Talk:J. B. Fenby

No sources
This article has no referenced sources. A Google search on "F B Fenby" shows only links to Wikipedia or mirror sites. --Blainster 00:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Located the reference here. And according to this MS Word doc, author Read was the founder of Popular Electronics (or first editor), and Welch was the curator of the Syracuse University audio archives. --Blainster 01:07, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This article has it all wrong, no one named Fenby has ever been Mayor of Worcester, Massachusetts. It was not FB Fenby who invented the Electro-Magnetic Phonograph, it was Joseph Beverley Fenby, and he was not from Worcester, Massachusetts, he was from Worcester in England, some how the J as in Joseph has turned into a F, and Worcester in the UK, has become Worcester, Massachusetts. see

"No evidence exists that anybody named JB Fenby lived in Massachusetts at that time. The US Patent Office did not issue a patent to anybody named Fenby in 1863. Or 1862. Or 1864. No patent was given for an electro magnetic phonograph"

In 1863 the electro-magnetic phonoscope"A musical Machine, for registering music instantaneously as played" was invented by Mr. J. Beverly Fenby of Bute Villa, St Johns, Worcester, England.

The 1863 "electro-magnetic phonograph patent of FB Fenby is a piano-score - recording device issued to Joseph Beverley Fenby of Worcester, England on January 13, 1863 (Brit. pat. 101)" -

Google Books link for contemporary source
The Builder, v 21, p 522, July 18, 1863, published in the land of pounds, shillings and pence, does indeed say "J.B.", not "F.B.", and "phonoscope", not "phonograph". Better not bet any brass farthings that the alleged invention actually worked as claimed. Automatic transcription of keyboard-playing into ordinary written music notation was a ruinously hard nut inventors were still trying to crack a century later. AVarchaeologist (talk) 00:44, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Am I alone in feeling that my leg is being pulled hard by that final sentence about this acclaimed scientist's ironic death? It and the sentence before it really ought to go into the bin unless someone can supply a source for them. The very weasely "it is often seen..." might well be changed to the more reasonable and somewhat less weasely "It might be seen...". AVarchaeologist (talk) 02:16, 10 May 2014 (UTC)