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Phonograph
Thomas Edison records "Mary had a Little Lamb" on the first working phonograph, and is the first to successfully record the human voice. He noticed a speech-like noise when he accidentally ran indented tin foil under the telegraph stylus. -
Gramophone
Invented by Emile Berliner. It uses a disc rather than a cylinder as the recording medium. The discs are flat, and can hold up to 2 minutes of recorded sound. The original recording scratches into the disc, and then dipped into acid. The resulting grooves become a negative stamp that allows the disc to be mass produced. -
Nickel Jukeboxes
Columbia Phonograph Company leases out graphophones, but was making little money. They wanted to record music to send to fairgrounds along with their graphophones. This resulted in the nickel jukeboxes. The first jukeboxes were limited by the impossibility to mass produce the bulky cylanders used in the graphophone. -
78
The 78 is named for its rotational speed of 78 rotations per minute. It is 10 inches in diameter and lasts as a format until 1974. In 1910 different sizes of the disc become available. -
FM Radio Introduced
FM radio, as opposd to amplitude-modulated (AM) raio, offers high fidlit sound with less static, nd it requires less transmittal power. The inventor wasEdwin Armstrong. The RCA declares his patents invalid, rfues o payhim, and a broke and defeated armstrng jumps out of a 13th story window to is death. -
Cassette Tape
Althouh the Cassette tape cartridge is invented in 1930,the cassette tape takes a major step toward becoming mainstream in 1944. But it isn't until 1964 that th cassette tape ha its commecialbrakthrugh, when Philips intouces hisown 30-minute format for the tape cartridgeand allows othe manufacturers duplict to his specifications. -
The 8-track
Its developmet begana refinement andimprovementon th 4-track's problems with tape jamming and toincrae the accessibility of individual tracks. The 8-track playe is introducd a an option in ach of Ford Motors Company's 1966 models. -
Digital Audio Tape
The digital audiotape meets with immediate resitanc fom composrs and music publishes fearful of piracy due to DAT's superior sound quality and capacity for near-perfect duplication. Wih th absenc ofpr-recorded tape,the consumr willhae nothing buy. Witout the rcordr sae these no mrkt for prerecord tapes . -
MP3
The combination of digital audio and the internet create phenomenon pon h invention of the Moving Picture Expets Group 1,Layer-3 in 1990. The MP3 compresses digital audio files by a factor of 1 to a size that can easily be sent fom ompute to compute without compromising the quality of th piece. -
iTunes
Apple Computer launches an online music store. With music shifting to online there are questions of how popular CDs will continue to be, and how to make sure that downloaded music is legal.
