graphophone

"The Graphophone was the name and trademark of an improved version of the phonograph. It was invented at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C., United States" (1). "[Also referred to as] phonograph and gramophone. [Graphophone] was for a time the standard term: all devices in the 1902 Sears Catalogue are called graphophones" (2).

"Alexander Graham Bell, his cousin Chichester Bell, and assistants including Charles S. Tainter in 1880 began investigating the nature of sound in a new laboratory in Washington, D.C. The next year, they developed what would become known as the Graphophone, an improved form of the phonograph [invented by Thomas Edison], and deposited a prototype with the Smithsonian Institution" (3). The phonograph was the latest sound recording before the graphophone was invented. The main difference between the two is that graphophones used wax while phonographs used tin oil as a medium for recording, which allowed for the mechanism to chisel into the wax instead of emboss tin (3). Patents for the graphophone were given to Alexander Graham Bell and his team in 1886 (3). They were originally marketed as office dictation machines but distributors soon found a more lucrative opportunity in their function as a record player and distrubuted them in 1890 (3). In 1895 Emile Berliner, a German immigrant in the U.S., created a commercial record player, he called a "gramophone," that used a zinc disk coated in wax instead of a cylinder (top image) (4). The name Graphophone was used by Columbia [Records] (for disc machines) into the 1920s or 1930s (bottom image) (1).
 * History of the Graphophone**

In //As I Lay Dying//, Cash Bundren, the oldest sibling of the Bundren family, hears music being played on what he assumes to be a graphophone, "The music was playing in the house. It was one of them graphophones. It was natural as a music-band" (Faulkner 235). The house is owned by the future Mrs. Bundren. At the end of //As I Lay Dying//, Anse Bundren, the father of the Bundren family walks up clean shaven and equipped with new teeth, with a woman holding a little graphophone. The Bundren children are told by Anse that the lady with him is Mrs. Bundren (Faulkner 261). Cash intended to buy a graphophone while in town from Suratt for five dollars. Cash says, "I don't know if a little music aint about the nicest thing a fellow can have. Seems like when he comes in tired of a night, it aint nothing could rest him like having a little music played and him resting" (Faulkner 259).
 * Graphophone in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County**

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphophone 2) Brown, Clavin S. //A Glossary of Faulkner's South.// London: New Haven and London Yale University Press, 1976. Print. 3) http://www.recording-history.org/HTML/phono_technology3.php 4) http://www.recording-history.org/HTML/phono_technology4.php Faulkner, William//. As I Lay Dying.// New York: Vintage, 1991. Print.