Phonograph
The phonograph is a device for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its forms, it is called a gramophone or, since the 1940s, a record player; the sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding physical deviations of a spiral groove engraved, incised, or impressed into the surface of a rotating cylinder or disc, called a "record". To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it faintly reproducing the recorded sound. In early acoustic phonographs, the stylus vibrated a diaphragm which produced sound waves which were coupled to the open air through a flaring horn, or directly to the listener's ears through stethoscope-type earphones; the phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound, his phonograph recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder.
A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil. Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone, including the use of wax-coated cardboard cylinders and a cutting stylus that moved from side to side in a zigzag groove around the record. In the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center, coining the term gramophone for disc record players, predominantly used in many languages. Improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its drive system, the stylus or needle, the sound and equalization systems; the disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century. In the 1980s, phonograph use on a standard record player declined due to the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc, other digital recording formats. However, records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles, DJs and turntablists, have undergone a revival in the 2010s.
The original recordings of musicians, which may have been recorded on tape or digital methods, are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modern usage, the playback device is called a "turntable", "record player", or "record changer"; when used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, turntables are colloquially called "decks". In electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an analogous electrical signal by a transducer converted back into sound by a loudspeaker; the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings; the roots were familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph and telephone. The new term may have been influenced by the existing words phonographic and phonography, which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice the word has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording, involving audio-frequency modulations of a physical trace or groove.
In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, "Phonograph", "Gramophone", "Graphophone", "Zonophone", the like were still brand names specific to various makers of sometimes different machines. "Talking machine" had earlier been used to refer to complicated devices which produced a crude imitation of speech, by simulating the workings of the vocal cords and lips – a potential source of confusion both and now. In British English, "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the Gramophone Company. "gramophone" was a proprietary trademark of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term. The term "phonograph" was restricted to machines that used cylinder records. "Gramophone" referred to a wind-up machine. After the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm "single" or two-song records, EPs, the common name became "record player" or "turntable".
The home record player was part of a system that included a radio and might play audiotape cassettes. From about 1960, such a system began to be described as a "hi-fi" or a "stereo". In American English, "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder
General Electric
General Electric Company is an American multinational conglomerate incorporated in New York and headquartered in Boston. As of 2018, the company operates through the following segments: aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, additive manufacturing, venture capital and finance and oil and gas. In 2018, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 18th-largest firm in the U. S. by gross revenue. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th-most profitable company but has since severely underperformed the market as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir and Ivar Giaever —have been awarded the Nobel Prize. During 1889, Thomas Edison had business interests in many electricity-related companies including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in East Newark, New Jersey. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family for Edison's lighting experiments. In 1889, Morgan & Co. a company founded by J. P. Morgan and Anthony J. Drexel, financed Edison's research and helped merge those companies under one corporation to form Edison General Electric Company, incorporated in New York on April 24, 1889.
The new company acquired Sprague Electric Railway & Motor Company in the same year. In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of New Britain, which merged a few years with Thomson-Houston Electric Company, led by Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company of Missouri. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co. Both plants continue to operate under the GE banner to this day; the company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed. In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously.
In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in Ohio; the lighting division has since remained in the same location. Owen D. Young, through GE, founded the Radio Corporation of America in 1919, after purchasing the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, he aimed to expand international radio communications. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales. In 1926, RCA co-founded the National Broadcasting Company, which built two radio broadcasting networks. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations and decided to divest itself of RCA. In 1927, Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of his television broadcasts at his General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Rd, New York. On January 13, 1928, he made what was said to be the first broadcast to the public in the United States on GE's W2XAD: the pictures were picked up on 1.5 square inch screens in the homes of four GE executives.
The sound was broadcast on GE's WGY. Experimental television station W2XAD evolved into station WRGB which, along with WGY and WGFM, was owned and operated by General Electric until 1983. Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE moved into the new field of aircraft turbo superchargers. GE introduced the first set of superchargers during World War I, continued to develop them during the interwar period. Superchargers became indispensable in the years prior to World War II. GE supplied 300,000 turbo superchargers for use in bomber engines; this work led the U. S. Army Air Corps to select GE to develop the nation's first jet engine during the war; this experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine, demonstrated in the United States in 1941. GE was ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. Although, their early work with Whittle's designs was handed to Allison Engine Company. GE Aviation emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, bypassing the British company, Rolls-Royce plc.
Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs and other products during the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose of the boycott was to protest against GE's role in nuclear weapons production. In 2002, GE acquired the wind power assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings. Enron Wind was the only surviving U. S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003. It acquired ScanWind in 2009. In 2015, GE Power garnered press attention when a model 9FB gas turbine in Texas was shut down for two months due to the break of a turbine blade; this model uses similar blade technology to GE's newest and most efficient model, the 9HA. After the break, GE developed heat treatment methods. Gas turbines represent a significant portion of GE Power's revenue, represent a significant portion of the power generation fleet of several utility companies in the United States. Chubu Electric of Japan and Électricité de France had units that were impacted.
GE di
Consolidated Edison
Consolidated Edison, Inc. known as Con Edison or Con Ed, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, over $48 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through its subsidiaries: Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. a regulated utility providing electric and gas service in New York City and Westchester County, New York, steam service in the borough of Manhattan. In 2015, electric revenues accounted for 70.35% of consolidated sales. Though the company provides an indispensable service to New York residents, a number of major incidents and service problems have negatively impacted its reputation with the public. In 1823, Con Edison's earliest corporate predecessor, the New York Gas Light Company, was founded by a consortium of New York City investors. A year it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Due to the Board of Aldermen's authority to grant franchises in the City of New York in the early to mid 1800s, interaction with Tammany Hall was required to expand business.
By William M. Tweed's reign in the late 1860s as the Boss of Tammany Hall, the power to authorize franchises lay with the County Board of Supervisors, of which Tweed had been a member. By 1871, Tweed was a member of the board of the Harlem Gas Light Company, a precursor to the Consolidated Edison Company. In 1884, six gas companies combined into the Consolidated Gas Company; the New York Steam Company began providing service in lower Manhattan in 1882. Today, Con Edison operates the largest commercial steam system in the world, providing steam service to nearly 1,600 commercial and residential establishments in Manhattan from Battery Park to 96th Street. Con Edison's electric business dates back to 1882, when Thomas Edison’s Edison Illuminating Company of New York began supplying electricity to 59 customers in a square-mile area in lower Manhattan. After the “War of Currents”, there were more than 30 companies generating and distributing electricity in New York City and Westchester County, but by 1920 there were far fewer, the New York Edison Company was the leader.
In 1936, with electric sales far outstripping gas sales, the company incorporated and the name was changed to Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. The years that followed brought further amalgamations as Consolidated Edison acquired or merged with more than a dozen companies between 1936 and 1960. Con Edison today is the result of acquisitions and mergers of more than 170 individual electric and steam companies. On January 1, 1998, following the deregulation of the utility industry in New York state, a holding company, Consolidated Edison, Inc. was formed. It is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, with $13 billion in annual revenues and $47 billion in assets; the company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through two regulated utility subsidiaries and three competitive energy businesses. Under a number of corporate names, the company has been traded on the NYSE without interruption since 1824—longer than any other NYSE stock.
Its largest subsidiary, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. provides electric and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York, an area of 660 square miles with a population of nearly 9 million. In 1998, Consolidated Edison, Inc. acquired Orange & Rockland Utilities, operated separately. To date, Con Edison has invested $3 billion in solar and wind projects. In September 2017 it was announced that the company would invest $1.25 billion in “renewable energy production facilities over the next three years.”The company's “renewable portfolio” contains more than 1.5 gigawatts of operating capacity. Seventy-five percent of that capacity comes from solar energy. Clean energy accounts for around eight percent of the company's earnings, as of fall 2017. To support electric vehicles, Con Edison partnered with the company FleetCarma to provide $500 in rewards to owners of electric vehicles in New York City and Westchester County, New York. Through this program, Con Edison pays customers to charge their vehicles.
The Con Edison electrical transmission system utilizes voltages of 138 kilovolts, 345 kV, 500 kV. The company has two 345 kV interconnections with upstate New York that enable it to import power from Hydro-Québec in Canada and one 345 kV interconnection each with Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey and LIPA on Long Island. Con Edison is interconnected with Public Service Electric and Gas via the Branchburg-Ramapo 500 kV line. Con Ed's distribution voltages are 33 kV, 27 kV, 13 kV, 4 kV; the 93,000 miles of underground cable in the Con Edison system could wrap around the Earth 3.6 times. Nearly 36,000 miles of overhead electric wires complement the underground system—enough cable to stretch between New York and Los Angeles 13 times; the Con Edison gas system has nearly 7,200 miles of pipes—if
Edison Ore-Milling Company
The Edison Ore-Milling Company was a venture by Thomas Edison that began in 1881. Edison introduced some significant technological developments to the iron ore milling industry but the company proved to be unprofitable. Towards the end of the company's life Edison realised the potential application of his technologies to the cement industry, formed the Edison Portland Cement Company in 1899. Edison had recognised the scarcity of iron ore in the 1870s in the east of the United States, his developments in the field of electricity meant that he had sufficient finances to invest in other projects. Discovering that beach sand contained high deposits of iron, he decided to form the Edison Ore-Milling Company in 1881, he patented a method of extracting the metal using a large electromagnet after developing the process in an addition to his laboratory. The remaining deposits of iron in the eastern side of the United States were of poor quality, the difficulty in separating it from the rock and other debris made it unprofitable.
Edison believed. William Kennedy Dickson had been put in charge of much of the laboratory and further refined the techniques along with mining expert John Birkinbine. However, the market for Edison's iron was not sufficient to bring in a profit and the operation was closed down after just a few years. After a short time away from the industry, Edison decided to return, adapting his methods to crush rocks brought up directly from a mine, he opened a plant in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania near to existing iron mines as a trial before building one of the world's largest ore-crushing mills in Ogdensberg, New Jersey. Completed in 1889, the factory contained three giant electromagnets and was intended to process up to 1200 tons of iron ore every day. Technical difficulties thwarted production. Edison formed the Edison General Electric Company in 1890 but it only lasted two years, merging in 1892 with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the General Electric Company, he redirected his interest back to iron ore, having high hopes for what he could achieve: "I'm going to do something now so different and so much bigger than anything I've done before people will forget that my name was connected with anything electrical."That year, he closed the Ogdensburg plant for upgrades, using the sale of stocks in General Electric to install new equipment that would be able to output more iron ore.
When it reopened, the earlier problems persisted and Edison once again had difficulties finding customers. Edison realised that the company was a failure, shutting it down in 1899. Edison commented about the financial losses, "it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it."The manufacturing process produced a large quantity of waste sand, which the company sold on to cement manufacturers. The properties of the sand were suitable for cement, leading to a harder, more durable product. Selling off the ore-crushing technology to mine owners, Edison decided to switch to the cement business, reusing some of the technology he had developed for ore-milling. List of Edison patents Edison Portland Cement Company
Thomas Edison National Historical Park
Thomas Edison National Historical Park preserves Thomas Edison's laboratory and residence, Glenmont, in Llewellyn Park in West Orange in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. These were designed, by Henry Hudson Holly. For more than 40 years, the laboratory had a major impact on the lives of people worldwide. Out of the West Orange laboratories came the motion picture camera, improved phonographs, sound recordings and sound movies and the nickel-iron alkaline electric storage battery; the history of how the site became a National Historical Park is complicated. Edison's home was designated as the Edison Home National Historic Site on December 6, 1955; the laboratory was designated as Edison Laboratory National Monument on July 14, 1956. On September 5, 1962, the 21-acre site containing the home and the laboratory were designated the Edison National Historic Site and overseen by the National Park Service. On March 30, 2009, it was renamed Thomas Edison National Historical Park, adding "Thomas" to the title in hopes to relieve confusion between the Edison sites in West Orange and Edison, New Jersey.
Following extensive renovations of the laboratory complex, there was a grand reopening on October 10, 2009. In 1996, the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants recorded four songs on phonograph cylinder at the museum. One of these recordings, of the song "I Can Hear You", appeared on their album Factory Showroom released the same year; the other three songs were released on the band's website in 2002. Edison's Black Maria Edison State Park Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum National Register of Historic Places listings in Essex County, New Jersey Edison Storage Battery Company Building List of museums in New Jersey Thomas Edison National Historical Park - official site Stained glass restoration National Park Service Historic American Buildings Survey No. NJ-729, "Glenmont, Llewellyn Park, West Orange, Essex County, NJ", 31 photos, 13 measured drawings, 12 data pages HABS No. NJ-729-A, "Glenmont, Gardener's Greenhouse" HABS No. NJ-729-B, "Glenmont, Barn" HABS No. NJ-729-C, "Glenmont, Concrete Garage" HABS No.
NJ-729-D, "Glenmont, Pump House" Historic American Engineering Record No. NJ-70, "Thomas A. Edison Laboratories" HAER No. NJ-70-A, "Thomas A. Edison Laboratories, Building No. 2" HAER No. NJ-70-B, "Thomas A. Edison Laboratories, Building No. 3" HAER No. NJ-70-C, "Thomas A. Edison Laboratories, Building No. 5" The Invention Factory: Thomas Edison's Laboratories, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places lesson plan
Edwin S. Porter
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over 250 films created by Porter, his most important include Jack and the Beanstalk, Life of an American Fireman, The Great Train Robbery, The Kleptomaniac, Life of a Cowboy, Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, The Prisoner of Zenda. Porter was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, to Thomas Richard Porter, a merchant, Mary Porter. Named Edward at birth, he changed his name to Edwin Stanton, after Edwin Stanton, the Democratic politician from Ohio who had served as Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War. After attending public schools in Connellsville, Porter worked, among other odd jobs, as an exhibition skater, a sign painter, a telegraph operator, he developed an interest in electricity at a young age, shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. Becoming a merchant tailor, Porter was battered by the Panic of 1893.
He filed for bankruptcy on June 15 and enlisted in the United States Navy four days on June 19. He served three years as a gunner's mate, serving at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he was employed in the electrical department of William Cramp & Sons, a Philadelphia ship and engine building company. During his three years' service he showed aptitude as an inventor of electrical devices to improve communications. Porter entered motion picture work in 1896, the first year movies were commercially projected on large screens in the United States, he was employed in New York City by Raff & Gammon, agents for the films and viewing equipment made by Thomas Edison, left to become a touring projectionist with a competing machine, Kuhn & Webster's Projectorscope. He traveled through the West Indies and South America, showing films at fairgrounds and in open fields, he made a second tour through Canada and the United States. Returning to New York City in early 1898, Porter found work at the Eden Musée, a Manhattan wax museum and amusement hall which had become a center for motion picture exhibition and production and licensee of the Edison Manufacturing Company.
While at Eden Musée, Porter worked assembling programs of Edison films, most exhibitions of films of the Spanish–American War, Edison productions which helped stir an outbreak of patriotic fever in New York City. As an exhibitor, Porter had tremendous creative control over these programs, presenting a slate of films accompanied by a selection of music and live narration. In 1899 Porter joined the Edison Manufacturing Company. Soon afterward he took charge of motion picture production at Edison's New York studios, operating the camera, directing the actors, assembling the final print, he collaborated including George S. Fleming. During the next decade Porter became the most influential filmmaker in the United States. From his experience as a touring projectionist, Porter knew what pleased crowds, he began by making trick films and comedies for Edison. One of his early films was Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King, a satire made in February 1901 about the Vice President-elect, Theodore Roosevelt. Like all early filmmakers, he took ideas from others, but rather than copying films he tried to improve on what he borrowed.
In his Jack and the Beanstalk and Life of an American Fireman he followed earlier films by France's Georges Méliès and members of England's Brighton School, such as James Williamson. Instead of using abrupt splices or cuts between shots, Porter created dissolves, gradual transitions from one image to another. In Life of an American Fireman the technique helped audiences follow complex outdoor movement. Porter's next film, The Great Train Robbery took the archetypal American Western story familiar to audiences from dime novels and stage melodrama, made it an new visual experience; the one-reel film, with a running time of twelve minutes, was assembled in twenty separate shots, along with a startling close-up of a bandit firing at the camera. It used as many as ten different indoor and outdoor locations and was groundbreaking in its use of "cross-cutting" in editing to show simultaneous action in different places. No earlier film had created such swift variety of scene; the Great Train Robbery was enormously popular.
For several years it toured throughout the United States, in 1905 it was the premier attraction at the first nickelodeon. Its success established motion pictures as commercial entertainment in the United States. After The Great Train Robbery Porter continued to try out new techniques, he presented two parallel stories in The Kleptomaniac, a film of social commentary like his technically more conventional film of 1904, The Ex-Convict. In The Seven Ages he used side lighting, close-ups, changed shots within a scene, one of the earliest examples of a filmmaker departing from the theatrical analogy of a single shot for each scene, he directed trick films such as Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, based on the comic strip by Winsor McCay. Between 1903 and 1905 he demonstrated most of the techniques that were to become the basic modes of visual communication through film. For instance, he helped to develop the modern concept of continuity editing, is credited with discovering that the basic unit of structure in film was the "shot" rather than the scene, paving the way for D
Edison Machine Works
The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, other components of the electrical illumination system being built by Thomas A. Edison in New York City; the need for equipment in the development of a large scale electric illumination "utility" in New York City, starting around 1880, soon outstripped the capacity of Thomas Edison's machine shop at Menlo Park. To alleviate the problem in 1881 Edison leased the old Etna Iron Works on Goerck Street, lower Manhattan and set up the Edison Machine Works with Edison providing 90% of the capital and investor partner Charles Batchelor providing 10%; the workforce built up to some 800 men supervised by Edison machinist Charles Dean. This shop supplied jumbo dynamos for the original Pearl Street Station as well as dynamos of various sizes for the different types of electric light installations Edison was offering customers; the Machine Works was incorporated in 1884 with Edison investor Charles Batchelor as general manager, John Kruesi as assistant general manager, Samuel Insull as secretary.
At the end of 1885 the Electric Tube Company and the Edison Shafting Manufacturing Company were merged into the Edison Machine Works. The Machine Works had a department that designed and tested equipment and trained Edison workers how to wire buildings and install and repair dynamos. New types of dynamos were designed here as well as improved power consumption meters; the demands of the expanding utility soon over taxed the cramped lower Manhattan shop. Extra lathes needed for production had to be set up on the sidewalks outside the building connected through the factory windows by long drive belts. Strikes, unionizing attempts, the general expense of labor and land in New York City sent Edison looking for a site for a new factory. In 1886 the Machine Works, along with 200 of its workers, were moved to two unfinished factory buildings on a 10-acre site in Schenectady, NY, intended to have been the McQueen Locomotive Works; the new factory was put under the control of Samuel Insull. Edison Machine Works continued as a separate company until 1889, when all of Edison's electric related companies were merged to form Edison General Electric.
The plant expanded and 1892 saw the merger of Edison General Electric and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts to form General Electric with the Schenectady location used as GE's headquarters for many years thereafter. Notable employees included: Justus B. Entz - joined Edison Machine Works in 1887 Reginald Fessenden - worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1886 Kunihiko Iwadare - joined Edison Machine Works in 1887 Emil Kolben - joined Edison Machine Works in 1888 John W. Lieb - worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1881 Nikola Tesla - worked at the Edison Machine Works in 1884 schenectadymuseum.org - Edison Machine Works Edison Companies, Rutgers University – The Thomas Edison Paper
