The Development of Sound Recording

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New mass media have often been defined in terms of the communication technologies that preceded them. For example, movies were initially called motion pictures, a term that derived from photography; radio was referred to as wireless telegraphy, referring back to telegraphs; and television was often called picture radio. Likewise, sound recording instruments were initially described as talking machines and later as phonographs, indicating the existing innovations, the telephone and the telegraph. This early blending of technology foreshadowed our contemporary era, in which media as diverse as newspapers and movies converge on the Internet. Long before the Internet, however, the first major media convergence involved the relationship between the sound recording and radio industries.

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THOMAS EDISON In addition to the phonograph, Edison (1847–1931) ran an industrial research lab that is credited with inventing the motion picture camera and the first commercially successful lightbulb, and a system for distributing electricity.