Today is the 148th anniversary of the day that Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. To me it is a more intriguing invention than photography, because it is uses a two dimensional surface to record a one dimensional signal.<\/p>\n
Of course the phonograph is not the first technological innovation to use a two dimensional surface to record a one dimensional signal. That would be the invention of writing, which predates the phonograph by thousands of years.<\/p>\n
But the phonograph marks a kind of of trifecta for Edison. He also invented a version of motion pictures as well as that famous light bulb.<\/p>\n
My friend Lance Williams once pointed out to me that there is an interesting way to look at this combination: “Edison invented the light bulb,” he said, “so that people would stay up all night listening to his phonograph.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is the 148th anniversary of the day that Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. To me it is a more intriguing invention than photography, because it is uses a two dimensional surface to record a one dimensional signal. Of course the phonograph is not the first technological innovation to use a two dimensional surface to … Continue reading “Happy birthday phonograph”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28226,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28225\/revisions\/28226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}