Phonograph record

A flat disc that stores sound as grooves traced by a stylus and reproduced by a phonograph or record player. Its groove shape encodes a continuous audio signal.

Gramophone record groove: A spiral groove on a disc whose modulations encode recorded sound. Its lateral or vertical undulations carry the record’s audio signal.
Emile Berliner: A German-American inventor who developed the flat-disc gramophone system. His disc-based system became the foundation for commercial phonograph records.
Gramophone record collecting: The practice of acquiring and organizing recorded music on discs. Records invite physical collecting through editions, labels, artwork, and condition.
Compact disc: An optical digital disc format that stores audio as encoded data read by a laser. It replaced grooves with digital optical storage in mainstream recorded music.
Phonograph: A device that records or reproduces sound using a stylus and a grooved medium. Its stylus follows the record groove and converts motion into sound.
Gramophone: A sound-reproduction system developed by Emile Berliner that plays flat discs with a stylus. The record is the central medium in the gramophone system.
Album: A collection of recorded music issued as a unified work or release. The LP’s extended playing time helped establish the album as a cohesive format.
Audio cassette: A magnetic tape format housed in a compact cassette for recording and playback. Tape offers portable playback and recording without a grooved disc.
Cartridge (phonograph): A record-player component that converts stylus movement into an electrical signal. It translates groove motion into the signal sent to an amplifier.
Shellac record: An early mass-market disc record made primarily from shellac compound. Shellac discs preceded vinyl as the dominant commercial record format.

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