In conducting our work we had first to design an experimental apparatus, then hunt about, often in Philadelphia and New York, for the materials with which to construct it, which were usually hard to find, and finally build the models we needed, ourselves.[7]
Figure 3.—Page from Notebook of Charles Sumner Tainter, describing an experiment in sound recording. The Tainter notebooks, preserved in the U. S. National Museum, describe experiments at the Volta Laboratory, in the 1880's. The Graphophone patents of 1886, were the result of this research. (Smithsonian photo 44312.)
The experimental machines built at the Volta Laboratory include both disc and cylinder types, and an interesting "tape" recorder. The records used with the machines and now in the collections of the U. S. National Museum, are believed to be the oldest reproducible records preserved anywhere in the world. While some are scratched and cracked, others are still in good condition.
By 1881 the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent. Wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. Rather than apply for a patent at that time, however, they deposited the machine in a sealed box at the Smithsonian, and specified that it was not to be opened without the consent of two of the three men. In 1937 Tainter ([fig. 1]) was the only one still living, so the box was opened with his permission.
For the occasion, the heirs of Alexander Graham Bell gathered in Washington, but Tainter was too old and too ill to come from San Diego.
The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following is the text of the recording: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Remarked Mrs. Gilbert Grosvenor,[8] Bell's daughter, when the box was opened in 1937, "That is just the sort of thing father would have said. He was always quoting from the classics."