Talk:Phonograph

Front loading systems
Does anyone have a picture of one of these extraordinary devices? --Mmartins 5 July 2005 18:26 (UTC)

Gramophone
Gramophone is a musical grouped formed in California's Bay Area.

Members

Daniel Rosado- Guitar, Stephen Harkins- Vocals,Guitar, Marcelo Brasil- Drums, Alex Ball- Bass

They are well known in Nevada.

Resurging market?
I reverted the edit by 67.70.212.194 because it seemed like it was just hype for vinyl, in addition to having a number of typos. If you feel that this information is actually true, please correct the typos and post a reference here on the talk page.

Superior Sound Quality?
"While there are many audiophiles who still prefer vinyl records over digital music sources (primarily compact disc) for superior sound quality..."

Isn't that an opinion? They prefer the sound of vinyl, but what makes it superior to a CD? Sounds like more vinyl hype. DavidRavenMoon (talk) 01:32, 4 June 2012 (UTC)


 * This seems to be more a case of vested interests. You might be very surprised to learn that musicians are paid exactly the same royalty per track published today that they were in the 1960's. In the UK at least the royalty was 1d (one old penny) per track sold. Today it is 0.4p (0.4 of a new penny - exactly the same amount). No record company would publish 'prestige' recordings on vinyl and expect rave reviews - after all every released vinyl recording is an eighth generation copy of the original and each new generation introduces distortions and noise (bearing in mind that the generation subsequent on the first are also distorting the distortions and the noise previously introduced.


 * This 'vinyl is better' nonsense is largely pushed by the bands making the records, mostly because the do not want (or probably more accurately: cannot afford) to pay for their records to be fully digitally recorded and mastered (where every subsequent copy is identical to the original). It is much more expensive because the equipment is more expensive - analogue studios are mostly using antiquated equipment because it still works. It is worth noting that the well established and popular bands do release fully digital recordings. 86.132.158.45 (talk) 18:28, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Steel Needles
I'm offended! I have a Jelly Roll Morton 78 that I like to play on my Victor Victrola 4-3, and I use the steel needles only once. The records actually don't wear out quickly-quite the contrary. Don't be afraid of using a steel needle with a wind-up record player-it won't hurt it.


 * The advice is to change the needle every record. This actually means change the needle every side played. I have several records where side 2 is worn out because someone didn't play it with a new needle. This is particularly important these days because most needles come from China and are rarely the correct radius. If you change the needle every side, the wear to the record is minimal. The needles are far cheaper than the records and a lot less rare! I have quite a few records that still play like the record was new (that is without the krkrkrkr noise of a worn record). The record did contain a lubricant in the shellac mix but this is rapidly worn away with worn out needles. 86.132.158.45 (talk) 18:33, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Phonograph's disruption of live music/sheet music business
I would really like to see someone go into depth on this topic if they are familiar with it. I think it has historical value for the changes taking place today. Otherwise I am off to the library this weekend to research. NickD 19:44 15 June 2007(UTC)

unknown comment
What's with this "1 gram of stylus force" statement? A gram is a unit of mass, not force! Well, that's how people refer to the force with which a needle bears into a groove. Perhaps it's scientifically questionable, but it's the correct phrase for the article. --128.119.22.152 (talk) 18:31, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Bkaduk (talk) 02:18, 10 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rent A Troop (talk • contribs)

Clean your turntable for crying out loud. Look at that dust! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.204.181.173 (talk) 14:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Gramophone Record vs Phonograph Cylinder
This article refers to gramophone records and phonograph cylinders as one concept. Gramophone records are flat discs whereas phonograph cylinders are disparate. The entry for Phonograph makes phonograph and gramophone synonymous where "gramophone record" remains a separate entry from "phonograph cylinder"s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.151.117.162 (talk) 09:46, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Disc players were known as phonographs in America long after the cylinder disappeared. The word 'gramophone' was a registered trademark of His Master's Voice and the word passed into common usage in the United Kingdom for disc players.  It was far less common in America even though the Victrola company was able to use both the registered trade mark as well as the Nipper dog logo. 86.163.86.229 (talk) 18:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Édouard-Léon's voice
The article contains 3 recordings of Au Claire de la Luna with 2 of them pitch adjusted to reflect the pitch of Édouard-Léon's voice. Unless there is a another recording of his voice that is of a precisely known recording speed (highly unlikely), this would be impossible to achieve. 86.184.233.167 (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Based no the known male vocal range you could at least get it in the right octave. Possibly even in the right key. --Kvng (talk) 17:21, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the recording because it was too much for a WP:SUMMARY. I wasn't sure whether to replace the recording already present on Phonautograph so I instead landed it on the talk page for discussion. --Kvng (talk) 17:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

VolksWagen Van
I have deleted the unsourced illustration of the VolksVagen van sitting on a record. Without any further description of what it is and what it does, the illustration adds nothing to the article. It could just be a photo of any toy van placed on a record. If you wish to reinstate it, please at least add some description as to where it fits into the phonograph story (with appropriate citations of course). 86.177.27.130 (talk) 08:06, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It was a Volkswagen van that held a phonograph cartridge, a phonograph preamp, and a speaker. In other words, it was a complete phonograph. A novelty item that never became popular, its applicability to this article is very small. Binksternet (talk) 12:13, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I had guessed that it was something of that nature. But that was my principal objection - I had to guess. 86.182.65.190 (talk) 16:45, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Device shown in October or November? Citations needed.
In the intro, it says that Edison showed the phonograph in October. Later, it says November.

As there were disputes (and lawsuits) related to the invention of the telephone and/or microphones around about that time, it seems important that the exact timing of related inventions be stated and cited. (There are SEVERAL articles here about the telephone and its timeline. And they don't all entirely agree.)

The article on Microphones didn't seem to help, as it has didn't have a history section or timeline (that I saw); and many of the developments mentioned don't have dates.

Different articles across Wikipedia state that different people invented the microphone.

They say, in short that:

In 1876, several people were working on a microphone concept -- some say Emile Berliner invented it, some may say Elisha Gray, or Alexander Graham Bell, though some mysterious voice-related devices were apparently shown in the 1840s and 1850s. (Documentation?) One also says that In 1876, the first carbon microphone was tested by Thomas Edison.

Not being a historical expert on these matters, and not having citations handy, and not having hours to research this, I therefore added in the intro here.

For this device, which was it, November or October? :)

Misty MH (talk) 11:48, 12 June 2011 (UTC) June 11, 2011.


 * In fact there were lawsuits over the phonograph as well. It is alleged (so it won't go in the article) that Edison spent more on litigation over the phonograph than he ever made out of it - and most of the lawsuits were against Edison alleging that most of his phonograph features were unpatentable as they were developed by others. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 18:37, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Photograph source disagreement?
On this page, the photograph of Edison with his second phonograph is attributed to Matthew Brady; clicking the link shows the same photograph attributed to Levin C. Handy, an attribution supported by its link to The Library of Congress. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.5.50.18 (talk) 15:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Vinyl 78s
They do exist: I've got a vinyl 78. It's "Putting On the Style" c/w "Gamblin' Man" by Lonnie Donegan and his Skiffle Group, recorded 9 May 1957, on Pye Nixa N.15093. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I have several vinyl 78s in my collection. They can't, of course, be played on any of my vintage wind up gramophones because the steel needle and the heavy sound box would ruin them.  DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I, too, have some vinyl 78s. I have a lightweight cartridge with a sapphire needle made for playing them, on a modern phonograph produced in 2000. I also have a heavy steel needle cartridge for older records. Binksternet (talk) 19:43, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Who deleted record player
I don' know about you, but I called it a "record player" or a "turntable". It a record that you put on you record player or a turntable, so that it plays sound. No one called it phonogragh any more. I'm just saying make a differet article, OK. hul3124 comment added by 130.156.142.240
 * No need for a new article, record player works. The problem with turntable is that it has other meanings. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:07, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Choice of words
"While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound." - so how did people know if the sound was recorded unless it played back. Obviously preceding inventions could also reproduce sound, right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.248.183.27 (talk) 05:52, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Previous machines, although they recorded sound, were never intended to play that sound back. The machines were invariably constructed in order to investigate the properties and nature of sound. 86.171.45.27 (talk) 18:06, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Lenco - wet play
Vinyls have been played liquid-greased, too. Trademark Lenco sold slim cylindric plastics bottles, containing about 150 ml clear liquid (I think iso-propanol, water, antistatics) brushed on in a thin layer by a second lever, before & during play on the groove and drying soon. Starting about 1975 or 1980 --Helium4 (talk) 12:44, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

incomplete
a couple of us were looking for information on how the sound was reproduced. This article is the perfect place for such info but way too much time is spent on the recording mechanism and not enough on the replay mechanism. We're still in the dark. Pun intended. 68.55.64.124 (talk) 18:32, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the current rev of the opening paragraph now makes that a bit clearer right off the bat, at the cost of being considerably longer. But the reader still has to be willing to click on a link or two or three if the nature of sound is not already well-understood, or an audio waveform is not easily visualized, etc. AVarchaeologist (talk) 08:32, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Historically inaccurate changes made to promote Tomorrowland movie
Removed reference to "Plus Ultra" and other changes made that referred to fictional elements of the upcoming Tomorrowland movie from Disney Pictures. See link for details: http://www.tomorrowlandtimes.com/2014/09/tomorrowlands-secret-plus-ultra-society.html

Inclusion of Vertical players?
Is it worthwhile added a reference / image of the Sharp (I do not know if other manufacturers made similar devices) Vertical, linear record players to the Linear tracking section - such as the one built into the VZ-2500 Ghetto-blaster from the early 1980s? This particular model is a little iconic as a portable player (though it does automatically stop playing and reset the tone-arms if lifted from the surface if it is playing a record!) capable of playing both sides of a 7/10/12 inch 33⅓/45 r.p.m. vinyl record. SlySven (talk) 00:23, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

"Murder Weapon" section is unsourced, false
The original link is dead. The article can be retrieved at the writer's personal site in the form of a Word doc.

I read this article, and found this is the extent of Frank Palka's supposed phonograph murder (note there are no phonographs here):

''THE EXAMPLE OF FRANK PALKO Frank Palko was a resident of the state of Connecticut. Late one evening in 1935, he broke into a music store, stole a radio and fled on foot (in those Great Depression days, a getaway car was a luxury few criminals could afford--O Tempora, O Mores). The police were summoned and they contacted Palko a few blocks away. When they approached him, Palko shot and killed one of the officers and escaped. He was captured and arrested a month or so later.''

The idea that Palka clobbered someone to death with a phonograph clearly is untrue and not related to this Wikipedia page. Therefore: I'm deleting it. If someone wants to add it back, maybe they could find evidence for such absurd claims. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.197.221.217 (talk) 04:09, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Removed uninformative image
This image was previously being used as an illustration in § Phonographs in the 21st century, until I removed it just now. The data it represents (information which we have no way to verify), the number of images associated with each manufacturer that have been contributed to a particular website by its user community, is not informative in any way within the context of the article. In fact, it's entirely possible that it was added for no other purpose than to tacitly promote the website named in the caption. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 16:34, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Pic  Elliptical stylus, TEXT wrong
The elliptical stylus allows for more groove contact area, which increases fidelity,

The increased contact area does defnitely NOT increase fidelity, it may reduce pressure and record wear, or may NOT ... The contact area is increased vertically, but reduced horizontally (smaller contact radius).

The main increase in fidelity is, that the Elliptical stylus is able to follow the curvature of the groove at higher frequencies (steep slopes, slewrates). This will be important above 2 kHz. Also the contact area at the spherical stylus moves around the needle, this increases also some sort of distortions.

--AK45500 (talk) 12:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Phonograph record which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 14:59, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Unlikeliness versus impracticality.
@User:Just plain Bill You made this revert, and now it's clear that you  here. The cause is the impracticality of storing large numbers of records in the cylindrical form, because they would take too much space. The effect is the unlikeness that anyone would choose such an impractical option. Let me give you a simple example: You can say that wearing white clothes by coal miners is unlikely. But coal miners don't wear white clothes for a reason. What is the reason? Unlikeness? By your logic coal miners don't wear white clothes because it is unlikely that coal miners wear white clothes. The absurdity of such reasoning is self-evident. Can't you see it? Someone chose the black color not because the white color is somehow unlikely, but because it is impractical. PS. I restored my version, split the sentence and corrected the logic. 85.193.228.103 (talk) 14:28, 26 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The workers I see doing dirty jobs tend to wear inexpensive durable blue denim, not black. In commercial food preparation, the workers tend to wear white, so dirt is obvious, indicating that it is time to change a soiled garment. In that field, industrial laundry services are often provided by the employer.


 * None of that is relevant to bureaucratic reasons for preserving or discarding sound recordings in an era of paper-based record keeping. Once a Dictaphone record had been handed off to a stenographer and a paper transcription made, the archived copy was the paper, not the wax cylinder. In many cases, the sound recording was seen as a transient preliminary artifact not worth keeping, hence unlikely to be kept, whether storage was practical or not. Just plain Bill (talk) 15:58, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

@User:Just plain Bill

> The workers I see doing dirty jobs tend to wear inexpensive durable blue denim, not black.

Maybe, but their clothes are certainly not snow-white. So, please, read the word "black" in my example as "non-white".

> In commercial food preparation, the workers tend to wear white, so dirt is obvious, indicating that it is time to change a soiled garment.

Yes, but in my example I wrote about coal mining, not food preparation. Besides, I don't claim that white clothes are impractical in every situation. Sometimes white color is very practical, for example as camouflage for soldiers on snow.

> None of that is relevant to bureaucratic reasons for preserving or discarding sound recordings in an era of paper-based record keeping.

There are many applications of sound recording. But you are talking only about dictaphones in courts. But even there convenient practical storage matters. And this is why in 1947 Dictaphone introduced its Dictabelt technology. Sound recording needed a recordable medium. Vinyl records were non-recordable by a user, and thus useless for this purpose. Therefore dictaphones with a wax cylinder survived to 1922. However, for playing recorded music, vinyl records were ideal at the time. They were flat, hence practical for storing. 85.193.228.103 (talk) 22:11, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Where did I say anything about courts?
 * The commercialization of sound recording technology was initially aimed at use for business correspondence and transcription into writing, in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages.
 * In business applications, the cylinders were seen as ephemera of little value, an intermediate step between dictation and archived paper, so they were seen as unlikely to be stored. Practicality has very little to do with that. Just plain Bill (talk) 15:53, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Ah indeed, you said nothing about courts, sorry about that! I thought that stenography took place mostly in courts, hence my mistake. However it does not change much. Do you really think that the huge market of recorded music had no impact on the transition from cylinders to disks? 85.193.228.103 (talk) 01:47, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Doesn't matter what I think about the recorded music market. The bit of text in question is not about that, anyway; it is about the use of one-off voice recordings in business. Just plain Bill (talk) 19:49, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

eco sytem
what is an eco system — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:201:D002:E925:853D:1207:3DCF:B981 (talk) 09:36, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

RCA connectors vs. phono connectors
My recent edit adding this sentence to the end of the United States section was reverted by an IP editor: In its mono form this was the original use of the RCA connector, also known as a "phono connector". (In bold because the original sentence contains double quotes.) The reason given by the IP editor for the revert was: "Phono connectors existed long before amplifiers had 'phono' inputs. Besides the 'phono connector' and the 'RCA connector' are not the same. Though similar, the plug of one does not correctly mate with the socket of the other."

Though the specifics the IP editor gave MAY be true, that does NOT affect the validity of my statement; thus I consider his reasoning bogus. As ANYONE who reads the "History" section of the RCA connector article should know (the IP editor obviously did), the first "phono connectors" were being used internally within RCA combination radio-phonograph floor consoles by 1937; by 1938 they had been expanded to the rear of RCA AM radios to connect low-cost phonograph players or even TV sets; by 1939 there were also RCA radio-TV floor consoles using them internally, plus RCA and even non-RCA TVs that used them for audio output instead of a built-in audio amplifier and speaker (as most TVs have even today, though they're becoming worse with each new generation of flat-screens due to limited space).

It is true, as the "History" section goes on to read, that "(r)efinement of the RCA connectors came with later designs". Though it goes on to read that "they remained compatible" (with "citation needed" tag), the "phono connector" pictured in that section (a female jack on a 1939 model RCA AM radio) clearly has BOTH too large a center pin hole (determining its gender) AND an outer ring not deep enough to accommodate modern RCA male plugs. Nonetheless, it is CLEAR from that photo plus the statement that the 1930's "phono connector" was indeed the origin of today's "RCA connector", ALSO sometimes called a "phono connector" or "RCA phono connector" itself (as the lead article says) BECAUSE of its origin. As recently as stereo equipment in early 1980's RadioShack catalogs, RCA connectors were more commonly called "phono jacks / plugs" (with only occasional reference to RCA which was still in business at that time); though those had the dimensions of today's RCA connectors, they did NOT have the color-coded insulators (jacks) & external grips (plugs) of today's RCA connectors. That came along in the mid-to-late 1980's (just before the original RCA was absorbed by GE with its electronics business sold to Thomson, now Technicolor SA), as RCA connectors expanded into VCRs and more modern stereo equipment became ubitiquous; this required greater clarity as to which connectors connected to which.

This shift also tended to replace the historic magnetic "phono" inputs of stereos with today's "line-level" audio inputs, which work with tape decks, cassette players (including the Walkman), VCRs, CD players, etc. all the way to some cellphones today (even using phone connectors with now-ubitiquous Y-adapters); only a pre-amp is needed to connect phonograph players, and modern phonograph players often come with them built-in. Nonetheless, EVEN IF you could overcome the physical difference between 1937-39 "phono connectors" (also intended for magnetic inputs from phonograph players; TVs probably followed that as well) and today's RCA connectors, there are two signficant OTHER compatibility issues: First, 1937-39 radios were almost always mono; that itself could be overcome with a Y-adapter, but it's uncertain if the vacuum tubes in use back then would have withstood that. More importantly, record companies didn't use modern-day equalization until the 1940's, and the now-standard RIAA equalization curve didn't exist until the 1950's; thus the sound output from a 1930's AM radio playing today's records would likely be even worse than its modern-day AM radio reception. THIS is why your comparison is wrong; you probably couldn't connect a 21st-century turntable to a 1930's AM radio even if you COULD plug it in directly. --RBBrittain (talk) 18:00, 14 May 2021 (UTC)


 * WP:TLDR The (American) RCA connector was derived from the (UK) phono connector, but they were not the same. The RCA plug is frequently, these days, called a phono plug which is not a problem as the original phono plug is entirely obsolete. The phono plug's central pin, though the same diameter as the RCA connector was one quarter of an inch longer (I have examples of both but I cannot upload photographs). This meant that if the phono plug was inserted in an RCA socket, the shield of the plug would just make contact with the shield of the socket. In practice tolerances meant that it sometimes touched and sometimes didn't and if it did, it was a very poor contact. Similarly, inserting an RCA plug into a phono socket meant that the central pin failed to make contact as it was too short. The plug became obsolete precisely because it did not correctly mate with RCA sockets which were becoming common on imported Japanese audio equipment.


 * The (UK) phono plug was originally developed in the late 1920's as a cheaper and smaller alternative to the more expensive shielded connectors of the day for the more professional equipment. Where domestic radio sets had the ability to act as the amplifier to an external record player, the connection was made through a simple unshielded two hole 'banana' socket (and the setting on the wave-change switch that selected it was usually labelled 'G' or 'GRAM' - short for gramophone). The phono plug did have a brief resurgence in the domestic market for 1950-1960's era reel-to-reel tape recorders as an inexpensive alternative to the DIN plugs used in Dutch and German machines.


 * Exactly why the plug was described as a 'phono plug' is not clear. It may have been used to connect early electrical disc recording equipment, but the term 'phonograph' was only ever used in the UK to describe acoustic cylinder playing machines, the word never having been applied to acoustic disc playing machines let alone electric disc cutters or players or indeed anything else. 86.132.158.45 (talk) 14:20, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Actually, on thinking about this: it may well be that the 'phono plug' was probably not known by this name at its inception. Connectors of the era were invariably proprietary and usually known by the company that introduced them, as in the 'RCA connector' or 'Belling Lee connector' etc. I do not know who first designed the phono plug. It is possible that it subsequently inherited the 'phono' label from the superficially similar 'RCA phono connector'. The name has to have come from the US as phono, as stated above, was not a UK term. The problem with this theory is that the RCA connector was largely unknown in the UK until Japanese imported audio equipment started appearing at the end of the 1960's. 86.132.158.45 (talk) 17:13, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * I remember these plugs well. All my phono plugged cables which fitted my British made tape recorder, would not reliably connect to the Japanese made tape recorder which replaced it in c1970.


 * I have little doubt that the reason for the incompatibility was down to the fact that the original phono plug was almost certainly a patented design (this was a time when companies would patent anything and everything). I assume that the patentee made the classic mistake of including the dimensions of the plug and socket in the patent. When RCA came to rip off the design they were easily able to do so simply by changing the length of the centre pin. The patent would have specifically covered a plug with a 0.71 inch long pin (assuming the quarter inch difference is correct). RCA, by making the pin 0.56 inches long evaded the patent because the plug and socket they produced was not exactly the ones specified in the patent.


 * I can certainly confirm that the term phonograph was not a term used for anything other than a cylinder playing mechanical machine (of which I have a fine example made by the Edison company in 1909). The term ‘phono’ did not exist in British English for anything other than the phono plug. I would agree that the description ‘phono’ must have originated from across the pond. I cannot confirm whether the RCA sized plugs were generally available at the time other than to note that I do recall having the devil’s own job attempting to acquire them. Fortunately, my Japanese tape recorder did have a parallel connected DIN socket for the line input and output connections (doubtless for the European market). 85.255.234.148 (talk) 17:34, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Using image
Should this image be used in this page? Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 08:49, 23 May 2021 (UTC) Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 08:49, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Bluetooth turntables at Bed Bath jeh.jpg

Electronics, the vacuum tube
It seems to me that the article misses the introduction of the vacuum tube, a major advance over the purely mechanical players. Vacuum tubes aren't mentioned until we get to transistors. Mwanner | Talk 22:51, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

T4P and other systems not described !?!
T4P and other systems not described !?! -- 2A02:8071:819F:4700:7835:1C1E:E3F2:6492 (talk) 11:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 14:09, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Terminology
The roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph ("light writing"), telegraph ("distant writing"), and telephone ("distant sound"). The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording, involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", "Graphonole" and the like were still brand names specific to various makers of sometimes very different (i.e. cylinder and disc) machines; so considerable use was made of the generic term "talking machine", especially in print. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords, tongue, and lips – a potential source of confusion both then and now.

United Kingdom
[The term gramophone] has been so used in the UK and most Commonwealth countries since. The term "phonograph" was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records.

"Gramophone" generally referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records, $33 1/3$-rpm LPs (long-playing records) and 45-rpm "single" or two-song records, and EPs (extended-play recordings), the common name became "record player" or "turntable". Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio (radiogram) and, later, might also play audiotape cassettes. From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, monophonic) or a "stereo" (most systems being stereophonic by the mid-1960s).

United States
"Talking machine" was the comprehensive generic term, but from about 1902 on, the general public was increasingly applying the word "phonograph" indiscriminately to both cylinder and disc machines and to the records they played. By the time of the First World War, the mass advertising and popularity of the Victrola (a line of disc-playing machines characterized by their concealed horns) sold by the Victor Talking Machine Company was leading to widespread generic use of the word "victrola" for any machine that played discs, which were generally called "phonograph records" or simply "records", but almost never "Victrola records".

After electrical disc-playing machines appeared on the market in the late 1920s, often combined with a radio receiver, the term "record player" was increasingly favored by the public. Manufacturers, however, typically advertised such combinations as "radio-phonographs". Portable record players (no radio included), with a latched cover and an integrated power amplifier and loudspeaker, were becoming popular as well, especially in schools and for use by children and teenagers.

In the years following the Second World War, as "hi-fi" (high-fidelity, monophonic) and, later, "stereo" (stereophonic) component sound systems slowly evolved from an exotic specialty item into a common feature of American homes, the description of the record-spinning component as a "record changer" (which could automatically play through a stacked series of discs) or a "turntable" (which could hold only one disc at a time) entered common usage. By the 1980s, the use of a "record changer" was widely disparaged. So, the "turntable" emerged triumphant and retained its position to the present. Through all these changes, however, the discs have continued to be known as "phonograph records" or, much more commonly, simply as "records".

Gramophone, as a brand name, was not used in the United States after 1902, and the word quickly fell out of use there, although it has survived in its nickname form, Grammy, as the name of the Grammy Awards. The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, resembling a Berliner Gramophone with a taper arm.

Modern amplifier-component manufacturers continue to label the input jack for a magnetic pickup cartridge as the "phono" input.

Predecessors to the phonograph
Several inventors devised machines to record sound prior to Thomas Edison's phonograph, Edison being the first to invent a device that could both record and reproduce sound. The phonograph's predecessors include Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's phonautograph, and Charles Cros's paleophone. Recordings made with the phonautograph were intended to be visual representations of the sound, but were never sonically reproduced until 2008. Cros's paleophone was intended to both record and reproduce sound but had not been developed beyond a basic concept at the time of Edison's successful demonstration of the phonograph in 1877.

Paleophone
Cros proposed the use of photoengraving, a process already in use to make metal printing plates from line drawings, to convert an insubstantial phonautograph tracing in soot into a groove or ridge on a metal disc or cylinder. This metal surface would then be given the same motion and speed as the original recording surface. A stylus linked to a diaphragm would be made to ride in the groove or on the ridge so that the stylus would be moved back and forth in accordance with the recorded vibrations. It would transmit these vibrations to the connected diaphragm, and the diaphragm would transmit them to the air.

The early phonographs
Edison presented his own account of inventing the phonograph: "I was experimenting," he said, "on an automatic method of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing point connected to an arm traveled over the disk; and any signals given through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disc was removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several hundred words were possible.

"From my experiments on the telephone I knew of how to work a pawl connected to the diaphragm; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous rotation to a pulley. This pulley was connected by a cord to a little paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I reached the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the diaphragm properly, I could cause such records to reproduce the original movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in recording and reproducing the human voice.

"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on each sketch. If the workman lost, I would pay his regular wages; if he made more than the wages, he kept it. The workman who got the sketch was John Kruesi. I didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of."

Early machines
Playback was accomplished by exactly repeating the recording procedure, the only difference being that the recorded foil now served to vibrate the stylus, which transmitted its vibrations to the diaphragm and onward into the air as audible sound. Although Edison's very first experimental tinfoil phonograph used separate and somewhat different recording and playback assemblies, in subsequent machines, a single diaphragm and stylus served both purposes. One peculiar consequence was that it was possible to overdub additional sound onto a recording being played back. The recording was heavily worn by each playing, and it was nearly impossible to accurately remount a recorded foil after it had been removed from the cylinder. In this form, the only practical use that could be found for the phonograph was as a startling novelty for private amusement at home or public exhibitions for profit. Edison's early patents show that he was aware that sound could be recorded as a spiral on a disc, but Edison concentrated his efforts on cylinders, since the groove on the outside of a rotating cylinder provides a constant velocity to the stylus in the groove, which Edison considered more "scientifically correct".

Edison's patent specified that the audio recording be embossed, and it was not until 1886 that the method of vertically modulated incised recording using wax-coated cylinders was patented by Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter. This method of recording was patented in 1886. The actual device that reproduced the sound with the wax cylinders, which they named the Graphophone, was not patented until 1888.

Introduction of the disc record
The use of a flat recording surface instead of a cylindrical one was an obvious alternative which thought-experimenter Charles Cros initially favored and which practical experimenter Thomas Edison and others actually tested in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The oldest surviving example is a copper electrotype of a recording cut into a wax disc in 1881.

Cylindrical Dictaphone records continued in use until the mid-20th century. The commercialization of sound recording technology had been initially aimed at use in business correspondence, i.e. transcription into writing, in which the cylindrical form offered certain advantages. With paper documents being the end product, the cylinders were considered ephemeral; need to archive large numbers of bulky, fragile sound recordings seemed unlikely, and the ease of producing multiple copies was not a consideration.

In 1887, Emile Berliner patented a variant of the phonograph which he named the Gramophone. Berliner's approach was essentially the same one proposed, but never implemented, by Charles Cros in 1877. The diaphragm was linked to the recording stylus in a way that caused it to vibrate laterally (side to side) as it traced a spiral onto a zinc disc very thinly coated with a compound of beeswax. The zinc disc was then immersed in a bath of chromic acid; this etched a groove into the disc where the stylus had removed the coating, after which the recording could be played. With some later improvements, the flat discs of Berliner could be produced in large quantities at much lower cost than the cylinders of Edison's system.

In May 1889, in San Francisco, the first "phonograph parlor" opened. It featured a row of coin-operated machines, each supplied with a different wax cylinder record. The customer selected a machine according to the title that it advertised, inserted a nickel, then heard the recording through stethoscope-like listening tubes. By the mid-1890s, most American cities had at least one phonograph parlor. The coin-operated mechanism was invented by Louis T. Glass and William S. Arnold. The cabinet contained an Edison Class M or Class E phonograph. The Class M was powered by a wet-cell glass battery that would spill dangerous acid if it tipped over or broke. The Class E sold for a lower price and ran on 120 V DC.

The phenomenon of phonograph parlors peaked in Paris around 1900: in Pathé's luxurious salon, patrons sat in plush upholstered chairs and chose from among many hundreds of available cylinders by using speaking tubes to communicate with attendants on the floor below.

Volta's early challenge
In 1879, Hubbard got Bell interested in improving the phonograph, and it was agreed that a laboratory should be set up in Washington. Experiments were also to be conducted on the transmission of sound by light, which resulted in the selenium-celled Photophone.

By 1881, the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent. Wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. Rather than apply for a patent at that time, however, they deposited the machine in a sealed box at the Smithsonian, and specified that it was not to be opened without the consent of two of the three men.

The preserved Bell and Tainter records are of both the lateral cut and the Edison-style hill-and-dale (up-and-down) styles. Edison for many years used the "hill-and-dale" method on both his cylinders and Diamond Disc records, and Emile Berliner is credited with the invention of the lateral cut, acid-etched Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been experimenting with both formats and directions of groove modulation as early as 1881.

Graphophone commercialization
Shortly after American Graphophone's creation, Jesse H. Lippincott used nearly $1 million of an inheritance to gain control of it, as well as the rights to the Graphophone and the Bell and Tainter patents. Not long later Lippincott purchased the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. He then created the North American Phonograph Company to consolidate the national sales rights of both the Graphophone and the Edison Speaking Phonograph. In the early 1890s Lippincott fell victim to the unit's mechanical problems and also to resistance from stenographers.

Disc vs. cylinder as a recording medium
Recordings made on a cylinder remain at a constant linear velocity for the entirety of the recording, while those made on a disc have a higher linear velocity at the outer portion of the disc compared to the inner portion. Cylinders, however, broke easily while flat discs were more robust. Edison develops flat discs until 1929 to compete with the more popular flat discs.

Edison's patented recording method recorded with vertical modulations in a groove. Berliner utilized a laterally modulated groove.

Though Edison's recording technology was better than Berliner's, there were commercial advantages to a disc system since the disc could be easily mass-produced by molding and stamping and it required less storage space for a collection of recordings.

Berliner successfully argued that his technology was different enough from Edison's that he did not need to pay royalties on it, which reduced his business expenses.

By late 1901, ten-inch (25 cm) records were marketed by Johnson and Berliner's Victor Talking Machine Company, and Berliner had sold his interests. In 1904, discs were first pressed with music on both sides and capable of around seven minutes total playing time, as opposed to the cylinder's typical duration on two minutes at that time. As a result of this and the fragility of wax cylinders in transit and storage, cylinders sales declined. Edison felt the increasing commercial pressure for disc records, and by 1912, though reluctant at first, his production of disc records was in full swing. This was the Edison Disc Record. Nevertheless, he continued to manufacture cylinders until 1929 and was last to withdraw from that market.

From the mid-1890s until World War I, both phonograph cylinder and disc recordings and machines to play them on were widely mass-marketed and sold. The disc system superseded the cylinder in Europe by 1906 when both Columbia and Pathe withdrew from that market. By 1913, Edison was the only company still producing cylinders in the USA although in Great Britain small manufacturers pressed on until 1922.

Dominance of the disc record
Berliner's lateral disc record was the ancestor of the 78 rpm, 45 rpm, 33⅓ rpm, and all other analogue disc records popular for use in sound recording.

The 1920s brought improved radio technology. Radio sales increased, bringing many phonograph dealers to near financial ruin. With efforts at improved audio fidelity, the big record companies succeeded in keeping business booming through the end of the decade, but the record sales plummeted during the Great Depression, with many companies merging or going out of business.

Record sales picked up appreciably by the late 1930s and early 1940s, with greater improvements in fidelity and more money to be spent. By this time, home phonographs had become much more common, though it wasn't until the 1940s that console radio/phono set-ups with automatic record changers became more common.

Booms in record sales returned after the Second World War, as industry standards changed from 78s to vinyl, long-playing records (commonly called record albums), which could contain an entire symphony, and 45s which usually contained one hit song popularized on the radio – thus the term "single" record – plus another song on the back or "flip" side. An "extended play" version of the 45 was also available, designated 45 EP, which provided capacity for longer musical selections, or for two regular-length songs per side.

Shortcomings include surface noise caused by dirt or abrasions (scratches) and failure caused by deep surface scratches causing skipping of the stylus forward and missing a section, or groove lock, causing a section to repeat, usually punctuated by a popping noise. This was so common that the phrase: "You sound like a broken record,” was coined, referring to someone who is being annoyingly repetitious.

First all-transistor phonograph
By the 1960s, cheaper portable record players and record changers which played stacks of records in wooden console cabinets were popular, usually with heavy and crude tonearms in the portables. The consoles were often equipped with better quality pick-up cartridges. Even pharmacies stocked 45 rpm records at their front counters. Rock music played on 45s became the soundtrack to the 1960s as people bought the same songs that were played free of charge on the radio. Some record players were even tried in automobiles, but were quickly displaced by 8-track and cassette tapes.

The fidelity of sound reproduction made great advances during the 1970s, as turntables became very precise instruments with belt or direct drive, jewel-balanced tonearms, some with electronically controlled linear tracking and magnetic cartridges. Some cartridges had frequency response above 30 kHz for use with CD-4 quadraphonic 4 channel sound. A high fidelity component system which cost well under $1,000 could do a very good job of reproducing very accurate frequency response across the human audible spectrum from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz with a $200 turntable which would typically have less than 0.05% wow and flutter and very low rumble (low frequency noise). A well-maintained record would have very little surface noise.

A novelty variation on the standard format was the use of multiple concentric spirals with different recordings. Thus when the record was played multiple times, different recordings would play, seemingly at random. These were often utilized in talking toys and games.

Records themselves became an art form because of the large surface onto which graphics and books could be printed, and records could be molded into unusual shapes, colors, or with images (picture discs). The turntable remained a common element of home audio systems well after the introduction of other media, such as audio tape and even the early years of the compact disc as a lower-priced music format. However, even though the cost of producing CDs fell below that of records, CDs remained a higher-priced music format than either cassettes or records. Thus, records were not uncommon in home audio systems into the early 1990s.

By the turn of the 21st century, the turntable had become a niche product, as the price of CD players, which reproduce music free of pops and scratches, fell far lower than high-fidelity tape players or turntables. Nevertheless, there is some increase in interest; many big-box media stores carry turntables, as do professional DJ equipment stores. Most low-end and mid-range amplifiers omit the phono input; but on the other hand, low-end turntables with built-in phono pre-amplifiers are widely available. Some combination systems include a basic turntable, a CD player, a cassette deck. and a radio, in a retro-styled cabinet. Records also continue to be manufactured and sold today, albeit in smaller quantities than in the disc phonograph's heyday.

Turntable construction
Inexpensive record players typically used a flanged steel stamping for the turntable structure. A rubber disc would be secured to the top of the stamping to provide traction for the record, as well as a small amount of vibration isolation. The spindle bearing usually consisted of a bronze bushing. The flange on the stamping provided a convenient place to drive the turntable by means of an idler wheel (see below). While light and cheap to manufacture, these mechanisms had low inertia, making motor speed instabilities more pronounced.

Costlier turntables made from heavy aluminium castings have greater balanced mass and inertia, helping minimize vibration at the stylus, and maintaining constant speed without wow or flutter, even if the motor exhibits cogging effects. Like stamped steel turntables, they were topped with rubber. Because of the increased mass, they usually employed ball bearings or roller bearings in the spindle to reduce friction and noise. Most are belt or direct drive, but some use an idler wheel. A specific case was the Swiss "Lenco" drive, which possessed a very heavy turntable coupled via an idler wheel to a long, tapered motor drive shaft. This enabled stepless rotation or speed control on the drive. Because of this feature the Lenco became popular in the late 1950s with dancing schools, because the dancing instructor could lead the dancing exercises at different speeds.

By the early 1980s, some companies started producing very inexpensive turntables that displaced the products of companies like BSR. Commonly found in "all-in-one" stereos from assorted far-east manufacturers, they used a thin plastic table set in a plastic plinth, no mats, belt drive, weak motors, and often, lightweight plastic tonearms with no counterweight. Most used sapphire pickups housed in ceramic cartridges, and they lacked several features of earlier units, such as auto-start and record-stacking. While not as common now that turntables are absent from the cheap "all-in-one" units, this type of turntable has made a strong resurgence in nostalgia-marketed record players.

Turntable drive systems
From the earliest phonograph designs, many of which were powered by spring-wound mechanisms, a speed governor was essential. Most of these employed some type of flywheel-friction disc to control the speed of the rotating cylinder or turntable; as the speed increased, centrifugal force caused a brake—often a felt pad—to rub against a smooth metal surface, slowing rotation. Electrically powered turntables, whose rotational speed was governed by other means, eventually made their mechanical counterparts obsolete. The mechanical governor was, however, still employed in some toy phonographs (such as those found in talking dolls) until they were replaced by digital sound generators in the late 20th century.

Many modern players have platters with a continuous series of strobe markings machined or printed around their edge. Viewing these markings in artificial light at mains frequency produces a stroboscopic effect, which can be used to verify proper rotational speed. Additionally, the edge of the turntable can contain magnetic markings to provide feedback pulses to an electronic speed-control system.

Idler-wheel drive system
Earlier designs used a rubberized idler-wheel drive system. However, wear and decomposition of the wheel, as well as the direct mechanical coupling to a vibrating motor, introduced low-frequency noise ("rumble") and speed variations ("wow and flutter") into the sound. These systems generally used a synchronous motor which ran at a speed synchronized to the frequency of the AC power supply. Portable record players typically used an inexpensive shaded-pole motor. At the end of the motor shaft there was a stepped driving capstan; to obtain different speeds, the rubber idler wheel was moved to contact different steps of this capstan. The idler was pinched against the bottom or inside edge of the platter to drive it.

Until the 1970s, the idler-wheel drive was the most common on turntables, except for higher-end audiophile models. However, even some higher-end turntables, such as the Lenco, Garrard, EMT, and Dual turntables, used idler-wheel drive.

Belt drive system
Belt drives brought improved motor and platter isolation compared to idler-wheel designs. Motor noise, generally heard as low-frequency rumble, is greatly reduced. The design of the belt drive turntable allows for a less expensive motor than the direct-drive turntable to be used. The elastomeric belt absorbs motor vibrations and noise which could otherwise be picked up by the stylus. It also absorbs small, fast speed variations, caused by "cogging", which in other designs are heard as "flutter."

The "Acoustical professional" turntable (earlier marketed under Dutch "Jobo prof") of the 1960s however possessed an expensive German drive motor, the "Pabst Aussenläufer" ("Pabst outrunner"). As this motor name implied, the rotor was on the outside of the motor and acted as a flywheel ahead of the belt-driven turntable itself. In combination with a steel to nylon turntable bearing (with molybdenum disulfide inside for lifelong lubrication) very low wow, flutter and rumble figures were achieved.

Direct drive system
Direct-drive turntables drive the platter directly without utilizing intermediate wheels, belts, or gears as part of a drive train. This requires good engineering, with advanced electronics for acceleration and speed control. Matsushita's Technics division introduced the first commercially successful direct drive platter, model SP10, in 1969, which was joined by the Technics SL-1200 turntable, in 1972. Its updated model, SL-1200MK2, released in 1978, had a stronger motor, a convenient pitch control slider for beatmatching and a stylus illuminator, which made it the long-standing favourite among disc jockeys (see "Turntablism"). By the beginnings of the 80s, lowering of costs in microcontroller electronics made direct drive turntables more affordable.

Pricing
Audiophile grade turntables start at a few hundred dollars and range upwards of $100,000, depending on the complexity and quality of design and manufacture. The common view is that there are diminishing returns with an increase in price – a turntable costing $1,000 would not sound significantly better than a turntable costing $500; nevertheless, there exists a large choice of expensive turntables.

Arm systems
The tone arm (or tonearm) holds the pickup cartridge over the groove, the stylus tracking the groove with the desired force to give the optimal compromise between good tracking and minimizing wear of the stylus and record groove. At its simplest, a tone arm is a pivoted lever, free to move in two axes (vertical and horizontal) with a counterbalance to maintain tracking pressure.

However, the requirements of high-fidelity reproduction place more demands upon the arm design. In a perfect world:


 * The tone arm must track the groove without distorting the stylus assembly, so an ideal arm would have no mass, and frictionless bearings, requiring zero force to move it.
 * The arm should not oscillate following a displacement, so it should either be both light and very stiff, or suitably damped.
 * The arm must not resonate with vibrations induced by the stylus or from the turntable motor or plinth, so it must be heavy enough to be immune to those vibrations, or it must be damped to absorb them.
 * The arm should keep the cartridge stylus tangent to the groove it's in as it moves across the record, with minimal variation in angle.

These demands are contradictory and impossible to realize (massless arms and zero-friction bearings do not exist in the real world), so tone arm designs require engineering compromises. Solutions vary, but all modern tonearms are at least relatively lightweight and stiff constructions, with precision, very low friction pivot bearings in both the vertical and horizontal axes. Most arms are made from some kind of alloy (the cheapest being aluminium), but some manufacturers use balsa wood, while others use carbon fiber or graphite. The latter materials favor a straight arm design; alloys' properties lend themselves to S-type arms.

The tone arm got its name before the age of electronics. It originally served to conduct actual sound waves from a purely mechanical "pickup" called a sound box or reproducer to a so-described "amplifying" horn. The earliest electronic record players, introduced at the end of 1925, had massive electromagnetic pickups that contained a horseshoe magnet, used disposable steel needles, and weighed several ounces. Their full weight rested on the record, providing ample tracking force to overcome their low compliance but causing rapid record wear. The tone arms were rudimentary and remained so even after lighter crystal pickups appeared about ten years later. When fine-grooved vinyl records were introduced in the late 1940s, still smaller and lighter crystal (later, ceramic) cartridges with semi-permanent jewel styluses became standard. In the mid-1950s these were joined by a new generation of magnetic cartridges that bore little resemblance to their crude ancestors. Far smaller tracking forces became possible and the balanced arm came into use.

Prices varied widely. The well-known and extremely popular high-end S-type SME arm of the 1970–1980 era not only had a complicated design, it was also very costly. On the other hand, even some cheaper arms could be of professional quality: the "All Balance" arm, made by the now-defunct Dutch company Acoustical, was only €30 [equivalent]. It was used during that period by all official radio stations in the Dutch Broadcast studio facilities of the NOS, as well as by the pirate radio station Veronica. Playing records from a boat in international waters, the arm had to withstand sudden ship movements. Anecdotes indicate this low-cost arm was the only one capable of keeping the needle firmly in the groove during heavy storms at sea.

Quality arms employ an adjustable counterweight to offset the mass of the arm and various cartridges and headshells. On this counterweight, a calibrated dial enables easy adjustment of stylus force. After perfectly balancing the arm, the dial itself is "zeroed"; the stylus force can then be dialed in by screwing the counterweight towards the fulcrum. (Sometimes a separate spring or smaller weight provides fine tuning.) Stylus forces of 10 to 20 mN (1 to 2 grams-force) are typical for modern consumer turntables, while forces of up to 50 mN (5 grams) are common for the tougher environmental demands of party deejaying or turntablism. Of special adjustment consideration, Stanton cartridges of the 681EE(E) series [and others like them] feature a small record brush ahead of the cartridge. The upforce of this brush, and its added drag require compensation of both tracking force (add 1 gram) and anti-skating adjustment values (see next paragraph for description).

Even on a perfectly flat LP, tonearms are prone to two types of tracking errors that affect the sound. As the tonearm tracks the groove, the stylus exerts a frictional force tangent to the arc of the groove, and since this force does not intersect the tone arm pivot, a clockwise rotational force (moment) occurs and a reaction skating force is exerted on the stylus by the record groove wall away from center of the disc. Modern arms provide an anti-skate mechanism, using springs, hanging weights, or magnets to produce an offsetting counter-clockwise force at the pivot, making the net lateral force on the groove walls near zero.

The second error occurs as the arm sweeps in an arc across the disc, causing the angle between the cartridge head and groove to change slightly. A change in angle, albeit small, will have a detrimental effect (especially with stereo recordings) by creating different forces on the two groove walls, as well as a slight timing shift between left/right channels. Making the arm longer to reduce this angle is a partial solution, but less than ideal. A longer arm weighs more, and only an infinitely long [pivoted] arm would reduce the error to zero. Some designs (Burne-Jones, and Garrard "Zero" series) use dual arms in a parallelogram arrangement, pivoting the cartridge head to maintain a constant angle as it moves across the record. However, this creates more problems than it solves, compromising rigidity and creating sources of unwanted noise.

The pivoted arm produces yet another problem which is unlikely to be significant to the audiophile, though. As the master was originally cut in a linear motion from the edge towards the center, but the stylus on the pivoted arm always draws an arc, this causes a timing drift that is most significant when digitizing music and beat mapping the data for synchronization with other songs in a DAW or DJ software unless the software allows building a non-linear beat map. As the contact point of the stylus on the record wanders farther from the linear path between the starting point and center hole, the tempo and pitch tend to decrease towards the middle of the record, until the arc reaches its apex. After that the tempo and pitch increase towards the end as the contact point comes closer to the linear path again. Because the surface speed of the record is lower at the end, the relative speed error from the same absolute distance error is higher at the end, and the increase in tempo is more notable towards the end than the decrease towards the middle. This can be somewhat reduced by a curved arm pivoted so that the end point of the arc stays farther from the linear path than the starting point, or by a long straight arm that pivots perpendicularly to the linear path in the middle of the record. However the tempo droop at the middle can only be completely avoided by a linear tracking arm.

Linear tracking
If the arm is not pivoted, but instead carries the stylus along a radius of the disc, there is no skating force and little to no cartridge angle error. Such arms are known as linear tracking or tangential arms. These are driven along a track by various means, from strings and pulleys, to worm gears or electromagnets. The cartridge's position is usually regulated by an electronic servomechanism or mechanical interface, moving the stylus properly over the groove as the record plays, or for song selection.

There are long-armed and short-armed linear arm designs. On a perfectly flat record a short arm will do, but once the record is even slightly warped, a short arm will be troublesome. Any vertical motion of the record surface at the stylus contact point will cause the stylus to considerably move longitudinally in the groove. This will cause the stylus to ride non-tangentially in the groove and cause a stereo phase error as well as pitch error every time the stylus rides over the warp. Also the arm track can come into touch with the record. A long arm will not eliminate this problem but will tolerate warped records much better.

Of note are Rabco's SL-8, followed by Bang & Olufsen with its Beogram 4000 model in 1972. These models positioned the track outside the platter's edge, as did turntables by Harman Kardon, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Yamaha, Sony, etc. A 1970s design from Revox harkened back to the 1950s attempts (and, record lathes), positioning the track directly over the record. An enclosed bridge-like assembly is swung into place from the platter's right edge to its middle. Once in place, a short tonearm under this "bridge" plays the record, driven across laterally by a motor. The Sony PS-F5/F9 (1983) uses a similar, miniaturized design, and can operate in a vertical or horizontal orientation. The Technics SL-10, introduced in 1981, was the first direct drive linear tracking turntable, and placed the track and arm on the underside of the rear-hinged dust cover, to fold down over the record, similar to the SL-Q6 pictured.

The earliest Edison phonographs used horizontal, spring-powered drives to carry the stylus across the recording at a pre-determined rate. But, historically as a whole, the linear tracking systems never gained wide acceptance, due largely to their complexity and associated production/development costs. The resources it takes to produce one incredible linear turntable could produce several excellent ones. Some of the most sophisticated and expensive tonearms and turntable units ever made are linear trackers, from companies such as Rockport and Clearaudio. In theory, it seems nearly ideal; a stylus replicating the motion of the recording lathe used to cut the "master" record could result in minimal wear and maximum sound reproduction. In practice, in vinyl's heyday it was generally too much too late.

Since the early 1980s, an elegant solution has been the near-frictionless air bearing linear arm that requires no tracking drive mechanism other than the record groove. This provides a similar benefit as the electronic linear tonearm without the complexity and necessity of servo-motor correction for tracking error. In this case the trade-off is the introduction of pneumatics in the form of audible pumps and tubing. A more elegant solution is the mechanically driven low-friction design, also driven by the groove. Examples include Souther Engineering (U.S.A.), Clearaudio (Germany), and Aura (Czech Republic). This design places an exceeding demand upon precision engineering due to the lack of pneumatics.

Pickup systems
Historically, most high-fidelity "component" systems (preamplifiers or receivers) that accepted input from a phonograph turntable had separate inputs for both ceramic and magnetic cartridges (typically labeled "CER" and "MAG"). One piece systems often had no additional phono inputs at all, regardless of type.

Most systems today, if they accept input from a turntable at all, are configured for use only with magnetic cartridges. Manufacturers of high-end systems often have in-built moving coil amplifier circuitry, or outboard head-amplifiers supporting either moving magnet or moving coil cartridges that can be plugged into the line stage.

Piezoelectric (crystal/ceramic) cartridges
Early electronic phonographs used a piezo-electric crystal for pickup (though the earliest electronic phonographs used crude magnetic pick-ups), where the mechanical movement of the stylus in the groove generates a proportional electrical voltage by creating stress within a crystal (typically Rochelle salt). Crystal pickups are relatively robust, and produce a substantial signal level which requires only a modest amount of further amplification. The output is not very linear however, introducing unwanted distortion. It is difficult to make a crystal pickup suitable for quality stereo reproduction, as the stiff coupling between the crystal and the long stylus prevents close tracking of the needle to the groove modulations. This tends to increase wear on the record, and introduces more distortion. Another problem is the hygroscopic nature of the crystal itself: it absorbs moisture from the air and may dissolve. The crystal was protected by embedding it in other materials, without hindering the movement of the pickup mechanism itself. After a number of years, the protective jelly often deteriorated or leaked from the cartridge case and the full unit needed replacement.

The next development was the ceramic cartridge, a piezoelectric device that used newer and better materials. These were more sensitive, and offered greater compliance, that is, lack of resistance to movement and so increased ability to follow the undulations of the groove without gross distorting or jumping out of the groove. Higher compliance meant lower tracking forces and reduced wear to both the disc and stylus. It also allowed ceramic stereo cartridges to be made.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, ceramic cartridges became common in low-quality phonographs, but better high-fidelity (or "hi-fi") systems used magnetic cartridges. The availability of low-cost magnetic cartridges from the 1970s onwards made ceramic cartridges obsolete for essentially all purposes. At the seeming end of the market lifespan of ceramic cartridges, someone accidentally discovered that by terminating a specific ceramic mono cartridge (the Ronette TX88) not with the prescribed 47 kΩ resistance, but with approx. 10 kΩ, it could be connected to the moving magnet (MM) input too. The result, a much smoother frequency curve extended the lifetime for this popular and very cheap type.

Magnetic cartridges
There are two common designs for magnetic cartridges, moving magnet (MM) and moving coil (MC) (originally called dynamic). Both operate on the same physics principle of electromagnetic induction. The moving magnet type was by far the most common and more robust of the two, though audiophiles often claim that the moving coil system yields higher fidelity sound.

In either type, the stylus itself, usually of diamond, is mounted on a tiny metal strut called a cantilever, which is suspended using a collar of highly compliant plastic. This gives the stylus the freedom to move in any direction. On the other end of the cantilever is mounted a tiny permanent magnet (moving magnet type) or a set of tiny wound coils (moving coil type). The magnet is close to a set of fixed pick-up coils, or the moving coils are held within a magnetic field generated by fixed permanent magnets. In either case, the movement of the stylus as it tracks the grooves of a record causes a fluctuating magnetic field, which causes a small electric current to be induced in the coils. This current closely follows the sound waveform cut into the record, and may be transmitted by wires to an electronic amplifier where it is processed and amplified in order to drive a loudspeaker. Depending upon the amplifier design, a phono-preamplifier may be necessary.

In most moving magnet designs, the stylus itself is detachable from the rest of the cartridge so it can easily be replaced. There are three primary types of cartridge mounts. The most common type is attached using two small screws to a headshell that then plugs into the tonearm, while another is a standardized "P-mount" or "T4P" cartridge (invented by Technics in 1980 and adopted by other manufacturers) that plugs directly into the tonearm. Many P-mount cartridges come with adapters to allow them to be mounted to a headshell. The third type is used mainly in cartridges designed for DJ use and it has a standard round headshell connector. Some mass market turntables use a proprietary integrated cartridge that cannot be upgraded.

An alternative design is the moving iron variation on moving magnet used by ADC, Grado, Stanton/Pickering 681 series, Ortofon OM and VMS series, and the MMC cartridge of Bang & Olufsen. In these units, the magnet itself sits behind the four coils and magnetises the cores of all four coils. The moving iron cross at the other end of the coils varies the gaps between itself and each of these cores, according to its movements. These variations lead to voltage variations as described above.

Famous brands for magnetic cartridges are: Grado, Stanton/Pickering (681EE/EEE), B&O (MM types for its two, non-compatible generations of parallel arm design), Shure (V15 Type I to V), Audio-Technica, Nagaoka, Dynavector, Koetsu, Ortofon, Technics, Denon and ADC.

Strain gauge cartridges
Strain gauge or "semiconductor" cartridges do not generate a voltage, but act like a variable resistor, whose resistance directly depends on the movement of the stylus. Thus, the cartridge "modulates" an external voltage supplied by the (special) preamplifier. These pickups were marketed by Euphonics, Sao Win, and Panasonic/Technics, amongst others.

The main advantages (compared to magnetic carts are):


 * The electrical connection from the cartridge to the preamplifier is immune to cable capacitance issues.
 * Being non-magnetic, the cartridge is immune to "hum" induced by stray magnetic fields (same advantage shared with ceramic cartridges).
 * The combination of electrical and mechanical advantages, plus the absence of magnetic yoke high-frequency losses, make them especially suitable to reproducing frequencies up to 50 kHz. Technics (Matsushita Electric) marketed a line of strain-gauge (labeled "semiconductor") cartridges especially intended for Compatible Discrete 4 quadraphonic records, requiring such high frequency response. Bass response down to 0 Hz is possible.
 * By using a suitable mechanical arrangement, VTA (vertical tracking angle) stays steady independent of the stylus vertical movements, with the consequent reduction in related distortions.
 * Being a force sensor, the strain-gauge cartridge can also measure the actual VTF (vertical tracking force) while in use.

The main disadvantage is the need of a special preamplifier that supplies a steady current (typically 5mA) to the semiconductor elements and handles a special equalization than the one needed for magnetic cartridges.

A high-end strain-gauge cartridge is currently sold by an audiophile company, with special preamplifiers available.

Electrostatic cartridges
Electrostatic cartridges were marketed by Stax in the 1950 and 1960 years. They needed individual operating electronics or preamplifiers.

Stylus
A smooth-tipped stylus (in popular usage often called a needle due to the former use of steel needles for the purpose) is used to play the recorded groove. A special chisel-like stylus is used to engrave the groove into the master record.

The stylus is subject to hard wear as it is the only small part that comes into direct contact with the spinning record. In terms of the force imposed on its minute areas of actual contact, the pressure it must bear is enormous. There are three desired qualities in a stylus: first, that it faithfully follows the contours of the recorded groove and transmits its vibrations to the next part in the chain; second, that it does not damage the recorded disc; and third, that it is resistant to wear. A worn-out, damaged or defective stylus tip will degrade audio quality and injure the groove.

Different materials for the stylus have been used over time. Thomas Edison introduced the use of sapphire in 1892 and the use of diamond in 1910 for his cylinder phonographs. The Edison Diamond Disc players (1912–1929), when properly played, hardly ever required the stylus to be changed. The styli for vinyl records were also made out of sapphire or diamond. A specific case is the specific stylus type of Bang & Olufsen's (B&O) moving magnet cartridge MMC 20CL, mostly used in parallel arm B&O turntables in the 4002/6000 series. It uses a sapphire stem on which a diamond tip is fixed by a special adhesive. A stylus tip mass as low as 0.3 milligram is the result and full tracking only requires 1 gram of stylus force, reducing record wear even further. Maximum distortion (2nd harmonic) fell below 0.6%.

Other than the Edison and European Pathé disc machines, early disc players, both external horn and internal horn "Victrola" style models, normally used very short-lived disposable needles. The most common material was steel, although other materials such as copper, tungsten, bamboo and cactus were used. Steel needles needed to be replaced frequently, preferably after each use, due to their very rapid wear from bearing down heavily on the mildly abrasive shellac record. Rapid wear was an essential feature so that their imprecisely formed tips would be quickly worn into compliance with the groove's contours. Advertisements implored customers to replace their steel needles after each record side. Steel needles were inexpensive, e.g., a box of 500 for 50 US cents, and were widely sold in packets and small tins. They were available in different thicknesses and lengths. Thick, short needles produced strong, loud tones while thinner, longer needles produces softer, muted tones. In 1916, in the face of a wartime steel shortage, Victor introduced their "Tungs-Tone" brand extra-long-playing needle, which was advertised to play between 100 and 300 records. It consisted of a brass shank into which a very hard and strong tungsten wire, somewhat narrower than the standard record groove, had been fitted. The protruding wire wore down, but not out, until it was worn too short to use. Later in the 78 rpm era, hardened steel and chrome-plated needles came on the market, some of which were claimed to play 10 to 20 record sides each.

When sapphires were introduced for the 78 rpm disc and the LP, they were made by tapering a stem and polishing the tip to a sphere with a radius of around 70 and 25 micrometers respectively. A sphere is not equal to the form of the cutting stylus and by the time diamond needles came to the market, a whole discussion was started on the effect of circular forms moving through a non-circular cut groove. It can be easily shown that vertical, so called "pinching" movements were a result and when stereophonic LPs were introduced, unwanted vertical modulation was recognized as a problem. Also, the needle started its life touching the groove on a very small surface, giving extra wear on the walls.

Another problem is in the tapering along a straight line, while the side of the groove is far from straight. Both problems were attacked together: by polishing the diamond in a certain way that it could be made doubly elliptic. 1) the side was made into one ellipse as seen from behind, meaning the groove touched along a short line and 2) the ellipse form was also polished as seen from above and curvature in the direction of the groove became much smaller than 25 micrometers e.g. 13 micrometers. With this approach a number of irregularities were eliminated. Furthermore, the angle of the stylus, which used to be always sloping backwards, was changed into the forward direction, in line with the slope the original cutting stylus possessed. These styli were expensive to produce, but the costs were effectively offset by their extended lifespans.

[the Shibata stylus was invented around 1972 in Japan by Norio Shibata of JVC] ...fitted as standard on quadraphonic cartridges, and marketed as an extra on some high-end cartridges.

Most of those stylus profiles are still being manufactured and sold, together with the more common spherical and elliptical profiles. This is despite the fact that production of CD-4 quadraphonic records ended by the late 1970s.

For elliptical and advanced stylus shapes, correct cartridge alignment is critical. There are several alignment methods, each creating different null points at which the stylus will be tangential to the record grooves, optimizing distortion across the record side in different ways. The most popular alignment geometries are Baerwald, Løfgren B and Stevenson.

Common tools to align the stylus correctly are 2-point protractors (which can be used with any turntable as long as the headshells are long enough for the chosen alignment), overhang gauges and arc protractors (model specific).

Record materials
Early materials in the 19th century were hardened rubber, wax, and celluloid, but early in the 20th century a shellac compound became the standard. Since shellac is not hard enough to withstand the wear of steel needles on heavy tone arms, filler made of pulverized shale was added. Shellac was also fragile, and records often shattered or cracked. This was a problem for home records, but it became a bigger problem in the late 1920s with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc motion picture "talkie" system, developed in 1927.

and experimentally, in home records, the same year. However, with Sound-on-film achieving supremacy over sound-on-disc by 1931, the need for unbreakable records diminished and the production of vinyl home recordings was dropped as well, for the time being.

...and experimentally, in home records, the same year. However, with Sound-on-film achieving supremacy over sound-on-disc by 1931, the need for unbreakable records diminished and the production of vinyl home recordings was dropped as well, for the time being.

The Victrolac formula improved throughout the 1930s, and by the late 30s the material, by then called vinylite, was being used in records sent to radio stations for radio program records, radio commercials, and later, DJ copies of phonograph records, because vinyl records could be sent through the mail to radio stations without breaking. During WWII, there was a shortage of shellac, which had to be imported from Asia, and the U.S. government banned production of shellac records for the duration of the war. Vinylite was made domestically, though, and was being used for V-discs during the war. Record company engineers took a much closer look at the possibilities of vinyl, possibly that it might even replace shellac as the basic record material.

After the war, RCA Victor and Columbia, by far the two leading records companies in America, perfected two new vinyl formats, which were both introduced in 1948, when the 33$1/3$ RPM LP was introduced by Columbia and the 45 RPM single was introduced by RCA Victor. For a few years thereafter, however, 78 RPM records continued to be made in shellac until that format was phased out around 1958.

Equalization
Early "acoustical" record players used the stylus to vibrate a diaphragm that radiated the sound through a horn. Several serious problems resulted from this:


 * The maximum sound level achievable was quite limited, being limited to the physical amplification effects of the horn,
 * The energy needed to generate such sound levels as were obtainable had to come directly from the stylus tracing the groove. This required very high tracking forces that rapidly wore out both the stylus and the record on lateral cut 78 rpm records.
 * Because bass sounds have a higher amplitude than high frequency sounds (for the same perceived loudness), the space taken in the groove by low frequency sounds needed to be large (limiting playback time per side of the record) to accommodate the bass notes, yet the high frequencies required only tiny variations in the groove, which were easily affected by noise from irregularities (wear, contaminates, etc.) in the disc itself.

The introduction of electronic amplification allowed these issues to be addressed. Records are made with boosted high frequencies and reduced low frequencies, which allow for different ranges of sound to be produced. This reduces the effect of background noise, including clicks or pops, and also conserves the amount of physical space needed for each groove, by reducing the size of the low-frequency undulations.

During playback, the high frequencies must be rescaled to their original, flat frequency response—known as "equalization"—as well as being amplified. A phono input of an amplifier incorporates such equalization as well as amplification to suit the very low level output from a modern cartridge. Most hi-fi amplifiers made between the 1950s and the 1990s and virtually all DJ mixers are so equipped.

The widespread adoption of digital music formats, such as CD or satellite radio, has displaced phonograph records and resulted in phono inputs being omitted in most modern amplifiers. Some newer turntables include built-in preamplifiers to produce line-level outputs. Inexpensive and moderate performance discrete phono preamplifiers with RIAA equalization are available, while high-end audiophile units costing thousands of dollars continue to be available in very small numbers. Phono inputs are starting to reappear on amplifiers in the 2010s due to the vinyl revival.

These kinds of adjustable phono equalizers are used by consumers whoh prefer to play vintage record collections (often the only available recordings of musicians of the time) with the equalization used to make them.

In the 21st century
The quality of available record players, tonearms, and cartridges has continued to improve, despite diminishing demand, allowing turntables to remain competitive in the high-end audio market. Vinyl enthusiasts are often committed to the refurbishment and sometimes tweaking of vintage systems.

Updated versions of the 1970s era Technics SL-1200 (production ceased in 2010) have remained an industry standard for DJs to the present day. Turntables and vinyl records remain popular in mixing (mostly dance-oriented) forms of electronic music, where they allow great latitude for physical manipulation of the music by the DJ.

In hip hop music, and occasionally in other genres, the turntable is used as a musical instrument by DJs, who use turntables along with a DJ mixer to create unique rhythmic sounds. Manipulation of a record as part of the music, rather than for normal playback or mixing, is called turntablism. The basis of turntablism, and its best known technique, is scratching, pioneered by Grand Wizzard Theodore. It was not until Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" in 1983 that the turntablism movement was recognized in popular music outside of a hip hop context. In the 2010s, many hip hop DJs use DJ CD players or digital record emulator devices to create scratching sounds; nevertheless, some DJs still scratch with vinyl records.

The laser turntable uses a laser as the pickup instead of a stylus in physical contact with the disk. It was conceived of in the late 1980s, although early prototypes were not of usable audio quality. Practical laser turntables are now being manufactured by ELPJ. They are favoured by record libraries and some audiophiles since they eliminate physical wear completely.

Experimentation is in progress in retrieving the audio from old records by scanning the disc and analysing the scanned image, rather than using any sort of turntable.

1930s
I'd appreciate if the history section of this article said something about technology between 1907 (acoustic amplification) and 1955 (first solid state phonograph). I expect that somewhere in between, there were vacuum tube amplifiers. More info would be helpful. Thanks. 2601:644:8501:AAF0:0:0:0:6032 (talk) 04:55, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

"use would grow" the year after it was invented

 * "The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison.[1][2][3][4] Phonograph use would grow the following year."

Of course usage grew after it was invented. The question is to how much? Are we trying to say usage grew quickly? How about just saying that? B9 (talk) 00:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

"since the late 2000s" is confusing

 * Records have undergone a revival since the late 2000s.

The phrase "the late 2000s" seems more applicable to 2999 than 2009. Why was it phrased this way? Is there controversy? Looking at https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/, for example, it appears we can just say "since 2009" based on the increase of LP sales year over year.e. B9 (talk) 00:34, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I think it's safer to stick to "late" instead of fixing on a single year. Sales have increased every year since 2007 but because the bar was really low back then it can be misleading into readers believing that records were "wildly popular" from that time on when it wasn't. Also there's evidence at least from the UK that the revival was already beginning in 2006. Sateystnes (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The original point is that "late 2000s" is ambiguous; it most naturally refers to years such as 2089, 2094, or 2098. But the intention is to refer to years late in the period from 2000 to 2009, i.e. years 200x, for which the digit x is towards 9. Unfortunately there is no obvious unambiguous way (in English) to refer to this. Imaginatorium (talk) 10:40, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 6 May 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 02:12, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Phonograph → Record player – Phonograph is a very old term that isn't common and widely recognised today - it may have been suitable if this was an article strictly about something historic but this is something current too. Today the common name is a "Record Player", or a "Turntable" (often interchangable but the latter is strictly about a specific type of record player). See WP:COMMON it applies here. Sateystnes (talk) 23:53, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree that a move seems reasonable. I'm English, but live somewhere else, so I have no idea what terminology is common now, (or in the US, where I wouldn't be surprised to learn they call it a "disk rotator" or something). But notice that "record player" has only the one applicable meaning, whereas "turntable" also has other meanings, so is less clear. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose. Read the article.  It is a historical article, more than half if it is about cylinder phonographs and wind-up gramophones that are not commonly referred to as "record players".  "Record player" is a colloquialism that, however popular in some countries, is not universally used in English.   "Phonograph" is the parent term encompassing all varieties of this technology. Walrasiad (talk)
 * Oppose, the current primary redirect of Record player works fine. 162 etc. (talk) 16:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose, per common name and historical long-term significance. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:28, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Walrasiad; the scope of the article includes cylindrical and other phonographic devices that are not within the general definition of "record player" (which refers to players of circular phonographic platters made of vinyl and early on of hard wax).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:43, 9 May 2024 (UTC)