Watch this microscopic movie of a stylus tracking the grooves of a vinyl record
The technology underlying vinyl dates all the way back to the summer of 1877 when Thomas Edison demonstrated his new talking machine–an invention he called a “phonograph”–in the offices of Scientific American.
The word phonograph means “sound writing” in Greek (φωνή +γραφή). Sound is “written” as bumps, dips and undulations within the grooves of the rotating disc. When a stylus is dragged through those grooves, it read those bumps and turns them back into sound.
This is what it’s doing when you listen to a record. (Via TheVinylFactory.com)
