Gramophone

Gramophone is a magazine published monthly in London devoted to classical music, particularly to reviews of recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie. It was acquired by Haymarket in 1999.

Early attempts to design a consumer sound or music playing gadget began in 1877. That year, Thomas Edison invented his tin-foil phonograph, which played recorded sounds from round cylinders.

The Gramophone Player. Like other record players, gramophones read the sound with a small needle which fits into the groove in the record. That needle is attached to a diaphragm, which in turn is attached to a horn. ... These vibrations are transmitted to the diaphragm, which itself vibrates, creating sound.

The phonograph is a device, invented in 1877, for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms, it is also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910), or, since the 1940s, a record player.

The phonograph could record sound and play it back. The receiver consisted of a tin foil wrapped cylinder and a very thin membrane, called a diaphragm, attached to a needle. Sound waves were directed into the diaphragm, making it vibrate. The amplified vibrations played back the recorded sounds.

This was the first phonograph to carry the Edison trademark design. Prices for the phonographs had significantly diminished from its early days of $150 (in 1891) down to $20 for the Standard model and $7.50 for a model known as the Gem, introduced in 1899.

The stylus' job is to read all the information in the grooves, which were originally created using another needle as part of a transducer that converted the electrical energy of the sound waves into vibrations etched into the record grooves.

Few things changed our digital lives like CDs and DVDs, especially when it became affordable to make our own discs. They don't "wear out" in the same way a cassette tape or vinyl record used to wear out because there is no physical contact with the recording service, but they do deteriorate.

This means that your needle will have been dragged through over 300 miles of vinyl. Under normal conditions your diamond needle should last between 400 and 800 playing hours – 500 hours is probably the average.