How Music was Influenced by the Use of Recording Technology: A Very Brief Introduction
Since the introduction of the phonograph, music and recording have interacted in countless ways, influencing each other. This was as true a century ago as it is today. Precursors Remember that even before the phonograph, it was possible to make a recording-you just couldn't play it back. For several decades in the late 19th century, the recording of sound was just a scientific curiosity. In fact, for many years it was not possible to reproduce sounds that were recorded. One early sound recording instrument, the Phonautograph, inscribed a record of sounds onto glass cylinder or plate coated with a layer of smoky "lampblack." It made sound waves visible to the eye, but the records could not be played. There were some recordings made of musical instruments, usually to show graphically what the waveform of the instrument could look like. In some small way, the need to capture a voice or an instrument may have shaped individual "performances" (if you can call the playing of a single note a performance), but that was all.
Bell's ear Phonautograph, using the ear and part of a skull taken from a human cadaver.
A stylus attached to the eardrum engraved a visible line on a flat glass plate coated with lampblack, providing what Bell believed to be a more accurate image of sound.