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PHONAUTOGRAPH
It's the first device that could record sound waves as they passed through the air. It was intended only for visual study of the recording and could not play back the sound. The recording medium was a sheet of soot-coated paper wrapped around a rotating cylinder carried on a threaded rod. -
GRAMOPHONE
A gramophone record, commonly known as a vinyl record or simply vinyl or record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat polyvinyl chloride disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. -
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ACOUSTIC ERA
The earliest practical recording technologies were entirely mechanical devices. These recorders typically used a large conical horn to collect and focus the physical air pressure of the sound waves. A sensitive membrane or diaphragm, located at the apex of the cone, was connected to an articulated scriber or stylus, and as the changing air pressure moved the diaphragm back and forth. -
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ELECTRICAL ERA
The 'second wave' of sound recording history was ushered in by the introduction of Western Electric's integrated system. Sound recording now became a hybrid process — sound could now be captured, amplified, filtered and balanced electronically, and the disc-cutting head was now electrically-driven. -
MAGNETIC TAPE
Engineers at AEG, working with the chemical giant IG Farben, created the world's first practical magnetic tape recorder, the 'K1', which was first demonstrated in 1935. During World War II, an engineer at the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft discovered the AC biasing technique. With this technique, an inaudible high-frequency signal, typically in the range of 50 to 150 kHz, is added to the audio signal before being applied to the recording head. -
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MAGNETIC ERA
The technology was invented in the 1930s, but remained restricted to Germany until the end of World War II. Magnetic tape provided another dramatic leap in audio fidelity — indeed, Allied observers first became aware of the existence of the new technology because they noticed that the audio quality of obviously pre-recorded programs was practically indistinguishable from live broadcasts. -
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DIGITAL ERA
The "digital" era, has seen the most rapid, dramatic and far-reaching series of changes in the history of audio recording. In a period of less than 20 years, all previous recording technologies were rapidly superseded by digital sound encoding, which was perfected by the Japanese electronics corporation Sony in the 1970s. -
CD´s
Compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format released in 1982 and co-developed by Philips and Sony. The format was originally developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data (CD-ROM)
