HISTORY OF SOUND TECHNOLOGY Acoustic Era 1877 1925

HISTORY OF SOUND TECHNOLOGY Acoustic Era 1877 – 1925

The 1 st Recording · Dec. 6, 1877: Thomas Edison is the first to record sound: Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Early Phonograph Mechanical sound reproduction.

Alexander Graham Bell Mid 1880 s Develops the graphophone

Emile Berliner 1887 Patents the gramophone precursor to vinyl records

Late 1880 s Dickinson develops the kinetograph

Silent Film Era 1902 - 1926

Tube Technology Lee De Forest invents the vacuum tube (1906)

The Electronic Era 1925 - 1982

Don Juan 1926 First film to include music on an amplified sound track.

Sound on Film May, 1927 Fox produces newsreels known as Movietone News, which is shown prior to feature films in theaters.

1928 Neumann Microphones

Stereophonic Recording & Advances in Film Sound 1933: King Kong was released by RKO and made film sound history.

Stereophonic recordings Leopold Stokowski and Alan Blumlein were two pioneers in the field of stereo recording.

The First Magnetic Tape Recording: 1935

1940 Walt Disney’s Fantasia

Hi Fi Era 1948

1948 Birth of the LP

1949 The “single” is born RCA develops the 7” 45 RPM single.

1951 The portable tape recorder Stefan Kudelski builds the first Nagra portable field tape recorder.

1952 Widescreen Film formats Film industry develops wide formats to compete against the new TV industry.

1953 Cinemascope The Robe debuted as the first Cinemascope film.

1953 Sun Studios Considered the “Mecca” of modern rock recording.

Early Digital Technology 1957: The first computer generated sound

Modern Synthesizers 1966: Robert Moog releases first production model of the Moog synthesizer 1975: The synclavier, developed by composer Jon Appleton and engineers Sydney Alonso & Cameron Jones

1965 Dolby Type-A Adopted by film industry in early to mid 70’s to make movies sound better.

1976 Dolby Stereo A star is Born is the first Dolby stereo movie.

The Digital Era 1982 - ? ? ? 1982: The first Compact Audio Discs (CDs) are marketed by Sony.

1983 Return of the Jedi Introduces THX: A standard developed by George Lucas for theater sound systems.

1986 Dolby SR Dolby’s 2 nd generation professional recording system (for analog recordings).

1987 Rise of the DAT The 1 st Digital Audio Tape players are introduced.

1992 Dolby Digital Batman Returns is the 1 st movie in Dolby Digital

1993 SDDS Last Action Hero is the 1 st film released in this new format (Sony Dynamic Digital Sound).

Mid 90’s - Present DAW’s Digital Audio Workstations slowly overtake analog to become the new industry standard for recording and editing.