I heard recently that there were record players from the 30’s to 40’s that had the ability to actually record on blank records that were used for recording broadcasts from the radio. I was wondering if anyone had some information on this or even better, a place where you could get one.
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- Have you tried ebay?
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- Have you tried ebay?
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Scientifically speaking, I would wager ALL phonographs from that era had this ability! What Edison discovered was that a sound wave could wiggle a needle leaving an imprint. But, the sound wave is shrunk down to small enough size to fit on the vinyl record. (The conical speaker narrows down near the needle thereby producing a sound wave with a smaller amplitude.) Or, in reverse, when the needle is guided along the imprint, the needle wiggles produces the original sound wave…then magnified by the speaker to be audible. As I understand it, this was a strictly mechanical phenomena.
As speakers became more sophistocated and electric/electronic amplifiers, I think the ability to create your own recordings in this fashion was lost. - Jinx
In the very early 50s, a friend of the family purchased a playing/recording machine. The records are small (about 5 or 6 inches). I have 4 of these which consist of music sung or played by members of my family. From the looks of them, they are wax rather than vinyl, but I’m not sure. I remember the recording session and seeing the cutout wax, or whatever, curling up and out of the machine.
I have no idea of how these worked, or what they cost. I haven’t listened to the records since they were first recorded (I found them among some of my Mother’s stuff).
This, of course, is just an remembered experience of using the machine, and a confirmation that they existed.
Bob
Remember when Ed had Ralph make an apology recording to Alice with predictably hilarious results
Apparently, machines like this were put into booths in train stations and other tourist-y places so you could record a short message on a wax disc and mail it home to Aunt Edna, who could play it a few times on her turntable before the sound quality degraded.
I remember a holiday at butlin’s holiday camp in Wales in the late 70s (this was my first serious encounter with arcade video games) - there was a recording booth (quite similar in appearance to a photo booth) in one of the arcades that purported to record voice onto vinyl - the records were small - perhaps five inches in diameter and red in colour.
They’re called cutters.
Here’s some quick links:
Sorry, no cite, but the machines that were used for radio broadcasts recorded onto 16"-diameter aluminum disks (from the inside out, BTW, not from the outside in).
The recording booth models mentioned above were decidedly non-professional and used a much softer wax than standard disks of the day. As bradministrator says, the resulting recordings were only good for a few plays.
Jinx is mistaken about the possibility of using a phonograph for recording. Although it is true that Edison’s original cylindrical machine was both recorder and playback unit, AFAIK, no consumer model phonographs (cylinder or disk) were capable of recording. The styli were not intended for recording, and did not have cutting edges.
IIRC, vinyl was one of the key breakthroughs in the late '40s, early '50s that made high-fidelity long-playing recordings (at the lower 33.33 rpm speed) possible. 78-rpm disks from the '20s through the '40s were made of wax, not vinyl. Don’t drop them, they shatter!
On preview I see that ubermensch has found a link for the Presto machines, which were the professional kind I was referring to. The Vinylium link seems to be for a company that makes vinyl records, not recording machines, and the Vestax seems to be an interesting semi-pro unit.