Sound Recording, Its History and Impact on Media in the 21st Century
Sound Recording, Its History And Impact On Media In The 21st Century
On this essay I will try to show how Sound Recording impacts media in the 21st century. But in order for me to do that I will need to explore the history of Sound Recording, which started in the 19th Century.
Before 1877 sound could be recorded but not played. That year Thomas Alva Edison invented the talking tin foil, also known as the phonograph (voice – writer), which enabled sound to be played back (the first speech to be recorded and played back was the poem by Sarah Josepha Hale (1830) ‘Mary had a little lamb’, which, unfortunately “was not preserved, but in 1927, Edison re-enacted the recording for Fox Movietone news. It can be heard on the Recording Technology History web site at http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/mary.html” (John Cosway 2008 - Livin Publishing’s webpage)). But it had a problem when the tin foil was removed from the machine it would loose its shape making it impossible for sound to be played back again. Along the years technology improved a lot, especially after the First World War.
Because of radio improvements as well as records, recording and buying music became cheaper and easier. Radios would use records to fill up airtime and bands and singers would use radio to advertise their songs. That made music palpable to everyone all over the world. So a song recorded in Europe could be heard in the United States of America within months. But not only music was, now, able to cross oceans it was, also, able to cross classes, meaning that classical music could be heard by poorer classes as well as folkloric music could be heard by richer classes.
Edison realized “that what he had arrived at was something else, and in an article for the North American Review in 1878 he suggested a number of uses for the new invention. The article makes curious reading: here is an inventor, aware that the machine he has just created is
On this essay I will try to show how Sound Recording impacts media in the 21st century. But in order for me to do that I will need to explore the history of Sound Recording, which started in the 19th Century.
Before 1877 sound could be recorded but not played. That year Thomas Alva Edison invented the talking tin foil, also known as the phonograph (voice – writer), which enabled sound to be played back (the first speech to be recorded and played back was the poem by Sarah Josepha Hale (1830) ‘Mary had a little lamb’, which, unfortunately “was not preserved, but in 1927, Edison re-enacted the recording for Fox Movietone news. It can be heard on the Recording Technology History web site at http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/recording/mary.html” (John Cosway 2008 - Livin Publishing’s webpage)). But it had a problem when the tin foil was removed from the machine it would loose its shape making it impossible for sound to be played back again. Along the years technology improved a lot, especially after the First World War.
Because of radio improvements as well as records, recording and buying music became cheaper and easier. Radios would use records to fill up airtime and bands and singers would use radio to advertise their songs. That made music palpable to everyone all over the world. So a song recorded in Europe could be heard in the United States of America within months. But not only music was, now, able to cross oceans it was, also, able to cross classes, meaning that classical music could be heard by poorer classes as well as folkloric music could be heard by richer classes.
Edison realized “that what he had arrived at was something else, and in an article for the North American Review in 1878 he suggested a number of uses for the new invention. The article makes curious reading: here is an inventor, aware that the machine he has just created is
Bibliography: Cosway, John (2008) The Wayback Times [www] http://waybacktimes.net/coswayscorneredison.html (01/05/08;16:00) Gelatt, Roland (1977) The Fabulous Phonograph 1877-1977, London: Cassl Team One of Sociology (2000) Sociology at Duke [www] http://www.soc.duke.edu/~s142tm01/history90.html (15/04/08; 17:30) Wikipedia (2008) Wikipedia the free encyclopedia [www] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc (29/04/08; 21:00) [pic]www.library.duke.edu (1929 Advertisement by the American Federation of Musicians)