The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Pushing back the envelope, there is a great article on Wordpress by griffonagedotcom, on Berthold Laufer's stereo recordings of Chinese music in 1901.

Trying to copy the link was, unfortunately, a bit too hard for me; so you'll have to look it up.

- Bill

Is this it?

https://griffonagedotcom.wordpress.com/ ... s-of-1901/

Quite incredible. Thanks for the excellent article.

More Blumlein here 1

https://sounds.bl.uk/Sound-recording-hi ... recordings

These are absolutely amazing - many thanks all for the links.

Back to the original subject of this thread, this may be stating the obvious, but personally I doubt whether "stereo" marked on that soundbox has anything to do with stereo as such.

Orchorsol wrote:These are absolutely amazing - many thanks all for the links.

Back to the original subject of this thread, this may be stating the obvious, but personally I doubt whether "stereo" marked on that soundbox has anything to do with stereo as such.

When this soundbox was made, probably in the late 1920's, the word "stereo" had no meaning in relation to sound recording.
It derives from the Greek word "stereos" which translates as "solid". A curious choice for a name to put on a soundbox.

Thank you for finding that link to the 1934 EMI stereo sessions, phonosandradios; fascinating! The Ray Noble orchestra seems to have been augmented with strings on this recording. Nice also to see Charlie Kunz - with carnation - at the very start.
Abbey Road may have changed a lot; except the carpet! The Beatles stood on the same carpet as had Jack Hylton 30 years previously.

52089 wrote:Is this it?

https://griffonagedotcom.wordpress.com/ ... s-of-1901/

That's it: thanks!

- Bill

I wonder... to me the design of the soundbox looks more like 1940-ies or even 50ies, but that's just a guess. Anyway I thought it interesting when I read about the word stereo in the context of recorded sound, here an excerpt from the link just above this entry. At any rate for Thorens to write stereo on a soundbox is baffling. Maybe we will never know.

https://griffonagedotcom.wordpress.com/ ... s-of-1901/

"Stereo sound has a longer history than you might think. The word stereophonic is often said to have been coined by Western Electric in 1928, but in fact Alexander Graham Bell had already used it back in 1879. Some nineteenth-century transmissions of live performances by telephone were stereophonic, including those of the Théâtrophone, through which customers could listen to opera with a separate receiver at each ear. Harvey Fletcher and Alan Blumlein are widely credited with having made the first intentional stereophonic recordings in the 1930s, but Franklin M. Doolittle had been working on the idea since at least 1921 (see patents here and here); whether he really made any such recordings, I’m not sure, but he did pioneer actual stereophonic radio through his station WPAJ in 1924. And even before that, the “Multiple Graphophone” patented by T. H. Macdonald—filing date June 11, 1898, issue date October 21, 1902—had been equipped to make simultaneous multi-track recordings of “concerted music” that seem to qualify in retrospect as stereophonic..."

Lucius1958 wrote:Pushing back the envelope, there is a great article on Wordpress by griffonagedotcom, on Berthold Laufer's stereo recordings of Chinese music in 1901.

Trying to copy the link was, unfortunately, a bit too hard for me; so you'll have to look it up.

- Bill

Indeed an excellent article, quite educative! It is interesting to learn about the difficulty in synchronizing two soundtracks recorded on primitive mechanical devices.