|
What are Phonographia? Phonographia are phonograph related ephemera, words and memorabilia that contribute to our memory of the Phonograph. Phonographia are found in advertisements, personal stories and literature, art, photographs, greeting cards, postcards, cartoons, sheet music and other artifacts that connect the phonograph with respective eras of popular culture.
With the completion of the Phonograph on December 6, 1877 the revolution of sound began, culturally and in rpms. Thomas Alva Edison and his head machinist, John Kruesi, had successfully captured the human voice and played it back on Edison's "Talking Phonograph." (1) This site celebrates that historic event and documents reminders of the phonograph up to the present day. Visit Phonographia galleries - Friends of the Phonograph, PhonoArt, and Factolas - to see a variety of phonograph connections and their impact on popular culture. For locating specific topics, use the Phonographia Table of Contents.
The Phonograph Lives! The revolution that began with the Phonograph is a continuum. We still have record players and descendent technologies that record and reproduce sound waves. And most remarkably, launched one hundred years after the invention of the phonograph, Voyager 1 and 2 are travelling in interstellar space each carrying a phonograph record that is Earth's "message in the bottle" and "greetings from Earth" (2). Images, sounds and music on the Voyager's "Golden Record" are intended to represent life on planet Earth. However, as Carl Sagan noted, the record will only be played "if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space") (3). Perhaps the "Golden Record" will never be played. But there is still the mind-bending possibility that the Voyager record will exist longer than humans on Earth. Visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website, read more about the "Golden Record" and see real-time numbers of how far these golden records have travelled.
Remember the Phonograph! Next time you hear recorded sound remember the Phonograph. It's a Revolution still turning!™
Courtesy of The OKC Phil
© 2001-2019 Phonographia
|
