Gramophone

A sound-reproducing machine that plays recorded discs by tracing their grooves with a stylus and amplifying the resulting vibrations mechanically.

Phonograph record: A disc or cylinder bearing grooves that encode sound as variations in their shape. Its spiral groove carries the recorded motion that the gramophone’s stylus traces.
Emile Berliner: A German-American inventor who developed the flat-disc gramophone system. Berliner introduced the disc-based machine and record format that gave the gramophone its name.
Sound: A mechanical disturbance that travels through a medium as pressure variations and can be heard by an auditory system. A gramophone ultimately creates sound by setting air into pressure-varying motion.
78 rpm record: A shellac disc record designed to rotate at approximately 78 revolutions per minute. These records became the dominant format played on acoustic gramophones.
Recorded music: Music captured in a durable medium for playback apart from its original performance. Gramophones helped make recorded performances a routine form of musical experience.
Stylus: A pointed component that follows a record groove and transmits its movements to a transducer or soundbox. The stylus converts groove contours into vibrations at the start of playback.
Phonograph: An early sound-reproducing machine that records and plays sound, initially using cylinders. The gramophone’s flat discs offered an alternative to the phonograph’s original cylinder format.
Acoustic recording: Sound recording made by directing sound waves mechanically onto a recording surface, without electronic microphones. The earliest gramophone records were cut through a wholly mechanical recording chain.
Gramophone record collecting: The collecting and study of commercially issued sound recordings, including early disc records. Gramophones made recorded performances into durable, collectible objects.
Mass media: Communication technologies that distribute content to large audiences. Disc production allowed performances to reach listeners far beyond concert venues.

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