They consisted of a thin coating of a phenolic resin virtually identical to Bakelite on a core of compressed wood flour, later also china clay, lampblack for color, all in a rabbit-hide glue binder. The vertical format demanded a perfectly flat surface for best results, so Edison made his Diamond Discs almost one-quarter of an inch (6 mm) thick. At that time, with the notable exception of Pathé Records, which used yet another incompatible format, a disc's groove was normally of constant depth and modulated laterally, side-to-side. Like cylinder records, the sound in a Diamond Disc's groove was recorded by the vertical method, as variations in the depth of the groove cut. In 1912, Thomas Edison, who had previously made only cylinders, entered the disc market with his Diamond Disc Phonograph system, which was incompatible with other makers' disc records and players. Their quality was soon greatly improved, and by about 1910 the cylinder was clearly losing this early format war.
At the same time, the Berliner Gramophone Company was marketing the first crude disc records, which were simpler and cheaper to manufacture, less bulky to store, much less fragile, and could play louder than contemporary wax cylinders, although they were of markedly inferior sound quality. By the late 1890s, relatively inexpensive spring-motor-driven phonographs were available and becoming a fixture in middle-class homes. Soon, some affluent individuals who could afford expensive toys were customers, too. At first, costly wet-cell-powered, electric-motor-driven machines were needed to play them, and the customer base consisted solely of entrepreneurs with money-making nickel-in-the-slot phonographs in arcades, taverns, and other public places. The record industry began in 1889 with some very-small-scale production of professionally recorded wax cylinder records. In the late summer and early fall of 1929 Edison also briefly produced a high-quality series of thin electrically recorded lateral-cut "Needle Type" disc records for use on standard record players. The diaphragm of a reproducer used for playing lateral records is at a right angle to the surface. An Edison Disc Phonograph is distinguished by the diaphragm of the reproducer being parallel to the surface of the record.
Victor and most other makers recorded and played sound by a lateral or side-to-side motion of the stylus in the record groove, while in the Edison system the motion was vertical or up-and-down, known as vertical recording, as used for cylinder records.
Early Diamond Disc records, showing the thickness of each record and number stamped into side.Įdison had previously made only phonograph cylinders but decided to add a disc format to the product line because of the increasingly dominant market share of the shellac disc records (later called 78s because of their typical rotational speed in revolutions per minute) made by competitors such as the Victor Talking Machine Company.
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