How the Recording Industry Started

Over 100 years ago, far away from the bustling Royal City, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were fighting a major turf war over recorded sound which resulted in an extremely productive period of advancement in this technology.

Thomas Edison was responsible for the first sound recording on tin foil in 1877 but he soon lost interest in this area and moved on to the electric light bulb. In 1886 Alexander Graham Bell and his company, Bell & Tainter, decided that wax was a better medium on which to record and the company developed the brown wax cylinder and a ‘graphophone’ to hear the recording. Later that year, Thomas Edison, who was furious that another company wanted to develop sound recordings, came out with his own version of the brown wax cylinder and ‘phonograph’. The competition was on!
Brown wax recordings were made with cardboard tube cylinders that were covered with wax. They were only about 6 inches long and just over 1 inch wide. A cutting stylus would respond to sound waves through vibration and translated the sound by literally carving into the wax cylinder. In order to achieve an adequate recording, the volume had to be LOUD. Musicians and singers had to stand near the phonograph and belt out the tunes. Rock and roll music would have done well on these early recordings!
By 1902 the brown wax cylinder was eclipsed by the molded black wax cylinder, which was actually made of a soap compound. They were much more ‘hi-fi’ than brown wax cylinders and usually lasted longer. A typical recording on a black wax cylinder was about 2 minutes.
You can view an Edison Phonograph and a Bell & Tainter Graphophone at the New Westminster Museum and Archives and you can listen to some early brown wax cylinder recordings, now transferred to MP3, files right here on this page!

Please click on the links below to hear a 100+ year old wax cylinder recording.

TITLE	Afloat on a Five Dollar Note
GENRE	Comic, Ragtime
ARTIST	Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan
COMPANY	Edison
CYLINDER	Wax
RELEASE	1906
CATALOGUE NUMBER	9316
ANNOUNCEMENT	“Afloat on a five dollar note sung by Collins and Harlan, Edison Records”
TITLE	Slide, Kelly, Slide
GENRE	Comic, Baseball
ARTIST	Arthur Collins
COMPANY	Edison
CYLINDER	2-minute brown wax
RELEASE	1896-1897
CATALOGUE NUMBER	1547
ANNOUNCEMENT	"Slide, Kelly, Slide, sung by Arthur Collins, Edison Records"