If you are spending more than one day in Kanazawa (金沢), Japan, you should include the Kanazawa Phonograph Museum 金沢蓄音器館 in your travel itinerary. It is conveniently located across the bridge over Asano River (浅野川) from the old town at Higashiyama (東山) where most people visit).
The Kanazawa Phonograph Museum opened in 2001, showcases the Yamachiku Collection. A leading collection in Japan, it was collected by the owner of a record shop in Kanazawa, Hiroshi Yokaichiya, over a period of more than 50 years. The collection contains 540 well-maintained phonographs and 20,000 SP record discs, all of which produce beautiful music.
Listen to this recording (not from the Museum) on a celluloid cylinder made by Edison between 1912 and 1929, a predecessor of disc media.
The museum has 3 levels displaying and explaining the various recording and playback devices as well as the media that were developed from the beginning of commercial music reproduction.
Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the first phonograph in 1877. His device recorded sound onto a tinfoil-covered cylinder and could also play it back, which was revolutionary.
Alexander Graham Bell and his associates at the Volta Laboratory improved Edison’s invention by developing wax-coated cylinders that provided better sound quality and durability. These wax cylinders became the standard medium for phonographs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
An Edison Blue Ameberol cylinder as shown on the left in the photo, was used in the YouTube video above. >>>
Amberol cylinders, introduced by Edison in 1908, were wax cylinders with increased groove density, allowing for a four-minute playback time compared to the earlier two-minute records.
In 1902, Edison Records launched a line of improved, hard wax cylinders -“Edison Gold Moulded Records”. Edison had developed a process that allowed a mold to be made from a master cylinder, which then permitted the production of several hundred cylinders made from the mold.
In 1887, Emile Berliner invented the gramophone, which recorded sound onto flat discs instead of cylinders. The disc format soon became the preferred medium for recording and playback, and the term “phonograph” came to refer to machines using discs.
In 1899, the Gramophone Company purchased a painting by Francis Barraud, which featured his brother’s dog, Nipper, listening to a gramophone. Inspired by Nipper’s habit of curiously listening to voice recordings, Barraud titled the piece “His Master’s Voice.” This image became one of the most iconic trademarks of HMV and RCA record labels in the business.
It is fascinating to see how it became possible to store sound (changes in air pressure) in a portable mechanical medium (cylinders and discs) and reproduce the stored sound anywhere using a player. More in our next post.
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