Development of the Phonograph at Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory
Leslie J. Newville
gly a record of the voice vibrations was obtained."] Tainter's story, in his autobiography, of the establishment of the laboratory, shows its comparative simplicity: I therefore wound up my business affairs in Cambridge, packed up all of my tools and machines, and... went to Washington, and after much search, rented a vacant house on L Street, between 13th and 14th Streets, and fitted it up for our purpose.[5]... The Smithsonian Institution sent us over a mail sack of scientific books from the library of the Institution, to consult, and primed with all we could learn... we went to work.[6]... We were like the explorers in an entirely unknown land, where one has to select the path that seems to be most likely to get you to your destination, with no knowledge of what is ahead. In conducting our work we had first to design an experimental apparatus, then hunt about, often in Philadelphia and New York, for the materials with which to construct it, which were usually hard to find, and finally build the models we needed, ourselves.[7] [Illustration: Figure 3.--PAGE FROM NOTEBOOK of Charles Sumner Tainter, describing an experiment in sound recording. The Tainter notebooks, preserved in the U. S. National Museum, describe experiments at the Volta Laboratory, in the 1880's. The Graphophone patents of 1886, were the result of this research. (_Smithsonian photo 44312_.)] Th
