Classic-Banjo

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Cylinder Records

A technical question...how were the wax cylinder records mass produced?....Steve.

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Permalink Reply by Claude L. Medearis on February 1, 2011 at 13:54

I found this: Brown Wax Cylinders

Apparently they were originally recorded one at a time, and then a pantograph system was developed that allowed about 100 cylinders to be copied mechanically before the original master was worn out.

This one has more details on the recording process.

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Permalink Reply by Eric STEFANELLI on February 7, 2011 at 10:12

Hi !

Most of early Edison " brown wax" cylinders where produced in mass with the pentograph system, but the following "black wax" was produced by gold molding, they use a inner mold covered by gold inside, gold is inalterable metal, they can use it for thousands and thousands cylinders, and "blue amberol 4 minutes" was produced by simple molding, blue Amberol was made of nitro-cellulose, or celluloid, steinned in blue, some are deep pink colored...Production of blue amberol stopped around 1928/1929, & production of black wax 2 and 4 minutes was stopped around 1911/1912 in Edison company.