THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH
Sir,-Reading an article on page 7 of your issue. of September 10, I was amazed and shocked to find the American Edison getting all the credit for the invention of the phonograph, entirely ignoring the real inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, who invented also the telephone, only taking both to U.S.A. because his own country failed to appreciate their value. On the cylindrical records used on early phonographs Alexander Graham Bell got, at least, a small. share of the credit, each announcing in harsh, nasal tone, "So-and-So, ‘sung by So-and-So,
Edison-Bell Record." One I remember hearing often in my youth was "‘A Miner’s Dream of Home,’ sung by Mr. Hayden Coffin-Edison-Bell Record." Do you not think it is high time our own great nation got the credit that is its due for the great things it has done? I am thoroughly tired of hearing other nations extolled at the expense of our
own.
HELEN M.
CHALMERS
(Auckland),
(Accuracy in these matters is surely more important than national pride, "Most modern inventions," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "result from the contributions of many minds, and it is often difficult for the courts to determine priority, but when Edison made application in 1877 for a ‘phonograph or speaking machine,’ the U.S. Patent Office could discover no previous record of this sort." Bell’s "gramophone," one of the earliest talking-machines, was patented in 1885.-Ed.)
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 5
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231THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 5
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