Timeline for Audio
Alba Tandazo
-*1857- , Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville invented the phonautograph, the first device that could
record sound waves as they passed through the air, but it couldn’t record actual sound.
-*April 9, 1860- Worlds first audio recording was a verse of ‘Au Clair de la Lune’ (17 years before Edison’s
invention)
-*1877- Recording of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ by Thomas Edison.
-*1878- First music put on record, cornetist Jules Levy plays "Yankee Doodle."
-*1878- Edison invention, the Dictaphone continues to sell until 1929.-*1881- Clement Ader, using carbon microphones and armature headphones, accidentally produces a
stereo effect when listeners outside the hall monitor adjacent telephone lines linked to stage mikes at
the Paris Opera.
-*1887- Emile Berliner is granted a patent on a flat-disc gramophone, making the production of multiple
copies practical.
-*1888-Edison introduces an electric motor-driven phonograph.
-*1895- Marconi successfully experiments with his wireless telegraphy system in Italy, leading to the
first transatlantic signals from Poldhu, Cornwall, UK to St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901.
-*1898-Valdemar Poulsen patents his "Telegraphone," recording magnetically on steel wire.
-*1900- Poulsen unveils his invention to the public at the Paris Exposition. Austria's Emperor Franz Josef
records his congratulations.
-*1901- The Victor Talking Machine Company is founded by Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson.
-*1906- Lee DeForest invents the triode vacuum tube, the first electronic signal amplifier.
-*1910- Enrico Caruso is heard in the first live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, NYC.
-*1912- Major Edwin F. Armstrong is issued a patent for a regenerative circuit, making radio reception
practical.
-*1913- The first "talking movie" is demonstrated by Edison using his Kinetophone process, a cylinder
player mechanically synchronized to a film projector.
-*1917- The Scully disk recording lathe is introduced. E. C. Wente of Bell Telephone Laboratories
publishes a paper in Physical Review describing a "uniformly sensitive instrument for the absolute
measurement of sound intensity" -- the condenser microphone.
-*1919- The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) is founded. It is owned in part by United Fruit.
-*1926- O'Neill patents iron oxide-coated paper tape.
-*1927- The first movie to have sound was ‘The Jazz Singer’ produced by the Warner Brothers.
-*1929- The "Blattnerphone" is developed for use as a magnetic recorder using steel tape.
-*1933- Magnetic recording on steel wire is developed commercially. Snow, Fletcher, and Steinberg at
Bell Labs transmit the first inter-city stereo audio program.
-*1936- The first demonstration of the Tefifon at the “Radioexposition” in Berlin, Germany, the
brainchild of Karl Daniel.
-*1940- Walt Disney's "Fantasia" is released, with eight-track stereophonic sound.
-*1943- Altec develops their Model 604 coaxial loudspeaker.
-*1962- The Philips Company of the Netherlands invented and released the first compact audio-cassette
in 1962.
-*1976- Dr. Stockham of Soundstream makes the first 16-bit digital recording in the U.S. at the Santa Fe
Opera.
-*1993- In the first extensive use of ‘distance recording’ via ISDN, producer Phil Ramone records the
‘Duets’ album with Frank Sinatra.
-*1995- Iomega debuts high-capacity ‘Jazz’ and ‘Zip’ drives, useful as removable storage media for harddisk recording.
-*1996- Record labels begin to add multimedia files to new releases, calling them "enhanced CDs."
-*1997- DVD videodiscs and players are introduced. An audio version with 6-channel surround sound is
expected to eventually supplant the CD as the chosen playback medium in the home.
-*1998- MP-3 players for downloaded Internet audio appear.
-*1999- Audio DVD Standard 1.0 agreed upon by manufacturers.