The means to transmit, to record and to reproduce speech signals were invented almost simultaneously. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone and Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph were demonstrated in 1876 and 1877 respectively. Both inventions were popularly received and by the turn of the century several companies in a number of countries had been formed to manufacture and to sell telephone apparatuses and gramophone records and players. By the 1920s, worldwide sales of the units produced by the telephone and record industry exceeded many millions. Curiously, whereas much development, based on sound scientific principles and engineering practice, was the feature of the first fifty years of telephony, the position in the gramophone industry was one of stagnation. In the early 1920s, the recording of speech and music in the studio was little different from that of the 1890s. Fortunately, this situation changed in 1926 when J.P. Maxfield and H.C. Harrison, of Bell Telephone Laboratories, applied the findings of telephone research to the high-quality recording and reproduction of music.
Monophonic recording and reproduction, Page 1 of 2
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