 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. This has been a recording. From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Way To Read Comics on iTunes, or on our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com. Every few years, we see a lot of stories about the end of physical media, right before some sort of resurgence if only for collectors. And we're using that as an excuse to cover the history of audio recording. And we begin with mechanical methods of musical reproduction, which goes back to the 9th century. Three brothers named Banu Musa designed a large set of automated devices, including a water-powered organ that played interchangeable cylinders. And this was followed over the next millennium by various pianos, clocks, and bells, all of which could play music. Music boxes were invented in the early 19th century, which could translate bumps on a metal disc or cylinder into musical notes. A player piano uses a roll of paper with specific perforations, which, when pulled across our hey, Marnica-like grill, would activate the piano keys. There were even ways for a piano player to create new roles by playing live and having it record the results. Player pianos became so popular that they spawned what we know today as music licensing. Music writers would receive royalties based on the number of paper rolls sold. Restrictions were made on their use as it was felt that they were putting live musicians out of a job. Copyrights were established to protect musicians' work, which is the progenitor of today's copyright mess. However, if we're talking about actual recording of sound, we go back to 1857 and the phonograph, a device that scratched a line onto a sheet of paper based on an early form of microphone input. Ironically, there was no way to actually play it back at the time as it was designed for visual study of the waveform. Of course, an engineering, an enterprising engineer wrote software in 2008 to convert one of those sheets. It doesn't sound great. 1878 brought us the first practical recording process, the phonograph cylinder, patented by Thomas Edison in 1878. A hollow wax cylinder would be engraved with variable lines of information based on microphone input. They could then be played back on a phonograph. This became a huge hit as people could easily purchase the phonograph unit and cylinders and play them at home. The only problem was that wax cylinders had a rather short playing life, so celluloid and early plastic was later invented and used. And here's an example from 1900. Far more durable and louder than the cylinder, it took over the older medium by 1910 and became the primary recording method until the late 20th century. Original discs ran at 78 rpm and were made of shellac, a natural polymer secreted by an Asian bug. My mother kept a set of these, coming from my grandparents, and they're remarkably clear when played, considering that they sat at attics and basements for a century or so. By the way, I'm comfortable playing these online, as they all pre-date modern copyright rules. Anyway, record technology advanced over time, allowing much finer quality recordings with longer playtime. 33 and a third rpm became the standard, along with the smaller 45 rpm record, designed initially for jukeboxes. Shellac was replaced with vinyl, Mono became stereo, and then even Quadraphonic 4 channels and mechanical recording was replaced by electronic methods, converting sound into impulses. There were gimmick records, such as a plastic coated cardboard record, which you could cut out of the back of cereal boxes. We did that. Yeah. Multi-colored and picture albums. Dual track albums, such as Money Python's matching tie-in handkerchief, where different tracks would play on the same side, depending on where you drop the needle. Hmm. However, records still use essentially the same method of recording as early cylinders, a waveform in the guise of a variable line. Magnetic recording, where electrical impulses are converted to variable magnetic fields on some sort of medium, which can then be turned back into audio, got underway in the 1920s with wire recorders. They used a steel wire to record and playback magnetic impulses, and were popular for their compact size and durability. Alongside wire recording was magnetic tape, which really didn't get much momentum until plastics, specifically polyester, came into being. A reel of tape would be magnetized by a recording head and then played back in a similar manner. Tape recording got a big push from none other than Bing Crosby. He wanted to record his popular radio show, but the network refused unless he could find a way to make it sound just like a live event. He met former Army Signal Corps engineer Jack Mullen, who had been assigned to learn of Nazi advances in audio recording at the end of the war. He improved on their designs and gave demos where he had a band behind a curtain playing live, then a recording of the same band, asking viewers to tell the difference. Crosby invested heavily in this technology and funded a tiny company called Ampex, who quickly became the industry leader. One of the first production Ampex reel-to-reel units was given by Crosby to Les Paul, who would use it to invent multi-track recording. Reel-to-reel recording became the standard until the 70s and was still used professionally until just recently. However, reel-to-reel was complicated, particularly running the tape lead through the rollers and heads, over to the other reel, making sure the tension was correct, etc. Various alternatives were tried out, but it took Phillips to create the compact cassette, which quickly became known as a cassette tape. Self-contained and easy to use, it was originally intended for dictation machines, but engineers found ways to improve fidelity to the point where cassettes supplanted both reels and records as the predominant format. It also allowed the creation of the Sony Walkman, standard equipment for young people in the 80s, as well as the mixed tape. It also encouraged some kids in Northeast Ohio to make some recordings. Tape connoisseurs would consider their options, standard, chromium oxide, ferrochrome, nettle. The cassette had one major competitor, the 8-track tape. Developed as a partnership among RCA, Ampex, Ford, GM, Learjet, and Motorola, it was initially designed for use in automobiles. It had an endless loop of tape with four stereo tracks, or 8-tracks total, each of which would be announced by around Cha-Chunk as tracks changed. Despite this issue, 8-tracks became a hit, especially on K-Tel music collections and Columbia House. I even had an 8-track recorder for a while. The format ran out by the late 70s. The 80s brought a revolution to audio going from analog to digital recording. The compact disc was introduced in 1982, co-developed by Phillips and Sony. I remember seeing my first CD player during a New York City trip in the early 80s. Audio was converted to 1s and 0s on a shiny disc just under 5 inches in diameter. They could hold about 80 minutes of music which meant an entire album could easily be represented. Consumers spent billions repurchasing albums and cassettes as CDs. Home users also burned CDs with existing music and other recordings. And there was a whole mythology about CDs that CD recordings were somehow colder than records, not the case, that you could use a blue marker around the edge and improve audio quality which it didn't do. They were also used as data storage then called a CD-ROM. When that first came out CD-ROM stored a lot more data than most computer hard drives that would not be the case for long. And of course a similar physical format was used for DVDs. CDs ruled the roost in the 1990s but a digital revolution hit a second wave in the form of the MP3. A totally digital format that required no physical media. This started with consumers ripping their CDs into MP3 files which led to illegal services like Napster where the new ubiquity of the internet allowed people to download massive numbers of songs. For a while I had a portable CD player that could play MP3 files. It was bulky and rather difficult to use. The music industry which had enjoyed decades of massive profits based on records with one or two good songs plus a lot of filler at an expensive price saw their existence threatened. Lawsuits followed. It took a company that had changed the computer game 20 years earlier Apple to step in and save them even if they fought against it. iTunes provided a legal way to easily purchase individual tracks which provided a new main revenue source for the music industry. Of course Apple also introduced the iPod which made it easy to take your entire collection with you. In the 2010s streaming music services such as Spotify provide access to millions of songs four monthly feet. Is it the death knell for physical media? Well it looks like collectors and hipsters have brought back the record album. Using modern recording methods and high-end phono players along with an included audio copy sound quality is better than ever. Can an 8 track resurgence be far behind? We can only hope. So you can check out our digital audio podcast How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes or on our website sfpodcastnetwork.com From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. Thanks for watching.