Books on recording history

[mjbarnes]

Is there a best book? One that treats all the way from brown wax to today? And focuses on recording techniques, goals, practices (as opposed to musical artists). Thanks.

[Marc Hildebrant]

The most complete book I have found is "From Tinfoil to Stereo" by Read and Welch. Another book I use is the "Fabulous Phonograph" by Gelatt.

For technical information, "Sound Recording" by Frayne and Wolfe is very good. I also have a good reference "Sound Reproduction" by Briggs (great pictures inside).

Marc

[recordmaker]

One book to cover it all in recording technology detail seems difficult.
Read and Welch and Gelatt are pretty wide ranging and broad brush approaches to the industry as a whole.

Henry Seymour The Reproduction of Sound 1916 covers much of the acoustic era, written by working recording engineer and covering studio and mastering processes up to 1916 now available on line, the book being pretty rare, as it was self published and aimed at a fairly small industry at the time.

https://archive.org/details/TheReproduc ... 9/mode/2up

Courtney Bryson "The Gramophone Record" Benn 1935 is not easy to find even in the UK where it was published but carries on the insider information from the introduction of electrical recording.

You may want to download the Maxfiled and Harrison electrical recording paper I think it is on the CHARM website.