Exploring the Concepts of Old Recording Devices

On Chapter 5

                I find early technology fascinating and gorgeous, from typewriters to oil lamps to the first telephones, and the first born musical devices are no different. There is some old fashioned part of my soul that feels partial to inventions from the 1800’s through the late Victorian ages. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but I adore old fashioned technology. I am also the person who wishes we still rode around on horses instead of driving cars. But there is something that is so aesthetically pleasing to me about brass, copper, pig’s hair, and wax. I hate plastic and Plexiglas and other modern product materials. Perhaps, I possess a soul that is existing in the wrong time period, or that has already lived a life in the 1800’s and wishes to return. Or maybe I am more primal than most and as we near further away from natural resources I grow more and more uncomfortable. 

I was not even around for the birth and growth of record players, but I feel an artistic, almost nostalgic connection to them. So when I read about their history in Chapter 5, I was thrilled. My favorite was in the 1850’s when a hog’s-hair bristle was used as a needle that carved into a thick liquid coating a funnel via a vibrating membrane that connected the two. How cool is that?! Sound recorded by a boar’s-hair and waxy liquid—very primal, indeed. I love it! Even Edison’s phonograph which used foil cylinders in 1877 and its evolution into the graphopohne, which used wax ones to record sound are gorgeous in appearance and interesting in function. 

The idea of carving into wax cylinders to record sounds reminds me of a very, very cool short story (the name escapes me) from the anthology “Steampunk.” The short story is told like it is being played back from a recording device. The story is post-apocalyptic and, like the name of the anthology suggests, is Steampunk in nature. The sound recording devices used are wax cylinders (with a more elaborate processing system than the products mentioned in our book) and the piece reads as if you were listening to a recording of a diary/document regaling that had been etched into one. The neat part is that the story will cut off mid-dialogue or at certain points and will instead say things like, “scratch in cylinder…data missing” or have static/distorted sound effects in *’s. It’s a fantastic story and a great anthology in general—I highly recommend it.