| Date | Text | |
|---|---|---|
25 Apr 1854
Charles Sumner Tainter |
birth Charles Sumner Tainter Born 25 Apr 1854; died 20 Apr 1940 at age 85. American inventor of various sound-recording instruments, including the photophone (1880, with Alexander Graham Bell), an instrument for transmitting sound to a distance through the agency of light, using sensitive selenium cells. He also developed the Graphophone (1881, patented 1886; with Chichester A. Bell, a cousin of Alexander Graham Bell). This greatly improved on the tinfoil surface and rigid stylus then used by Thomas Edison. Tainter devising a wax-coated cardboard cylinder and a flexible recording stylus which incised the grooves (rather than embossing) to achieve better reproduction, making the phonograph and the dictagraph commercially possible. |
OnThisDay.net