phonograph
Sign in to savethumb|A typical modern component turntable, showing the curved tonearm with a headshell at the end, under which lies the magnetic cartridge and its attached stylus touching down on the grooves of a black record placed on the turntable's platter
AI overview
A phonograph is a device that plays recorded sound by using a needle (stylus) to read grooves in a vinyl record as it spins on a turntable. It matters because it was a foundational technology for music and audio entertainment, allowing people to listen to recorded sound in their homes.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
30 sectionsContents
- Terminology
- United States
- Australia
- Early history
- Phonautograph
- Paleophone
- The early phonographs
- Early machines
- Introduction of the disc record
- Oldest surviving recordings
- Improvements at the Volta Laboratory
- Volta's early challenge
- Volta Graphophone
- Graphophone commercialization
- Disc vs. cylinder as a recording medium
- Dominance of the disc record
- First all-transistor phonograph
- Turntable designs
- Arm systems
- Cue lever
- Linear tracking
- Optical readout
- Stylus
- Equalization
- Contemporary use and models
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|A typical modern component turntable, showing the curved tonearm with a headshell at the end, under which lies the magnetic cartridge and its attached stylus touching down on the grooves of a black record placed on the turntable's platter
A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound.