The Bell and Tainter patent was granted in 1886, and although the subject of much controversy, it has been repeatedly sustained by the United States courts, and in one case (87 F. R. 873) Judge Shipman had to consider all that other inventors had done or attempted to do, and he there decided that Bell and Tainter were the first to make “an actual living invention which the public was able to use.”
Oscar Seagle, the Well-Known Soloist, Recording
The artist stands before the horn and his every note is recorded with a fidelity startling in the extreme.
This method covered “a method of engraving records of sound, producing records of sound by engraving in a wax-like material which would permit of the handling, using and transporting of the record.” Another United States patent, covering a method of duplicating or copying sound records, was granted to Charles Sumner Tainter in 1886.
The Macdonald Graphophone Grand
Of course the talking machine of to-day is a long way removed from the early Edison and the early Bell and Tainter machines, because many master minds have been working on the problem of developing and maturing the art of sound recording and reproducing, and in perfecting machines to be used in reproducing the sound records after they have been made.