This guy is the father of all music piracy
Because God quickly realized that humans were a thieving bunch, He made rules against stealing one of the first things downloaded to Moses’ tablet 1,500 years ago: “Thou shalt not steal.” It’s ranked at number four on the list of things we’re not supposed to do, so it’s pretty clear that this was important to The Almighty: Don’t take stuff that’s not yours.
Lionel Mapleson didn’t think he was stealing. When he did what he did, it wasn’t stealing. Only later did history brand Mapleson as the father of all music piracy.
Mapleson came from a long line of music librarians who can be traced to the 1700s. Before moving from London to New York in 1889, where he hoped to become a great concert musician, his father trained him in the finer points of the occupation. Good thing, too, because six years in, it was clear Mapleson wasn’t cut out to be a top-level performer. His fallback position was a gig as the librarian at the newly formed Metropolitan Opera.
In early 1900, he bought a newfangled Edison Talking Machine — a phonograph — so he could listen to the newest thing: Recordings of performances scratched into wax cylinders. A friend then recommended that he purchase a Bettini Micro-Reproducer, a phonograph-style machine that could also record audio onto four-to-six-inch-long cylinders as well as play them back. It was about the size of a suitcase, so it was reasonably portable.
“You want a perfect reproduction without any metallic resonance, screeches, or blasts?” said the ads. “Then buy the Bettini Micro-Reproducer for the clearest and loudest made! A novice can make a perfect record!”