AN ORCHESTRA WHICH PLAYS BEFORE A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8509, 10 August 1907, Page 6

AN ORCHESTRA WHICH PLAYS BEFORE A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE.

(The following article from Musical America was written after a visit to the Recording Department of the Edison National Phonograph Company at Fifth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, New York City.) The thousands of people all over the world who daily derive pleasure from their own talking-machines or those in public p'aces have little idea of the infinite detail necessary in making a record. A visit to the laboratories of one of the prominent talking-machine companies is of exceeding interest. Let us follow the making of a "record" from the time tho wax cylinder, made at the factory, is received j at the laboratory. The cylinder, which has already been smoothed, is placed on a revolving bar beneath a 1 knife whose keen edge travelling along the wax reduces it to the most absolute and glassy perfection. Step across the hall into the recording room, a room bare of furniture, ending in a wooden partition from the centre of which projects a long, slender tube. Seated directly in front of this are three musicians, masters of their respective instruments, in fact, as the case happens, members of the Metropolitan Opera House Orchestra. On a platform, raised to about the level of a man's head, sits the harpist, at the base of the platform and close to it, the flutist, to the fore and behind him the violinist. All three are huddled close together, so as to focus the body of tone, yet not too close to interfere with the freedom of motion necessary. The relative positions as to height and distance from the horn, of the various instruments have been carefully measured and tested by experiment. The artists are booked weeks ahead, just as if they were playing at an ordinary concert, only, as we shall see, they have to be exceedingly generous with encores. The violin is not the ordinary woodenbellied instrument we are accustomed to seeing, but is a bar of wood with strings, keys and bridge, and an aluminium diaphragm and horn, the invention of a London musician. Step back of the wooden partition. There on the other side of the aperture is the end uf the horn with the attached needle cutting its careful groove in the cylinder, from which fly glistening clouds of the most delicate wax filaments. A tiny electric light illumines the rotary path of the record, which is taken on completion of this stage t,o another revolving machine where fine camels-hair brushes remove any stray threads of the wax which may have adhered. JThe record is then taken into another room and played to the "critic," who passes judgment upon the rendering from a musical point of view and also as regards it reception by the machine. While this is going on, the musicians are making another record of the same selection in the room with the wooden partition. This completed, they join the critic and pass opinions upon the records, deciding, perhaps, that some tone ought to sound stronger, another less harsh, etc., in this way finally making a record that is not only pronounced perfect by the mi- -ical critic, but by the record critic a: -veil. The latter examines the finished cylinders with a microscope to see that they are exact in every detail. The "master record," as it is called, is then ready for shipment to the factory, where the model, or matrix, is made. For this purpose it is 'enclosed in a tin can.

j Arrived at the factory it is slipped 1 on a pivot and surmounted by a stationary magnet in an absolutely airfree jar in which from electric wires are suspended two gold leaves. The sparks produced by this machine in action fly across the jar from one gold leaf to the other and create a beautiful gold atmosphere. Without the jar revolves another magnet which, by force of attraction, turns the magnet in the jar and consequently the attached cylinder, which soon becomes coated with gold. This process completed, the matrix, locking like an exquisite gold vase, is subi jected to a coating of copper, onej sixteenth of an inch in thickness, j after which it is fitted into a brass j form and dashed into, cold water, I which contracts the wax more than j the metal, so that the original cylinder drops out, and the impression is , firmly registered in the metal. It is , from this matrix that the records of _ the market are made. While not I more than six or eight at the most "master records" are turned out daily at the laboratory, about 120 to 125 thousand are sent out from the factory. The thought and care which Edison lavishas on the wonderful little invention is demonstrated by the numerous sketches of improvements which he continually sends to factory and laboratories. It is interesting to recall the way in which he arrived at the proper combination for the cylinders on which the records are made. He used to prepare the various mixtures in little butter dishes, having as many as forty going at one time, carefully patting them to the proper consistency, and then testing their adaptability to the culling machine with his penknife.