Recommended Readings

Additional Resources:

There are numerous other books available that contain chapters or sections related to the history of sound recording technology.

For the history of motion picture sound, try to find a copy of Belton and Weis, Film Sound, which has several sections on the early history of sound in the motion picture industry.

Another option is Douglas Gomery's The Coming of Sound. Now, this book is primarily about the economic impact of sound, and it has some serious problems in the editing department, but the information is there, and Gomery is indisputably the leading scholar of sound recording technology in the motion picture industry. Plus, this is one of the few books on this list that is both still in print and reasonably priced.

A really interesting but hard-to-find (and expensive) book on the early phonograph is Koenigsberg's Patent History of the Phonograph. It's is simply a compilation of text and images taken directly from U.S. patents, which are now availalble online for free (once upon a time, that material was difficult and expensive to find!). But the author has done the hard work of finding many relevant patents and putting them into context.

Also on the pricey side is Eric Daniel's book Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years. This is a compilation by various experts in the field of computer, video, and audio recording on magnetic media.

Hard-to-find but worth the effort is Magnetic Recording: The Ups and Downs of a Pioneer, by an inventor whose work at the Brush Development Company in Cleveland led to some of the earliest audio and data tape recorders.