Mondo Knows Facts
Berliner's gramophone played flat shellac discs
His lateral cut read a groove that wandered sideways instead of up and down Emile Berliner patented a gramophone in 1887 that traced a groove cut sideways rather than vertically. Early discs were etched in zinc with acid, then pressed in shellac, a brittle blend of resin and filler. A ten-inch disc spun at 78 revolutions a minute held only about three minutes a side. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: recording, berliner, shellac
Berliner's gramophone played flat shellac discs: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- His lateral cut read a groove that wandered sideways instead of up and down. The figure is taken from Library of Congress, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.