The Edison Phonograph
The Edison Phonograph
Although the phonograph was an excellent and a first of its kind invention, it had many problems. These problems included:
The tin cylinder would degrade after only a couple plays, and it would easily get damaged.
You would have to keep turning the crank on the phonograph to keep it playing.
The cylinders were hard to reproduce.
All of these problems had attempts at fixing them. Some were successful, and others were not.
The tin cylinder was replaced with a wax cylinder. This fixed the problem of the cylinders degrading too fast. Here is a picture of various 2 minute wax cylinders:
Here is a close of up of a tin cylinder. Wax ones look similar, except not shiny.
The problem of continually turning the handle on the phonograph had a couple try's to fix.
Preece and Stroh started to develop an automatic phonograph in 1879, but was unsuccessful. Eventually the graphophone was invented, and that solved the problem. You only had to turn it a couple times and it would continually keep turning.
The last major problem was how to reproduce the cylinders in mass, efficiently. This problem was not fixed until the invention of the gramophone. You can read about the gramophone by clicking on the link labeled 'after' above.
Of course, more things were made, too.
In 1878, Max Kohl built a phonograph that was 6 inches in diameter and a mandrel 10 inches in diameter, weighing 75 pounds
In 1878, Frank Lambert developed a talking clock using the phonograph. The recording of it is on the 'Various Recordings' page.
Professor D. Vital in Paris made one of the smallest tin-foil machines in 1879, constructed almost entirely of wood and sitting on a 6 inch base
In 1879, Edison began to turn his attention towards another of his great inventions. He turned his attention towards the electric light. It would not be until 1888 that he would make any changes to the phonograph. Luckily others would make changes.
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