On Wednesday 22 July 2026 we had our Monthly Meeting with one of our own members as the speaker. Herbie had already delivered Part 1 back in January 2024, and it was time now to pick up on the developments in the early part of 20th Century.

Thomas Edison had found a way to record and playback sound, but it was limited to a few seconds on the surface of a spinning tube. The idea of moving the groove that contained the recorded sound from a tube to a disc is credited to Emile Berliner (above), and Herbie produced photographs of the early stars Enrico Caruso and Beatrice Harrison.

Once recording engineers had worked out how to move from physical recording to electric recording, utilising the newly invented thermionic valves, the scratchiness of earlier discs disappeared and a much better quality of sound could be enjoyed. The valve was first registered in 1904, but it was the introduction of Lee de Forest’s triode valve in 1906 which could amplify a weak audio signal that changed recorded sound for ever.

We then learned about the clever technology that allowed two sound channels to be recorded in a single groove. Credit here goes to Alan Blumlein in 1931 although it was many years later that mass production of stereo equipment developed. With the advent of tape recorders in 1928, followed by cassette players and 7″ discs, high fidelity sound reached all families at all levels.

In the 1960s, stereo sound became available on radio broadcasts, and in 1966 a way to multiplex to two different sound channels on a single radio signal was developed, and stereo sound was finally available almost everywhere.

We look forward to the final part of the History of Recorded Sound at some time in the future when sound makes the leap from analogue recording to digital recording.

Our next Monthly Meeting will be on 26 August 2026 at 10:00am when the speaker will be Professor Ian Cooper.