The science of entertainment hits its stride in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first motion picture premieres in France, the pneumatic player piano or Pianola is a hit with households and the sound revolution of the gramophone are among the inventions and innovations at the turn of the century.
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In Europe, America and elsewhere it was a time of progress, advances in transportation, communication, engineering and health. The science of entertainment rapidly evolved as modern contraptions like telephones, bicycles and stream trains gave people more free time than ever before.
1. Gramophone - Music at Your Fingertips
The rise of the Gramophone happened in several stages. The phonograph, an 1877 invention by Thomas Edison in America, created sound using cylinders or discs etched with markings. When the stylus or phonograph needle traced the spiral grooves they created vibrations, thus playing back the recorded sounds. The device was intended to be used for office dictation.
In the 1880s, Alexander Graham Bell patented his graphophone, which used wax-coated cardboard cylinders. A cutting stylus moved side to side in a zigzag groove around the recording. Early stylus models used sapphires and diamonds, which were replaced with copper or steel at the beginning of the 20th century.
Because sounds were faint the playback mechanism included the familiar trumpet or horn, which directed sound waves into the room. A hand crank mechanism powered the turntable.
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In the 1890s Emile Berliner, a German-American inventor, took it all a step further with the Gramophone. His machine played flat discs instead of cylinders. It used 78 rpm records which were popular up to the mid-20th century.
Born 1851 in Hanover in what's now Germany, Emile was Jewish but later became agnostic. To avoid being drafted into the 1870 Franco-Prussian war he emigrated to America. To finance his hunger for inventions he worked as an accountant, and studied chemistry in his spare time.
In 1877 he moved to Boston and became a US citizen four years later. He invented a better telephone transmitter, an early form of the microphone, bought by Bell and contested by Edison.
Berliner dedicated his research to sound reproduction and received his first patent, for his "Gramophone", in 1887. The playable discs included the Gramophone logo in the center, thus creating the world's first record label.
Due to patents pending in the US, Berliner could sell the Gramophone only in Europe, where it was marketed as a toy. Dissatisfied, he convinced several financiers to cough up enough cash to create the full sized general entertainment model. It came with pre-printed music discs and the buyer could order more.
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Gramophones became popular drawing room entertainment before the widespread use of electricity. Then, electric models appeared. Bringing music into the home was a delightful novelty, for even the radio didn't yet exist. It was still in the experimental stage in Italy. Gramophones soon became all the rage.
Emile Berliner defined the future of sound recording. Among his other inventions were the rotary motor and an early version of the helicopter.
2. Pianola & Player Piano - When the House is Rockin'
Front and center in any stylish modern drawing room was the Pianola or pneumatically powered player piano. It played popular recordings by reading perforated cardboard or metal tubes.
Pianos for the home were first mass-produced in the 19th century. In 1866, America was producing 25000 pianos a year, closely followed by England, France and Prussia.
By 1910 the number doubled in America and rose in Europe. Sales reached a peak in 1924, then declined as the phonograph and gramophone caught on, and the radio moved from experimental to common use.
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The player piano defined an era of progress and change. People no longer had to go out or learn a score to hear music and could now boogie down in their own homes. They could choose music they wanted to hear and get instant gratification as the cheerful machine cranked it out.
In 1895 American Edwin S. Votey invented the first practical self playing mechanical piano. It could play whole musical performances using perforated paper rolls patterned for a particular piece of music. A piano and organ maker, Votey specialized in organs and held over twenty patents.
He followed up in 1896 with the first practical pneumatic piano player, called the Pianola.
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The cabinet device could be attached to and removed from a typical piano. Prototype testing for manufacturing began in 1896. Votey filed his patent application for the piano player on in 1897. The Pianola was released to the public in 1898, and the people rejoiced.
By 1900, when the patent came through, Votey was in major marketing mode. He took advantage of full page full color advertisements in a quantity unsurpassed by previous marketers. The Pianola sold for $250, about $9,200 USD today. At the same time, imitators crowded in, releasing cheaper models.
Word rolls, with lyrics printed on the sides, made the musical experience complete. Popular songs came into the hands of music lovers in America and overseas. In England, classical music was more to the public taste.
At the turn of the century jazz music and the foxtrot exploded onto the scene. This period defines the most popular era of the player piano.
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Just one thing. Whoever operated the player piano had to learn hand and foot controls, a process which could take up to three years.
In Germany, Edwin Welte was developing an instrument to reproduce every part of the music automatically. His machine could play back a recorded performance as if the original pianist were at the keyboard. Called a Reproducing Piano, the Welte-Mignon first appeared in parlors in 1904.
For many years the player piano enjoyed its reign. As new developments in the evolution of sound recording and transmission took hold, interest in the player piano waned. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 was its death knell.
Nonetheless the player piano remains, if not in our homes, in our hearts, as a vibrant and innovative symbol of an era in music.
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3. Motion Pictures - Novelties to Popular Culture
The nineteenth century saw great developments in photography. Just before the twentieth century, pictures started to move. With the swift progress of film and photographic technology, it was hardly surprising.
Although earlier attempts had limited success, the commercial public screening of ten short films by the Lumière brothers in Paris 1895 came to be the defining edge of technology. It was the breakthrough of motion picture projection and the advent of cinema.
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Each film was up to 17 m (56 ft) long. It had to be hand cranked through a projector and it ran about 50 seconds. Brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière took a world tour with their cinématographe in 1896. They stopped at Brussels, Bombay, London, Montreal, New York City, and Buenos Aires.
The cinématographe was based on a previous design and was able to record, develop and project motion pictures. The Lumières' early films were black and white, each taken as a single shot with a steady camera, of everyday events, for example, workers leaving the factory.
Ten years later, the evolution of motion pictures took film from a novelty to a mass entertainment industry, with film production companies and studios established throughout the world.
Claims to the title of first commercial movie house vary. It could be the Holland Bros. who opened their Kinetoscope parlor in New York in 1894; or a store owner in New Orleans 1896, who cleared out part of his shop to show movies on the back wall.
By 1905, the Lumière Brothers decided motion pictures were just a novelty after all, and pulled out of the film industry put their attentions elsewhere. They invented modern color photography, with the first practical photo color process, the Lumière Autochrome.
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