Record Player, Phonograph

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Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the -graph root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words phonographic and phonography , which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 The New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class", and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

An inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph". Oliver Read, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (1959) 2nd edition 1976: coauthor Walter Welch, Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams & Co., ISBN 0672212064 His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls (1880s), as well as Herman Hollerith's punch card tabulator (used in the 1890 United States census), a distant precursor of the modern computer.

The term phonograph is usually restricted to devices playing cylinder records. The term gramophone would generally be taken to refer to a wind-up machine, and from the 1960s onwards the more common term would be record player or turntable as part of a system that also played cassettes and included radio. Such a system would be called a hi-fi or stereo (most systems being stereophonic by the mid-1960s). Gramophone took its name from the Greek words "" (grami, line) and "" (phoni, voice). Like other, similar devices the marketers of which wanted to express the notion of "sound" in the devices' names, they also used the same part of the Greek word (e.g., telephone, microphone etc.).

In contemporary American usage phonograph most usually refers to disc record machines or turntables, the most common type of analogue recording from the 1910s on.

The Grammy trophy itself is a small rendering of a gramophone, Modern amplifier equipment still labels the input that accepts the output from a modern magnetic pickup cartridge as the 'phono' input (abbreviated from 'phonograph').

Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder using an up-down ("hill-and-dale") motion of the stylus.

On the other hand, all but the most expensive stereo receivers now omit the phono input. The list price of first-run CDs remains above $15, while used records are very inexpensive, and some are rare and sought after. Some combination systems include basic turntables with a CD and radio in retro-styled cabinets. Records also continue to be manufactured and sold today, albeit in very small quantities when compared to the disc phonograph's heyday.

Source: Wikipedia > Phonograph