The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I've been searching e-bay and also this forum for examples of, and/or discussion of, automatic stops for cylinder phonographs. This has to be something that has exercised some of the great minds around here. After all, it's one of the great annoyances of cylinder players as opposed to disc players. A needle reaches the inner ring of a disc and just circles around harmlessly until the spring plays out--if an automatic stop is not engaged--but on many cylinder players the reproducer must be stopped quickly at the end of the record before it could land on the hard surface of the mandrel and suffering damage to the stylus and its assembly.

I've been looking through my books and various on-line resources, but can't find much out there besides REPEATERS, which I'm not keen on at the moment.

Have any of you worked up any gadgets to address this issue? Here are the lines of development I've been able to think of:

1) Have a string lead from the back end of the reproducer carriage to the speed knob. IDEA: once the carriage reaches a certain point, the tensing string would then turn the speed knob towards slow--eventually stopping the machine. PROBLEMS: The string would have to be adjusted for the stopping points on each cylinder, and those vary, cylinder by cylinder. Also, there is usually not enough "blank space" at the end of a cylinder to pull the string enough to turn the speed knob sufficiently.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Find some sort of trigger mechanism (spring; weights) that would jerk the string by a few inches once triggered by the advancing carriage.

2) Add a small sloping ramp to the top right of the straight edge on which the carriage arm rests when the machine is in play. Hopefully the carriage would then lift the reproducer sufficiently off and away from the feed screw once it hit the slope--but something tells me that that won't work.

Inquiring minds want to know, people!

Ralph

They did make such a thing, at least I've seen one attached to an Edison Home. A wire linkage that is pushed to the right by the carriage and pulls the on/off lever as it does.

The small ramp might cause extra wear on the half-nut and drive screw. You would also need to adjust this to match the end of the record.

Estott, I've done a bit more researching and saw that--along with a Babson device that is set up much the same way but when pulled draws a lever across the base of the belt--pressing it inwards and stopping it. I might try to make my own version of that.

Rizbone, yes, that's what I was starting to realize about my ramp idea--it would raise and advance the carriage only so far but part of the half-nut would still be pressing down on the drive screw, causing wear to both.

We sentimental types who love our cylinder players are, well, sentimental; but I can really see why those babies became obsolete.

pughphonos wrote: We sentimental types who love our cylinder players are, well, sentimental; but I can really see why those babies became obsolete.

Really????......try storing 500 cylinder records compared to 500 disc's..... :lol. Not to mention "Edison's" choice of music on the whole leaves a lot to be desired.... . For most of the time he and he alone had the final say what was hot and what was not. Funny coming from a man that was deaf.

gramophone78 wrote:

pughphonos wrote: We sentimental types who love our cylinder players are, well, sentimental; but I can really see why those babies became obsolete.

Really????......try storing 500 cylinder records compared to 500 disc's..... :lol. Not to mention "Edison's" choice of music on the whole leaves a lot to be desired.... . For most of the time he and he alone had the final say what was hot and what was not. Funny coming from a man that was deaf.

I recently read an interesting book entitled "AC/DC - the savage tale of the world's first standards war" ( or something pretty close). The dust jacket cover photo has images of Charles Westinghouse and Thomas Edison with their backs to each other, separated by a lightning-bolt.

At any rate, it is about the struggle for supremacy between Edison and his beloved DC current, and Westinghouse (and Tesla) and the superior Alternating Current as a large network municipal power supply.

There is a biographical account of each man. In Edison's history, the author comments on Edison's deafness, which reached a rather pronounced stage by the time he was 20 or so. In later years, when he was asked about how his hearing loss has affected his life & work, he was quoted as saying:

"By the time I was eighteen, I had already heard everything I needed to hear."



The author also described the old laboratory at Menlo Park, which apparently had a large pipe organ at one end, and for diversion, Edison used to slide onto the bench and play "in an energetic and rustic fashion"...

There's also a stop shown in the Compendium, mounted on the endgate of a Standard: an adjustable screw contacts the carriage, and presses a rubber wheel against the end of the mandrel....

Bill

Hey gramophone78, I'm a good sport--always willing to poke fun at my own obsessions as well as everyone else's. You've had your fun with that poor, unfortunate deaf old man. Now go and be a real mensch: heckle the Pathé people--they'll throw needle caps at you once their butlers wake them up tomorrow morning.

Seriously, I probably DO have 500 or more cylinders. Stacked all over the house in those mini milk crates.

Chuck, thanks for the description of an electrical stop option. I thought of that as an option as well. Right now I've rigged my Triumph with a wire clothes hanger for an automatic stop and it WORKS! No photos will be provided--too improvized to show the gentry.

DeSoto Frank, thanks for the Edison anecdote. He does sound intolerable in many ways--but then I'm a sentimentalist and am very forgiving of poor, unfortunate deaf old men who putter with acoustical phonographs while trying to hold back modernity (but enough about MOST inhabitants of this forum).

Bill, thanks for the reference to another automatic stop.

Here is a Babson stop for Standards, which looks simple to copy and probably works well.

http://tinyurl.com/bu3vtkj

Wow, I've never seen one of those!

)

Tony K.
Melbourne, FL

Edison Collector/Restorer