The Sounds of Yesteryear (Part 1)

There are various aspects of growing old that have taken me by surprise, such as the fact that many of the technologies I regard as being relatively recent developments are considered antediluvian by today's young people (at least, they would be if youngsters were aware of the word “antediluvian,” but that’s a topic for another day).

For example, take the way we access recorded music. I remember when compact discs (CDs) were first introduced, circa the early 1980s. At that time, we viewed these bodacious beauties as being “space-age” technology. By comparison, most of today’s youngsters now regard CDs as something their parents used in ancient times. If young people are aware of CDs at all, it’s in the form of sad rows of small plastic cases gathering dust in a rarely frequented part of their parents’ house.

Or consider the audio coding format called MP3, which compresses sound files by removing audio data that is less audible to the human ear, while still preserving reasonably good sound quality. This was introduced circa the mid-1990s. The first portable media players (PMPs) or digital audio players (DAPs), commonly referred to as MP3 players, emerged on the market in the late 1990s.

The earliest MP3 players utilized flash memory, but this had significantly less capacity and was considerably more expensive than it is today. As a result, MP3 players circa 1999 often contained just 32MB or 64MB, which was sufficient to store only around 6 to 12 songs.

Apple introduced its first iPod MP3 player in 2001. This contained a 5GB hard drive that could hold around 1,000 songs, which was mindboggling at the time. However, the real game changer came when Apple launched the iTunes Store in 2003. This provided a legal means for people to purchase and download MP3 files, which appealed to both the music industry and consumers.

Prior to digital downloads — with older technologies like vinyl, cassette tapes, and CD albums — if you wanted one song, you had to buy the entire album. One of the most revolutionary features of the iTunes Store was that users could buy individual tracks for just $0.99. There were multiple implications stemming from this, such as reviving older hits, as people could now purchase individual nostalgic tunes.

Having said all this, there was significant consumer resistance at first to buying music as intangible digital files rather than as physical products, such as vinyl records, cassette tapes, or CDs. This resistance came from several angles, including emotional and tangible concerns (“You can’t hold it!”) as well as questions about ownership and digital media rights; for example, what happens to someone’s digital music collection, upon which they may have spent a lot of money, when they die? As a result, it took several years for downloadable music to gain widespread acceptance.

The interesting thing is that things have moved on from MP3, but most people remain unaware of this fascinating fact. At the time of this writing, most people prefer to stream music rather than download it. In fact, streaming now accounts for ~85-90% of all music revenue, while downloads (digital sales) account for only 3-5%, and physical media (CDs, vinyl, and cassettes, which are experiencing a small comeback) account for 7-10%.

Although MP3 continues to be universally supported across devices and platforms, streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, and others utilize more modern coding and compression formats, such as AAC, OGG Vorbis, Opus, and FLAC. Most young people today are unfamiliar with or uninterested in audio file formats. Many assume everything is MP3 because it’s the only one they’ve heard of, even though they’re usually streaming in one of the more modern formats.

But we digress… All the above is intended only to set the scene. What I really wanted to talk about was what came before. As usual, of course, we can expect me to wander off into the weeds, as is my wont. For example, I recall once reading a short science fiction story in which archaeologists discover that the decorative grooves on some ancient pottery contain recordings of voices and music that the potter unintentionally captured as he worked and sang. Someone realizes that much like a phonograph needle, the potter’s stylus recorded the vibrations of sound waves into the wet clay as it spun on the wheel. Later, using modern equipment, these "recordings" are played back, revealing voices from the ancient past.

In turn, this reminds me of my recent Radical Retro Cans column, in which we discussed the French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. In 1857, Édouard invented a device called the phonautograph that recorded sound as “squiggles on paper.” In 2008, scientists successfully converted one of Scott’s phonautograph recordings from 1860 back into sound.

If I were to go out on a limb and take a wild guess, I would suggest that most young people in their early twenties (at least, the ones who managed to stay awake during history lessons at high school) are at least vaguely aware of some of the early recording devices. I’m thinking of things like the phonograph (cylindrical recorder), which was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, and the gramophone (flat disc recorder), which was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, both of which captured sound as squiggles in grooves (“groovy grooves,” if you will).

I’d also bet that most young people are at least aware of the concept of the big reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders that were first used in the 1930s and 1940s for professional studio and broadcasting applications. Later, in the 1950s, consumer versions became available for home use, but these were pricey, and not many households could afford one.

So, what could I tell young people that they don’t know? Well, how about the fact that before there were magnetic tape recorders, there were magnetic wire recorders, in which sound signals were recorded on steel wire? The first wire recorder was invented in the late 1890s by the Danish Engineer, Valdemar Poulsen. Improved versions of these devices were used for dictation and telephone recording from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

The image below shows an original reel of Webster-Chicago recording wire from my own small private collection of “interesting stuff.” As we see from the enclosed brochure, this was available in 1/4-hour, 1/2-hour, and 1-hour sizes.

To be honest, I didn’t become aware of wire recorders myself until around 2012. This was when I was contacted by an Englishman named Nick Gent, who told me about the recordings his grandfather had captured on a homemade wire recorder in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Nick had to build his own machine to play these back, at which time he heard the voices of his great-grandparents and his own mother as a child. That must have been an amazing experience. You can read more about this fascinating story on Nick’s website.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much more I have to tell, but I don’t want to outstay my welcome, so I’ll save any further musings until my next column. In the meantime, as always, I welcome your captivating comments, querulous questions, and sagacious suggestions, all of which you can share on Hackster's Throwback Thursdays Discord channel. I look forward to seeing you there.

P.S. Don't forget that you can peruse and ponder all of my Throwback Thursdays columns here.