Recordings J1

Way back when, recordings were a big thing. Music used to be something rare that you only heard on special occasions, like at the village dance. It wasn't like setting a record on a record player and setting the needle down; you had to find someone who knew a song, someone to play as musical accompaniment, and maybe then you'd get to listen. Of course, people were way too busy trying to survive to indulge your whims and sing a bit.

Until we get to Thomas Edison. He invented the phonograph, which a more fragile version of the record player. It recorded sounds and you could play them back again and again until the tin foil ripped. It was also impossible to reproduce perfectly; the original message would always be the best.

After that came the Berliner gramophone, not ten years later in 1887. His gramophone followed the general idea that Edison's phonograph did: record sound, play it back. His metal disks weren't as fragile as tin foil and were reproducible. Suddenly, records were becoming forms of communication. You could listen to the words of a loved one long after they were gone.

However, it wasn't until the 1920s that recordings became a form of mass communication. It was the birth of pop (popular) culture. Everyone on the street could listen to the latest recording by a famous band and talk about it. Recordings, by then, could be rapidly mass produced. Audio became electricity and with that came microphones and speakers.