For Your Home Entertainment & Listening Pleasure

April 28, 2021

Spin records. Flip through pages. Walk down memory lane… with us.

We offer a collection of vinyl LPs and 45’s and a nice selection of hardback, softback and audio books. Both great for audio and visual satisfaction but some of our customers get crafty and use them for upcycling and decorating too! There are some really neat and unique ideas out there!

FUN FACTS:

1857 Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French printer, bookseller and inventor, patented the phonautograph. He used a vibrating stylist pen to graphically record sound on paper so he could see what sound looked like.

1877 As the result of his invention of the telegraph & telephone, Thomas Edison took the phonautograph and invented a cylinder-shaped phonograph which, unlike the phonautograph, could play and record sound. The device used a stylist to cut grooves into tinfoil. Thomas last resided in West Orange, NJ. As most of us are aware, his contributing invention included the incandescent light bulb and the motion picture camera. He held 1,093 patents. How about that for a kid with dyslexia, who’s mother pulled him out of school!

1886 Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Tainter invented the graphophone, a cylinder that produced sound using wax. Alexander was a Scottish-born American inventor who last resided in Canada. He was the inventor of the telephone and founder of the AT&T Corporation and held over 18 patents. He studied sound and hearing. His mother and wife where hearing-impaired. He and his father were teachers for the deaf. Here’s a guy that dropped out of school at age 15 but passed entrance exams to get into college.

1887 With the help of Eldridge Johnson, a machine shop owner from Camden NJ, Emile Berlinger patented the gramophone. The device operated by hand. It played 7 inch rubber discs, which eventually were made of vinyl. Eldridge’s wealth skyrocketed to over $37mil (1/2 billion in today’s dollars).

The first albums were made of shellac playable at 78 rpm. Shellac is made from the secretion of a female tree bug found in Thailand and India called a “lac”.

The foundations for the Victor Talking Machine Company date back to the late 1880’s and the “Victrola” was eventually patented.

1901 Victor Company released a record player called the Red Seal and it played 10 inch “program transcription discs” playable at 33 1/3 rpm and pressed on a 12inch flexible plastic disk.

1913 the first electric motor option became available on the Victrola, eliminating the need for cranking. It was called an Electrola.

1948 Peter Goldmark, an engineer for CBS Laboratories and later employed by Columbia Records, invented the first long playing vinyl record and improved the phonograph stylist and tone arm. This guy also produced the first live color television images 8 years earlier. He earned 77 patents and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1977. Peter’s last known residency was in Port Chester, NY.

sources: Google Search & Wikipedia. These dates may not be exact, as I found discrepancies upon researching. Hope you enjoy it anyway! Hooray for inventors!

Shop with us today and take advantage of our 20% off all vinyl records

plus BOGO Free hardback, paperback and audio books! Offers good thru Sunday May 2nd