1898 Edison Suitcase Home Phonograph Playing 1898 Brown Wax Cylinder

Brooklyn hipsters now have a wax format to play their music on. Hopefully it’s organic and no bees were hurt in its production.

 

I went to an auction in Albany NY many years ago where one of the best collections of cylinder players was being sold. I believe there may have been several hundred machines. Buyers came from thousands of miles.

 

The lower and higher ends of the audio spectrum are somewhat lacking

 

But the part that pierces your heart and brings tears to your eyes persists to the very beginning of recorded sound.

 

On page 13 of this document it says that it perfectly produces the human voice and duplicates instrumental music with pure-toned brilliancy. You don't believe them?

 

It was perfect at the time. The definition of perfection (or the threshold to satisfy perfection) changes through time.

 

What's the signal to noise ratio on that thing?

 

0.0001

 

It's a documented fact Edison wasn't exactly an honest person. But prolly he didn't steal this very idea from Tesla or it had sounded much better.

 

Don't forget that Edison was near deaf and was tone-deaf

 

Well that explains it then; didn't know that !

 

From the web:

Edison’s Deafness




Edison had hearing problems from childhood on. These caused him some difficulty when he entered school in Port Huron. His teachers considered him to be a dull student. He had difficulty following the lessons and his school attendance became sporadic. In fact, young Edison’s mind wandered so much he was noted to be terrible at mathematics, unable to focus, and had difficulty with words and speech. His teacher, Mr. Crawford, called him “addled” and said that he had something wrong with his brain and would never be able to learn.

It was true that young Thomas Alva Edison didn’t want to sit still in his one-room schoolhouse classroom and learn the way that the other students did. He would rather draw in his notebook instead of copying down assignments. He had more questions than the teacher wanted to answer. To make things worse, Little Al (short for Alva, as his parents called him) was often sick and was already losing his hearing, which made it even harder for him to pay attention in school. His teacher, made fun of him and often sent him to sit in the corner as a punishment.

After being credited with only three months of official schooling, Edison quit and became an avid reader. Since his mother was a teacher, Edison’s further schooling may have been a very early version of Home Schooling, which is now common in the United States. Additionally, he reportedly lost more of his hearing, becoming technically deaf in his early teens.

The actual cause is not known. It could have resulted from an early childhood illness or, as legend has it, from having his ears “boxed” by a rail conductor when he was about 12 years old. In any case, Edison lost “almost all his hearing.” It is now believed that a major cause was a bout with Scarlet Fever during childhood, along with recurring untreated middle ear infections. These causes suggest that he had significant early hearing impairment that he lived with most of his life. By all indications, it was conductive or mixed in nature, probably worsened by age in later years.Otolaryngologists believe that Scarlet fever produces acute otitis media more often than any other specific disease. They further report that the percentage of scarlatinal otitis that progresses to mastoiditis requiring surgical intervention is very high. It’s also quite possible that Edison had a conductive hearing loss from Otitis Media with Mastoiditis.

There are indications that Edison could have had surgery for his hearing loss, a further indication that his impairment was likely conductive, but he refused the surgery, fearing that good hearing would disrupt his thought processes and impede his thinking. After reviewing the various material on Edison, I suspect that this brilliant individual, inventor of many of our most beneficial things, had a maximum conductive loss, 50-60 dB, likely in both ears that was exacerbated by the aging process.