UCC Henebry Wax Cylinders

     The Henebry Wax Cylinders are one of the earliest forms of music recording. They are hollowed out cylinders made from wax which, similar to vinyl, have music engraved into them, dating back to the late nineteen hundreds. These cylinders are played through an Edson wax cylinder phonograph. These phonographs were mainly used and popular through the years 1896 to 1915. Before the wax cylinders were created, people used paper, tape and tinfoil to listen to music through a suitable phonograph for the material. The wax cylinders were produced by acoustic analogue recording. This is achieved by “a microphone diaphragm that can detect and sense the changes in atmospheric pressure caused by acoustic sound waves and record them as a mechanical representation of the sound waves on a medium such as a phonograph record (in which a stylus cuts grooves onto a record)” (Wikipedia contributors, 2017).

     The one downfall to these wax cylinder recorders is that the more they are played the further they disintegrate. This means that these recorders are only available to be listened to a certain amount of times. All of the cylinders produced were recorded live, as a result these recordings could only be listened to a maximum of 20 times. New cylinders would have been required to be purchased quite frequently.

     Over time, the type of wax used in the creation of these cylinders was improved and hardened so they could be played with better quality over 100 times. However, once these cylinders had been improved, it was unfortunately too late in terms of making the cylinders popular in these times. New materials and methods of playing and recording music had been produced and widely marketed.

     These cylinders were very fragile and sensitive and had to be handled and played with great care. They were kept in cardboard containers and could not exceed a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit, as their wear may have increased significantly. This is due to the major problem of mould in regards to the cylinder which can be caused by humidity.

    These cylinders are played between 90 and 105 RPM (revolutions per minute). They rotate at a speed twice as fast as contemporary discs. They were at a higher audio quality than the discs available in the nineteen hundreds.

    In order to digitize the cylinder, making them available to a wider audience, a confocal microscope was used. Sound quality of these recordings was hugely improved.

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Bruderhofer, Norman, Norman Bruderhofer’s Cylinder Guide (2016) http://www.cylinder.de/guide_brown-wax-cylinders.html [accessed 14 March 2017]

 

Contributors, Sound Recording and reproduction. (2017) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_recording_and_reproduction [accessed 14 March 2017]

 

Literary of Congress, History of the Cylinder Phonograph (2016) http://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-mtions-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/ [accessed 14 March 2017]

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Contributors, Phonograph cylinder (2017) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki.Phonograph_cylinder [accessed 14 March 2017]