made by KDKA, Pittsburgh PA.

1925

• Bell Labs develops a moving armature lateral cutting system for electrical recording on disk. Concurrently they Introduce the Victor Orthophonic Victrola, "Credenza" model. This all-acoustic player -- with no electronics -- is considered a leap forward in phonograph design.

• The first electrically recorded 78 rpm disks appear. • RCA works on the development of ribbon

microphones.

1926

• O'Neill patents iron oxide-coated paper tape.

1927

• "The Jazz Singer" is released as the first commercial talking picture, using Vitaphone sound on disks synchronized with film.

1928

• Dr. Harold Black at Bell Labs applies for a patent on the principle of negative feedback. It is granted nine years later.

• Dr. Georg Neumann founds a company in Germany to manufacture his condenser microphones. Its first product is the Model CMV 3.

1929

• Harry Nyquist publishes the mathematical foundation for the sampling theorem basic to all digital audio processing, the "Nyquist Theorem."

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

1931

• Alan Blumlein, working for Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI) in London, in effect patents stereo. His seminal patent discusses the theory of stereo, both describing and picturing in the course of its 70-odd individual claims a coincident crossed-eights miking arrangement and a "45-45" cutting system for stereo disks.

• Arthur Keller and associates at Bell Labs in New York experiment with a vertical-lateral stereo disk cutter.

1932

• The first cardioid ribbon microphone is patented by Dr. Harry F. Olson of RCA, using a field coil instead of a permanent magnet.

1933

• Magnetic recording on steel wire is developed commercially.

• Snow, Fletcher, and Steinberg at Bell Labs transmit the first inter-city stereo audio program.