Abstract
IT is well known that during the last few years the gramophone (invented by Berliner in 1887), in its more complete and expensive forms, has been so much improved as to have completely eclipsed the phonograph. It is now an instrument that not only records pitch and intensity, but also quality to a surprising degree, so that one can listen to orchestral music in which the quality of each musical instrument is rendered with much fidelity, and also to the fine voices of many of the most celebrated vocalists of the day. Chorus effects are also remarkable, and one can, for example, enjoy the Soldiers' Chorus from Faust or the Wedding Chorus from Lohengrin. The nasal effects, the thin reediness of the voices, the alterations in quality, so characteristic of the phonograph, and of the gramophone in its earlier stages, have now almost entirely disappeared; indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that no scientific instruments have made greater progress since the inception of the phonograph a little more than thirty years ago.
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MCKENDRICK, J. The Gramophone as a Phonautograph . Nature 80, 188–191 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/080188c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/080188c0