Since its conception, the phonograph has evolved to be a machine for the masses. Despite Edison’s insistence on marketing the phonograph for business purposes, the phonograph was most popular as a nickel-in-slot entertainment device, avaliable at train stations and other public venues for people to listen to entertainment for a reasonable price. By the early 1900’s domestic phonographs were popping up in homes all over the country, allowing families to listen to and create their own entertainment. Soon, the recording industry became wildly successful, with new machines such as Berliner’s Gramophone being created solely to allow people to listen to records. Today, with iPods, music streaming services, and mobile voice recorders, audio recordings …show more content…
From men tinkering away on their phonographs in the1920’s to the hyper-masculine DJ battles of the 1980’s, the use of recording technology reinforces many traditional ideals of masculinity in American culture, such as a talent for machines, cleverness, and competitiveness. Though the technology for sound recording has also broadened the set of activities that can be considered masculine, such as music, the phonograph itself has been labeled as a “masculine” technology, which is conservative of societal expectations of manhood.
During the early stages of its development, Edison marketed the phonograph for use in recording memos and letters in the office. He wanted his new invention to be used for an important purpose, and following in the trend of scientific management, offered the phonograph up as a machine that would increase efficiency in the workplace. The phonograph, however, never quite took off in the way that Edison expected it to. Despite the supposed gains in efficiency, executives disliked the machine. While there
…show more content…
One of the main avenues opened to men by the introduction of the phonograph was music. In the late 19th century, when the phonograph was first being offered as a device for playing music, women were the main providers of entertainment in the home. Daughters were trained at a young age to play musical instruments so that they could perform for parties and other gatherings. Pianos were a particularly popular choice, as many families had a piano in the parlor that could be played to entertain company. For this reason, when phonographs were initially being marketed for home use, the advertisements frequently targeted women. However, the domestic phonograph had a profound effect on men of the era. Since phonographs were machines, they were not associated with the femininity of a musical instrument, and so men were able to use it to enjoy music. Many of the phonographs offered at the time had a volume control slider, which men could turn up or down in an attempt at self-expression. Others expressed themselves through conducting, which the Minneapolis Phonograph Society described as one of the most “exhilarating phonographic indoor sport.” This reference to conducting as a sport further emphasizes the “masculine” nature of the activity. Here, the use of the phonograph as a cover of masculinity shows how it help men adhere to traditionally male
Web. 15 Feb. 2014. <http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/collection/disk_play.cfm>. Edie, Paul C. "History of the Victor Phonograph." The Victor-Victrola Page.
During the 1920’s music was very important to the people and exacerbated racial tensions in the postwar period (citation). The music industry began to take off because new technology started making it easier to produce and share music around.
“Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities” by Michael Messner seeks to explain how participation in organized sports results in the manifestation of masculinity in males. Messner also uses feminist analyses to explain that masculinity
Although Thomson set up the first electric system, it was Edison who invented the phonograph in eighteen seventy-seven. Editors at Scientific American, who were some of the first to experience Edison's newest creation, were startled. "The machine began by politely inquiring as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night." (RCA Online 2)
Thomas Edison has to be credited with starting the recording industry, because without his invention of the phonograph, there might not be music on the radio, or on tapes and CD’s today(Biagi 143). In 1887, a man by the name Emile Berliner replaced Edison’s phonograph with the gramophone and in 1947 Goldmark introduced the LP, or Long-playing record(143-4).
The music industry has found many ways to let the fans listen to the music they love. Internet streaming radios like Pandora are having to pay artists for copyright reasons. The music industry had two significant changes in the 21st century: the physical albums have dropped but streaming music has increased, even though artists get little to nothing in return. How did the music industry start to get the music out to the people? At first it started with the phonograph, which came out in 1877 and was made mostly out of tin foil.
The piano has been inextricably linked with the roles and expectations of women in British society since its advent in the mid 1700s to the late 1800s when rising standards of living made it more accessible to middle class society. Pianos were regarded as "secure icons of social distinction" 1 and a wife was viewed similarly as a possession of "privatization, success and respectability."2 Pianos were instrumental in both reinforcing gender roles and as delineators of class distinction thus perpetuating the class system. 3
7. “The History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph.” American Memory: Historical Collects for National Digital Library 13 Mar. 2003. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html.
Thesis Statement: The vinyl record, though underappreciated and often overlooked, has a rich history and interesting process of creation.
A man named Thaddeus Cahill is said to have developed the first electronic instrument named the Telharmonium. This instrument was not made for the purpose of electronic music, it was used to broadcast music in restaurants and other public areas. “Cahill has never realized his plan, but his ideas were not so bad because today we make massive use of streaming media.” (The History Of Electronic Music, 2013)
As the popularity of the phonograph grew, people across the countrybegan to buy their through the mail. Originally, the music consisted mainly of classical singers and orchestral agreements of sentimental songs. One day in 1922 two Texan fiddlers named Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson and Henry Gilliland traveled from Atlanta to New York City to get their music recorded.
Nowadays, music is more accessible to people which has more effect on people nowadays than our great-grandparents. We can listen to popular music through iPod, iPhone, computer, internet and etc. However, these things would have been impossible to do back in 19th century because music can only be heard through live performance. This phenomena continue until the idea of recording music pop up back in late 1890s.
Prior to the 1970s when the theme of gender issues was still quite foreign, the societal norm forced female conformity to male determined standards because “this is a man’s world” (Kerr 406). The patriarchal society painted the image of both men and women accordingly to man’s approach of societal standards that include the defining features of manhood that consist of “gentil...
John Beynon, Professor in the Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, argues that this still reflects in “commonsensical assumption that masculinity is a standardized container, fixed by biology, in which all “normal” men are placed, something natural that can be measured in terms of ps...
Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1907884,00.html Kot, G. (2009). Ripped: How the wired generation revolutionized music. New York: Scribner Books, Inc. Prices for pro equipment. n.d. - n.d. - n.d.