1895 Graphophone

[m_nakamura]

What type of cylinder would this machine take? I was reading about this and all the early Columbia ones seem to have a really long cylinder mandrel.

[TinfoilPhono]

This is the Type N. It was made to play regular brown wax cylinders, but it can play later black wax 2-minute records. The mandrel is conventional in length, but the unusual bullet shaped tip gives the illusion of being longer. This was one of only two Graphophones that ever used an endgate to support the right end of the mandrel, the other being the Graphophone Grand (Type GG).

The earliest Graphophones played 6" long cylinders made of a cardboard tube with a thin ozocerite coating. They did not use a mandrel, they were simply supported at the ends. When Columbia switched to Edison-style standard cylinders, they went to 4" to match Edison. It would be many years later that Columbia (briefly) offered 6" long cylinders, requiring a very long mandrel. (I'm overlooking the Type C, which was primarily a business dictation machine with a 6" mandrel.) But even the 6" mandrels made for the "Twentieth Century" cylinders were still capable of playing standard 4" long records.

[phonogfp]

Millie,

Here's a good thread on the earliest Graphophones (typically these are Bell-Tainter machines). This appeared on the APS Forum five years ago:

https://forum.antiquephono.org/topic/32 ... mment-1774

George P.