Chapter Four:

Evolution of Recording Mediums

1. What is unusual about the first audio recording ever
made of a human (in 1860, by Édouard-Léon Scott de
Martinville)?
It could not be played back or heard until
2008!
 2. What was the very first song that could be
played back, recorded by Thomas Edison in 1877?
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”—a needle on a
cylinder of tinfoil
3. How is music played back from a record?
A needle vibrates from bumps cut into the groove, then
sends vibrations to an amplifier, which makes them
louder.
4. How many songs could fit on a wax
cylinder and how long would it play?
Only one song, two to four minutes long
5. What is the tip of a record needle usually
made of?
Diamond
6. How many grooves are on a typical record
or CD? How are they arranged?
Only one groove—in the shape of a spiral
7. What does RPM stand for?
Revolutions per minute
8. Flat 78RPM disc records replaced wax
cylinders. Give two reasons why.
 They took up less space, sounded better, and
had two sides, which equaled twice the music.
9. Why did slower and larger 33RPM records
—called LPs—come to replace 78s?
They played for about 45 minutes—they were
named “LP” for Long Playing.
10. In the 1950s and 1960s,
45RPMs became popular
with rock ’n roll fans
because they were cheap
and small. What is the
name of an automatic,
mechanical DJ that would
play these 45RPM records
one after another?
Jukebox
11. How do reel-to-reel machines and tape
recorders encode sound?
They arrange magnetic particles on plastic
tape.
12. What other invention of the 1950s used
tape recorders to store information?
The first computers (like the UNIVAC)
13. In the 1960s, Ford Motor Company began to
encourage people to bring their favorite music on
road trips by installing what in the cars?
8-track cassette tape players
 14. What became the dominant way to record
music at home in the 1970s and 1980s because it
was small, convenient, and easy to use, copy, and
trade with friends?
The cassette tape
15. In the 1980s, the compact disc had several
advantages. Name two.
 (1) Did not lose sound quality (2) was easier to
store than tapes (flat), (3) lasted longer, and could
(4) play lower and higher sounds
16. What is completely different about how
CDs work compared to records or tapes?
They store digital information in binary form
(zeros and ones).
How do CDs play back music?
A laser is either reflected or absorbed by a series of pits
and lands in the CD’s aluminum layer. This generates
binary data at a rate of 44,000 “pictures” of sound
every second.
18. What specific advantage do MP3s have
over CDs?
They are 10 times smaller than CD files, so you
can store hundreds of CDs on a tiny hard drive
inside an iPod or MP3 player.
19. What is meant by “music in the cloud” and
“subscription service”? Give one example.
Internet-based storage accessible anywhere—millions
of MP3s available to computers, cell phones, car
radios, and so on. Users pay one monthly fee to access
all the music on Spotify, Beats Music, and Rdio.
20. What are some possible replacements for
music in the cloud?
FLAC or other lossless quality files, and
potentially DNA