1912 – 1929
Edison
The vertical-cut Diamond Disc, and the man who would not bend
Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated · West Orange, New Jersey
The house
Edison invented recorded sound in 1877 and spent the next fifty years insisting his way of doing it was the right one. His company stayed with cylinders long after discs had won, and when it finally issued discs in 1912 they were nothing like anybody else's: a quarter of an inch thick, cut vertically rather than laterally, and playable only on an Edison machine with a diamond stylus.
The Diamond Disc was, on its own terms, technically superior — Edison ran famous public tone tests in which a singer performed alongside a record and audiences were invited to tell them apart. But a record that would not play on a Victrola was a commercial problem no amount of fidelity could solve.
Edison held out until October 1929, when the company left the record business entirely, weeks before the crash. Its lateral-cut Needle Type discs, issued at the very end, are among the rarest American records of the era.
What it sounds like
Very low surface noise and an even, undistorted midrange, at the cost of a restricted top end. Repertoire is conservative by design: Edison chose much of it himself and disliked most of what was popular.
On the shelf
Pulling sleeves…