-
PHONOAUTOGRAPH
This device is the first known device capable of recording sound. It was invented by Leon Scott, and patented on 25 March 1857. It consisted of a horn, which picked up the sound waves towards a membrane where it was a string. When the sound arrived, it vibrated, so the sound could was able to be recorded. It was mainly used to determine the frequency of a musical tone. It only could record sound, but not play it. -
PHONOGRAPH
Thomas Alva Edison announced the first phonograph the 21st November of 1877, and patented a year after. It used an analogue mechanical recording system, where sound waves are transformed into vibrations and these into a groove passed by a needle that would collect the vibrations in a wax cylinder. It was the first device that could both record and play sounds. -
WIRE-RECORDING MAGNETOPHONE
In 1911, with a simple invention by Lee DeForest, the Audion tube, it was possible to amplify these magnetic fields and make the first magnetic audio system. It wasn't until 1930 that this device could be launch onto the market. -
TURNTABLE
The turntable was invented in 1925, and consisted of a plate rotated by electric traction, an arm with a spike, and a coil (bobina) and magnet that were sensitive to the vibrations of the spike when it passed through the groove of vinyl. Then, there was an amplifier, which transmited the data recorded on the disc, reproducing the discs electrically and not electro-acoustically. -
TAPE SOUND-RECORDING MAGNETOPHONE
The German company AEG released the first tape sound-recording magnetophones in 1933, and the first ones for amauteur-use appeared in 1950. It also appeared these magnetophones for recording studios, eliminating the process of direct recording of audio on acetate discs, improving sound quality. This transformed the recording industry, and by the late 1950s the vast majority of commercial recordings were being mastered on tape. -
PHOTOLIPTOPHONE
The 23rd November, 1934, an Argentine inventor named Fernando Crudo patented the photoliptophone, a sound recording system that recorded and reproduced sound on printed paper, in order to make these type of devices cheaper and more accesible. -
COMPACT AUDIO CASETTE
The European company Philips introduced the compact audio cassette in 1963. It was a plastic box with a reel of about 100 meters of plastic tape covered by ferric oxide and another reel that was the receiver of the tape that was circulating. On the tape, there were 2 pairs of stereo tracks, one for each face. The audio cassette inspired other inventions such as the VHS, the Digital Compact Cassette, or the Microcasette. -
8-TRACK TAPE
The development of the 8-track tape occurred in the late 1950s and its commercial release was in the mid-1960s, with great success. It consisted of a plastic box with a tape (which was similar to the one in a tape sound-recording magnetophone), but it had no end. This new type of cassette had the advantage of having 8 tracks and a tape that circulated faster. -
LASERDISC
The Laserdisc was released the 15th December,1978, two months after the first VHS tapes appeared on the market. It was marketed in 1978, the invention was patented in 1961, and before 1969 Philips had developed a reflective video disc that had great advantages over the transparent one. -
COMPACT-DISC (CD)
In 1979 one of the most revolutionary inventions in history was produced, the Compact Disc or CD. It was the first digital audio format and over time ended up displacing the vinyl disc and the compact audio cassette. It was created by Kees Immink (working in Philips) and Toshitada Doi (working in Sony) in 1979, and it could record more than 70 minutes of sound. It was released in June of 1980, and later forty companies from around the world joined the production of the CD. -
MINIDISC
MiniDisc was a small, rewritable, magneto-optical disc, initially designed to hold up to 80 minutes of digitalized audio, and developed between 1982 and 1987. It was sold from 1992 to 2013 by Sony (along with other manufacturers), being smaller than aconventional CD and having larger storage capacity and better audio quality. -
MP3
In 1986 the technological scientist Karlheinz Brandenburg developed the MP3 format, that was first used by him in his own computer later in 1995. The mp3 format became the standard used for high quality audio compression. thanks to the ability to adjust the quality of the compression, being able to occupy 12-15 times less than the original uncompressed file. It was the first audio compression format popularized thanks to the Internet, because it made possible to exchange music files there. -
BLU-RAY
The development of the Blu-ray disc began the 19th May, 2005 when TDK announced the prototype of a100 Gigabyte blu-ray disc. Hitachi announced the 3rd October, 2007 that it had developed a 100 GB BD-ROM prototype that, unlike the TDK and Panasonic versions, was compatible with readers available on the market and required only a firmware update.
