When did tin foil phonographs go out of production?

[pughphonos]

Not that I am going to be able to own one anytime soon. But I'm curious.

Historians love to document the first appearance of various inventions, etc. But I think it's also interesting to learn when certain things "died out." My guess is that the tin foil phonograph would not have survived the commercial advent of the wax cylinder phonograph by more than a year or two.

How close am I?

Ralph

[Wolfe]

Tinfoil machines lay dead in the water well before the commercial production of wax cylinder machines. Maybe some French company made them or something, I don't know.

[phonogfp]

Tinfoil phonographs were manufactured into the mid-1880s by a few companies; notably in England by the London Stereoscopic Company in hand-driven, weight-driven, and spring-driven models. In France, Ducretet continued manufacture of simpler hand-driven models until the mid-1890s, but these were intended for schools where the principle of sound recording could be demonstrated.

Rene Rondeau published an excellent book on all known tinfoil phonographs (including reproductions) which I believe is still available from him. The title is, appropriately, Tinfoil Phonographs and I highly recommend it.

George P.

[Edisone]

I recently bought a copy of Rene's book, via a merchant on Amazon - I didn't think to check with Rene himself. It is, indeed, an excellent book, and actually cheaper from him than what I paid !

Here's his ordering info: http://www.edisontinfoil.com/book.htm

[TinfoilPhono]

I have a copy of a German scientific catalog from 1914 in which they were still offering tinfoil phonographs and even phonautographs for laboratory use.

Commercially, the tinfoil phonograph died off in 1880 in the US, when the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company shut down. They remained popular in Europe, as George notes, well into the 1880s and even to the early 1890s (some Ducretet machines were made as late as 1895).

It is because of the longer lifespan of tinfoils in Europe that I particularly prize machines like the Fondain. He is unequivocably documented as having gone bankrupt in April 1881 so his machines are contemporary with American phonographs -- 1879-1880. Same for Vital (though those are much rarer) since his book, with illustrations of his machine, was printed in 1879.

Not that I turn up my nose at some of the other fascinating European tinfoils, even if some can't be dated with such precision.

I hope to publish a revised edition of my book someday, in color. There is a TON of new information that I've turned up since 2001.

The most rewarding thing about having written that book is the astonishing number of people who have commented to me that they had no idea the subject was so vast. It's true that in my early years (decades, even) of collecting we looked upon tinfoils as a very small and essentially generic category. I really enjoyed unraveling the seemingly convoluted timeline of the machines made for the ESPCo and making sense of what had been random disorder.

[tinovanderzwan]

indeed tinfoils went on in laboratory circles for quite a wile ww1 might had put a spanner in it but i'm not realy sure
you could ask the same question about the acoustic phonograph with this i mean a machine that has a needle beeing vibrated by a groove wich inturn vibrates a acoustic amp a membrane or cone
so when did the acoustic phonograph die.... the awnser is it din't
the acousic phonograp survived in the form of pullstring doll voiceboxes right into the mid 1990s and at this time the first japanese gakken kit sets came on the market and in a more perfected form from the first sets they still are

gakken kit cup recorder type 1.jpg (163.48 KiB) Viewed 1333 times

gakken kit gramophone type 2.jpg (37.75 KiB) Viewed 1333 times

ps i don't count all the crapophones that came out of dumdum calcutta india since the mid 1970s fist mostly from recycled phono parts and later completely new
dumdum calcutta india is the place where his masters voice had its indian factory the same factory is now crapo, headquarters of the world


tino

[Starkton]

While the larger-scale manufacture phased out early, exhibitors continued to show tinfoil phonographs through the USA, although usually not worth the news in the papers.

I have a booklet, printed in 1884, by Edmund Davis of Providenve, N.J., in which he described his adventures with the phonograph. In December 1883, Davis wrote to Edison that he had shown the phonograph "ever since it came out with no intermission."

[Starkton]

Not that I turn up my nose at some of the other fascinating European tinfoils, even if some can't be dated with such precision.

Perhaps your Max Kohl phonograph, unearthed in the USA, was sold in 1893 to a local scientific institution. Kohl received an award in Chicago that year and I guess that he also exhibited the large tinfoil model.

[TinfoilPhono]

^^

Great info, thanks. I will have to try to find a list of exhibitors, and (especially) what they exhibited, at the 1893 Fair. It would be exciting if I could find even a circumstantial connection, despite the late date.

[pughphonos]

Thank you all for this great information! Wouldn't we all love to have catalogs to all contents of the 1893 World's Fair.