Cataloguing campaign of historic sound reproduction machines
ICBSA of the Italian Ministry of Culture has launched a cataloguing campaign of historic sound reproduction machines
The Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage – ICBSA, in collaboration with the Central Institute for Catalog and Documentation – ICCD are partners of the Polifonia project for the Italian Ministry of Culture. ICBSA has recently launched a photographic campaign on sound reproduction. The aim of the initiative is to describe and classify about 1000 objects.
The items are mainly historical engines dating between the late 1800s to the 1940s such as gramophones, phonographs, turntables and tape recorders. This new initiative not only improves the archival records but it is also an exceptional opportunity to make this fascinating heritage widely accessible.
Image credits ICBSA
Image 1: Gramophone Gramophone & Typewriter, Style n ° 2 (Dog Model series), Great Britain 1900-1902 It is a prototype gramophone still operated manually by a crank
Image 2 & 3: Edison Spring Motor Concert phonograph, USA 1895-1913.
It is a spring-powered phonograph that uses large wax cylinders called “concert”. The following image is a detail of the gears of the powerful 3-spring motor.