A BETTER LIFE - The Collectors
Interview of Collectors
A BETTER LIFE - The Collectors
Edison's Diamond Discs: The Acoustic Marvel With Brett Hurt and Jack Stanley
What happens when the most brilliant mind in sound recording technology insists on controlling every aspect of his creation—including what music deserves to be recorded? The fascinating story of Edison's Diamond Discs reveals both technical genius and commercial tragedy. A conversation with Brett Hurt and Jack Stanley.
Developed around 1908-1909, the Diamond Disc represented a complete reimagining of the phonograph record. Using vertical-cut technology rather than the lateral grooves of standard records, these discs were played with a permanent diamond stylus rather than replaceable steel needles. The result was remarkable durability—records that could be played hundreds or thousands of times without degradation—and sound quality that collectors describe as "frighteningly good" compared to contemporaries.
The technical brilliance behind these discs came from Edison's team, particularly chemist Jonas Ellsworth who created the "condensite" material that gave the records their unique properties. The machines themselves were marvels of over-engineering, with practically bulletproof motors and increasingly sophisticated horn designs that produced astonishing acoustic results from an entirely mechanical system.
Yet for all this innovation, Edison's personal involvement proved disastrous. Despite suffering from hearing loss, Edison insisted on personally approving every recording, rejecting anything that didn't suit his peculiar musical tastes. He despised jazz, popular dance music, and even classical composers like Mozart. While competitors embraced the sounds people actually wanted to hear, Edison stood firm as his phonograph division hemorrhaged money through the 1920s, eventually losing over a million dollars annually.
The Diamond Disc story teaches us that technical excellence alone doesn't ensure success. Edison controlled every aspect of his creation—refusing to license technology to others, rejecting popular music, and insisting on expensive manufacturing processes—while more nimble competitors focused on giving consumers what they wanted. It's a cautionary tale about genius, control, and the danger of believing that if you build something superior, the world will inevitably embrace it.
For collectors, these magnificent machines represent a fascinating alternate history of recorded sound—what might have been if the technical path Edison pioneered had prevailed. Take a journey into this forgotten world of acoustic marvels, stubborn genius, and the strange, wonderful sound of records built to outlast their creator.
First words I spoke in the original phonograph. A little piece of practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. Its feet were quite as slow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome back to A Better Life the Collectors. And I know it's been a little while since I've done one of these and basically the reason is that is because I had a couple of surgeries and I've been sick and all kinds of stuff. So I apologize for my shortcomings, but we are very lucky today to have Jack, stanley and Brett with us today. This dyslexic genius from his myriad thousands of podcasts I remember when he was on last time he said, oh, we just did our 2000s. I went on the other day and it was like 2,500 or something already. The man's a rocket ship and anytime I need to do something, I'm like gee, I wonder if I could glue that or fix that, or I wonder what that means. You can go on and just search his videos and he's done extensive videos about whatever thing you're thinking about doing, and we appreciate that.
Speaker 2:And jack, of course, is well known in every corner of not only the collecting but the historical parts of this amazing hobby that us and sometimes, I think, only another handful of old men are also doing. So I appreciate you all here today, and today the topic is one very close to my heart, matter of fact, when I started collecting. Today, the topic is one very close to my heart. Matter of fact, when I started collecting, I thought that's all I was going to collect was edison diamond discs. Yeah, that's not what happened, but edison is one of my favorites and the diamond discs, I think, are just an amazing part of history and speak volumes about the way Edison thought in my mind.
Speaker 3:Gentlemen, Nice to join you Always a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Where would you like to start talking about Edison and his infamous diamond discs, infamous.
Speaker 3:Okay, brett, do you want to go, or do you want me to go, or what?
Speaker 5:You're the history guy.
Speaker 3:The Diamond Disc is one of the most incredible things ever developed in the field of sound recording, if you think about it, especially when you think it all started like around 1908, 1909. They started their research on this and Edison was fortunate to have some of the most remarkable chemists and researchers and idea guys to create this phenomenal product. And his chemist was named Jonas Ellsworth, and Jonas Ellsworth was a genius. He developed the wax formulas, he developed these phenol plastics which would be called condensite. And the interesting thing is condensite was developed just about the same time as another plastic called Bakelite, and Bakelite was developed in the next town over. And neither one knew about the other. But they soon did because they started suing the hell out of each other because they were dropping on each other's patents.
Speaker 3:But the Diamond Disc record, to put it simply, was an acoustic marvel designed by Edison and in many respects damaged by Edison. He was choosing all the music, which was somewhat problematic. The interesting thing is that the sound quality, the wearability, the records could be played and played and played and played, whereas with a lateral 78 and you're using a steel needle which is basically a polished nail, would eventually wear it out, but these records would keep playing and keep working and a magnificent product and there's so many different things to talk about, but that's just like a precursor.
Speaker 5:Brett, please. I know that they had surface noise in the first run of diamond discs. You get a lot of surface noise in World War II, World War I they had surface noise. Then when they got to the paper labels and stuff, it got a lot better. I really like the Red Star records because Edison didn't like the music and there's a lot of good music on the Red Stars.
Speaker 2:It's funny, I always. It's ironic, right Edison, his company company. He chooses the music. His taste in music wasn't very good. It wasn't popular. At best let's say that I won't say it wasn't very good, it wasn't popular and plus he was deaf yeah, I had some hearing loss.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:The interesting thing is I, as I mentioned too in our conversation about Thomas Edison and the secret Thomas Edison he wrote a note to his doctor and said to be a little deaf and to be the only one that knows exactly how deaf you are has its advantages and of course Edison couldn't hear that well, but he heard a lot better than he admitted and, case in point, I brought these along, these are copies of his notes and he would listen to the record I repeat, he would listen to the record and then he would write down his comments about the song and this would go to each and every individual in the recording department in the office and then they would read through it and he would reject or say how good it was or how bad it was or how lousy it was or how it hurt his ear because it was too loud.
Speaker 3:Things like that. And that was one of the fascinating parts of the Diamond Disc is the fact that Edison devoted himself, rather than with the cylinders Cylinders Edison was just observing. In the case of the Diamond Disc, edison was basically starting a kind of a retirement. He wasn't doing things as busily as he had and he focused all his energy pretty much on the Diamond Disc for a while.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's ingenious on the motors that it tracks, the horn tracks with the record and you record and how all that works. The Nygus motors, they're absolutely bulletproof. The only thing that breaks on them is the winding crank spring, the little cog system that locks it like the ratchet on that machine. That spring breaks. That's the only thing that will ever break on them.
Speaker 3:Wow, and you take.
Speaker 2:oh sorry all the ones I have. Just on that note, I don't think I've ever had service, except for the one directly in back of me. I have a we said it's a b80, which is early in the evolution, and I saw it at an auction upstate new york and there were only a couple other. There was also an original sonora tabletop that I had never seen before and I ended up with both of them and it has the. It really plays amazingly. The reproducer was fine. It really either was replaced or maybe I replaced it. It's possible because I go through the reproducers. What's amazing about it is that the turntable and the grill cloth are both the original Mohair and I have never seen that before. But when I saw it was Mohair I said it's got to be original. Nobody put Mohair on there, so it's really nice. And then I have an A100100, which I bought from the original family that owned it, and I think an lu 15 or 75 or something like that, london, and my favorite of all is a that I have, but there's.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping you guys are going to tell me what other ones I really want. And that is my chalet, in that gum wood that it was made in. It weighs a thousand. I almost didn't take it. I bought it and somebody went to their house to pick it up. I said there's no way I'm going to carry this down the stairs, there's just no way. It weighs a ton. And the gentleman who lived there said I'm not giving you your money back, so I better figure it out. So him and his wife picked it up and carried it down the stairs and put it in my car. But I just I love Diamond Disc. I wish the music was better, but I just think the mechanisms run amazingly and it's hard to believe in the engineering. You could become obsessed with Edison, just the way he builds things.
Speaker 3:Over-engineered.
Speaker 2:It really is amazing. Over-engineered. Oh yeah, Totally over-engineered.
Speaker 5:You get like a 250 horn, like an A250 or or the c19, the big edison, the top line one. The sound out of those are just tremendous. Even with a standard reproducer, it just it'll blow you out of the living room yeah, that's.
Speaker 2:I think that's the one jack's been telling me that I need I think that's what he just got an a250, is that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I got it also from the original family. It's an amazing thing. They used it until 1919 and then they put it away and it wasn't touched for a hundred and what, 105, 106 years. And so the thing is still like shiny and it's really bizarre looking, because you usually find the old phonographs and the outside has totally changed from what the inside's like. In this case, the outside is like the inside, it's freakish, and it came with all the early recordings, which was really interesting, and some of them the earliest of the discs didn't work too well in lamination.
Speaker 3:Dampness is the worst thing for a diamond disc and over the course of 105 years, many of these records. If you look here, you'll just see the. I don't know if you can see the. It just totally separates and cracks Right and you can't play them. Half the records were like that. But the A250 is a phenomenal machine and I've been learning an awful lot from Brett about all the workings of it and he's been telling me about this, that and how the springs are from the cylinder machines and it's really quite amazing and it's been a learning experience. So that's why Brett is a national treasure in that regard. Just to give us help, oh, Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Because you both. Why I do these podcasts? Because unfortunately, this is like an oral tradition collecting One person tells another. And if we don't and that's probably why Brett does his videos too Unless we deposit this down, you're not going to have new collectors, because no one's going to be able to remember. They may collect, but there's going to be a mystery to it all, and there already is a mystery to it all. We all have all the books that have been out of print forever. You could buy books at auction because they haven't been made in so long. So we all buy everything, every manual I could find. I am inept at fixing anything, but I guess I still try.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I consider myself Primitive Pete. When it comes to fixing anything, I'm terrible.
Speaker 5:I always like it from you, jack, primitive Pete. No, the A250, the first version almost this light maroon paint on it pinstriped the motor. The spring barrels on the motor come out of an A100. No an A1. So it has bigger springs. It only has two springs in it. It's built like an absolute tank. That motor is fabulous. Nothing breaks on those. It's totally over-engineered. Until they went to the next motor down the road. The horns are faux painted on the inside to match the finish on the outside. They come apart like a signet horn. They're really really well made. I bought mine 100 years ago for $500 and 500 diamond discs.
Speaker 2:Wow 500.
Speaker 3:Oh my god.
Speaker 5:Oh man. And I picked up the part of the box to carry the diamond discs. I'm a young collector. I'm like, damn these things are.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I bought. I don't have it any longer. But I bought the Chippendale. I don't remember the number of that one. A woman said she had it and she only wanted $150, $200 for it. She hadn't looked at it in years.
Speaker 2:It was shrink-wrapped in her basement. I think I've told this story to you both. I went in. I couldn't move the thing. It was so heavy. It was shrink-wrapped, so I had no idea anything about it. Turned out there were 100 diamond discs in the cabinet. If you can imagine, it made the machine pretty heavy.
Speaker 2:Thank God there was a couple guys doing gardening there and I said guys, let me give you 50 bucks, put it in my car. And I could barely get it out. Thank God it had wheels, but the mechanism didn't work at all. There were like mice I had to clean, like mice drop, oh yeah. And so I cleaned all that stuff out. And then I had a little problem. And so I cleaned all that stuff out. And then I had a little problem and I went to one of Brett's videos, because it was just a.
Speaker 2:He said he goes loosen this screw, push this up, tighten the screw again. It'll be fine, this video, and I'm like, yeah, okay. So then I do it and it works perfectly. So now I have, but unfortunately the outside really needed to be totally taken apart and redone and I didn't have that ability. I actually took it to somebody and he finally gave up with trying to do it. So I actually a collector that couldn't afford to go out and buy his own I actually gave it to them and say, listen, I'm not, I'm going to look for another one, I'm not bringing this to my collection. You might as well take it and enjoy it and start your journey with this.
Speaker 3:It's an interesting thing that I found going through the notes at the Edison site is that as time went on, they tried to keep them.
Speaker 2:I want to stop you for one second Now, brett. Isn't that amazing to hear him say that while I was at the Edison site, I took Edison's notes and I read this about what was going on. What's more amazing than that?
Speaker 3:Well, to tell you the truth, that was a phenomenal honor for me to go through. I went through hundreds of his notebooks and I did it all in room 12 in the laboratory, and that was Edison's room. So where the notes were written was where I was studying them, and so it was like being in the same space where it was all taking place, and then, a hundred some odd years later, being in the same space and reading it and studying it and getting the information that was being put down. But going through not to lose thought of what I wanted to say here, going through the notes they did as time went on, to save money, they cheapened the cabinets.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, and they lessened the veneer, they made it thinner. So a lot of times with the really late cabinets you just look at them the wrong way and the veneer comes off. You'll see that, like with the Amarola 30s and stuff like that, the really late ones, they just they're always missing veneer and stuff. But the earlier the machine they usually were a lot hardier and they were dealing with a lot of really great furniture companies at that point that were really making the A250. They were being made in Wisconsin and shipped to Edison. But if you do look for one of the big ones, I would recommend getting an earlier one than a later.
Speaker 5:Get an earlier one.
Speaker 2:Of which model are we talking about now?
Speaker 3:Look at like a C250, if we're something like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you can find those in gorgeous oak inexpensive under $5.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know a lot of the diamond. People don't collect them because they're big and heavy. Same thing with Victor. Unless you have something specific or particular, that's rare. A lot of people don't collect them because they're big and that's what makes them cheap.
Speaker 3:That's the way it used to be years ago, when I first started collecting, back 100 years ago. I would go to the Salvation Army and walk in there and they'd have a bunch of Victrolas and they would be $45. $45? And nobody really wanted them. And then all of a sudden, when everything changed and the Japanese really got into early phonographs and Edison stuff, the prices started going up like crazy. That's one of the main reasons why the prices went up so high. And then when the Japanese economy changed and they got tired of early fun, the prices started coming down again. It's an interesting thing. Can we play one?
Speaker 5:Huh, you want me to play a diamond disc? Sure, okay, let me run upstairs. It's going to be bumpy. Let's see what I can do for you guys. Oh no, it's fun. And then in the late. They built the Sherbert and the Beethoven. I think it is. I got it honey.
Speaker 3:The Edisonics yeah, there.
Speaker 5:The Edisonics is the best there.
Speaker 3:While you're walking. One of the things that was also a treasure for me was to talk to Theodore Edison, and he was involved in the development of the Edisonic machines and he was amazing. And speaking of amazing, look at all these machines.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, Look at that, let's see what we got. And he took it apart and reassembled it, so it's like it came from the factory this is santa's workshop for us that's all I said. The whole time he gave the tour is like oh my god, oh my god, look at that yeah oh, I'd love to have one of those.
Speaker 2:I'm like he had one side of the wall where all three, all the machines I was looking for were just on one wall. You may have to re-turn that a little bit towards the machine, a little bit more, brett.
Speaker 5:Okay, just a minute. Can you see that?
Speaker 2:I see the top. Can you bend it down some or no? Just a minute.
Speaker 5:Is that better?
Speaker 2:No, it's worse.
Speaker 5:I'll probably have to hold it. How's that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just turn a little bit to the left. That's your right. Oh, that's my right. Turn it to your right. There you go. Should we just say forget it? Check. Yeah, it's good. How's that? Now it's pointing up towards the sky, okay.
Speaker 5:Let me get it, and then I'll focus in on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't have to worry, because I'll cut out all the menagerie. And which one is that? That's the A250?. Yeah, so is the A or B or C.
Speaker 5:Give me today. It's $52,391. It's electrically recorded Electrically.
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 2:Which we all know is adverse to what we usually feel about things. Everything wants to be acoustically recorded, but with diamond discs you get both sides of the coin. First of all, that's an amazing disc. How's the? Finish on that, Jack.
Speaker 5:It's beautiful. Yeah, and that's why you have an Edison Diamond Disc.
Speaker 2:What reproducer is in there?
Speaker 5:So Edison built that's the standard reproducer.
Speaker 2:Sounds amazing.
Speaker 5:And then we are discussing the Edisonic, which has the bigger weight, and then regular Edison has. This is the regular Edison one, and then this is the Edisonic. It has a much bigger weight and the sound out of those Listen for a minute.
Speaker 2:I've gone through my discs and cataloged them, but I haven't really listened to them all.
Speaker 3:It's hard to sometimes. Sometimes you have so many and different types, it's hard to sometimes.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you have so many and different types, but a lot of the later ones I really need to spend some time with because the music is more palatable.
Speaker 3:The earlier stuff has a great deal of influence for medicine. A lot of waltzes, a lot of sentimental songs and things like that.
Speaker 2:And obviously he was very somewhat political.
Speaker 5:And that sounds really good. It does it sounds amazing. Edison was doing the dance craze. It does. It sounds amazing. Edison was doing the dance craze. What you need is the dance reproducer, which is different. It's bolted together here. It has a bigger weight on it because the originals aren't bolted together right here. So let's take the same record and demo it on the Beethoven. So let's take the same record and demo it on the Beethoven, so that's what happened?
Speaker 2:my chalet came with a dance reproducer and, frankly, I gave some to somebody to fix it. I don't know what happened to it. Maybe the diamond was bad. I can't remember what happened to it, but I have to look. Maybe I actually have it back there.
Speaker 5:That's the, so I'll play the same song again.
Speaker 2:We're getting test of all the reproducers here okay yeah, I think the diamond was bad and I don't know, I think it may have ended up as parts for somebody else. I'm going to have to liberate one from somebody.
Speaker 3:You have to get another reproducer myself. It's easier to experiment and play. But if you have a couple of them, you can sit there Because I keep taking the same one apart.
Speaker 2:I have an extra one now because I saw one in the original packaging and so I bought it. They told me it was pristine, never used. Of course it was shot, somebody switched it out somewhere, but why? Sorry to hear that Happens.
Speaker 3:I believe that the Beethoven, like that one there, has the longest horn of any diamond disc.
Speaker 5:Yeah, they're way a ton. Yeah, that's a totally different sound. The horn's way bigger.
Speaker 4:It almost sounds like a credenza which they're trying to copy. Doing that? That's cool, I'm ready to sing.
Speaker 3:Bye-bye, Miss Bonnie.
Speaker 2:That's cool, very nice.
Speaker 5:Thank you. Oh no, they built them in different horn sizes. We didn't discuss that. They built the 100, 150, 200, and 250 horn and then they built the Edisonic horn.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Edisonic really has the long, the long piece going to the horn, which I really think Theodore was involved in that quite a bit. And because he told me something when I asked him about the machines, he said bass. Everybody wants to have bass. He said it's unnatural. But what he would do he had a double doctorate in mathematics and what he did when he would listen to music he would pinpoint, looking at a horn, and put holes in the horn for areas to enhance the sound. Wow, and I never quite understood that when he was explaining that to me.
Speaker 3:Years later, at the Edison site I was up on the third floor where a lot of stuff was just stored and I found some of his Cine Music horns. He had developed something called the Cine Music system and I found the horns and, lo and behold, in the horns were various holes and I said aha, Theodore was here and he really was very instrumental in developing a lot of that later stuff for the Edison company electrically. They were even playing electric recordings through klaxon horns and stuff like that Driving Edison crazy actually.
Speaker 5:People don't realize that the phonograph as we know it, that includes everything you know, victor, and stuff. They don't realize that this came out of these guys' heads and they had a slide rule and there's no computers used to create all this stuff, even the Edison recordings. Like you said, this chemist was a genius to come up with this stuff, edison's guy.
Speaker 2:People don't realize that A lot of trial and error, a lot of learning and understanding in their own minds, a lot of trial and error.
Speaker 5:It's fascinating to me. These guys were sitting down there. I wonder if this works. You know their musical ear. They didn't have synthesizers and all this stuff. This is just totally raw music when you listen to it.
Speaker 3:Indeed.
Speaker 2:My image I always think when we're talking about phonographs in general, is that some guy works for a living, works hard, gets his paycheck, and he just goes past the store one day and he sees the phonograph in the window and he goes inside and hears recorded sound for the first time in his life and is mesmerized and puts down whatever it is you know $10, $15, whatever it's an exorbitant amount of money even those days and comes home and you just imagine the entire family sitting and listening to one recording for hours on end and being mesmerized by it.
Speaker 3:It was magical. It was absolutely magical. Yeah, quick story here for you.
Speaker 3:In the interviews I did with some of the people that made cylinders, I talked to some of those folks who were old enough to remember getting the early machines, and Walter Cronkite told me a quick story. He said his grandparents had Edison machines and his parents had Victor machines. He said they were a little bit more modern, he said, but it didn't matter where I was, but I had to wind them and that was his job. He had to wind all the machines all the time and he got all excited when I brought the Edison machine to record him. He said let's have some Edison entertainment.
Speaker 3:And I put on by the Light of the Silvery Moon and he jumped up and started dancing and then he led everyone to a sing-along. We sang along with the cylinder, which I imagine years ago people probably sat in their living rooms and sang along with the records, and so it was really an amazing thing that I was able to have someone who was born now 110 years ago, who had remembered that as a kid and then in his 80s, sat there and was experiencing it all over again and sharing it with us and was experiencing it all over again and sharing it with us.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like the magic of this. When you were saying he had him wind, his job was to wind the machines. It reminds me of when we were kids that your dad would say put on channel four. You were the remote control. There weren't a lot of channels, but he wasn't getting off the chair. He worked all day to change it. That was your job.
Speaker 3:You got to tune it and do the antenna.
Speaker 2:We had an antenna on a roof because we lived in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 5:Our neighbor lady. She moved to see a couple of kids. We had a power failure a couple of days ago because Warren's Electric in South Carolina was doing something. But she was talking to us on the front porch. We're sitting out there having a nice glass of wine. The lights went out. I said okay. I said we can go outside. I got candles, we can play some music. They come in. She looks at all the photographs and goes holy crap. So we got everything adjusted in the living room I fired up the Vic-4 and I played a song. I said, okay, I'll play my trying to E. I'll play Cylinder on there.
Speaker 5:This is a 35-year-old mommy with a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old and she looks at Edison Cylinder and this got me. She goes holy shit, what is this? And she looks at Edison cylinder and this got me. She goes Holy shit, what is this? It's a really early record. The first records were these. They weren't flat and I played it and couldn't believe it. And then I had the seven year old kid. I said you want to crank up the triumph?
Speaker 5:Oh God, this is so heavy, but it was fascinating to me. I had no conception of how all this works.
Speaker 3:It's so far removed.
Speaker 5:Yeah, the cell phone. Our life's in the cell phone, it's like that. But I think it's really funny. I do have a tinfoil. When I give tours in the house I show him the parlor tinfoil, the Edison thing, and I go. When he invented this in 1877, november, december, whenever I said, and when he went to do the patent thing, et landed on the planet Earth, I said first time they had been able to record and then listen to something. And they look wow. And then they get really funny. I said, yeah, you have to scream bloody hell into this thing. And then it comes back Hi, how you doing it's really fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never used mine. I know that and I could tell by what came along in the crate that it was in that Charlie Hummel, who owned it, used to take it and carry it for demonstrations. But I've never tried. I don't have a horn for it, but I'm sure I could make something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you could take any kind of little funnel and do that and then just scream your full head off.
Speaker 2:In the box. There's extra mica, there's extra a lot of things in the crate, and I just basically left it as half of a memory of a man that went everywhere to do these things and haven't really messed with it.
Speaker 3:Charlie was a dear friend of mine. He was a mentor to me. He used to sit and chit-chat with Theodore and we used to trade Theodore stories, which was fun, and it's amazing you think about it now. Here we are in the year 2025. We're almost to the point where the last diamond discs were made nearly 100 years ago. It's really amazing to think when many of us started in this hobby like the last diamond discs were like 40 years old.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I've only been been collecting. I'm coming up on two years in august. I can be a little obsessive of course you're new.
Speaker 3:You're a kid in a candy shop and I could.
Speaker 2:I tend to giving my nature as a attorney, administrative, administrative law judge, arbitrator, whatever you want to call it. I tend to see, learn, obsess, synthesize and then, after I know, everything which is impossible in this hobby. That's probably why I like it is to explore and I meet I hate to say it because I'm really a new collector but I meet people that maybe don't have all the avenues that I have. Between people I've made great relationships. When I bought my first Edison standard and it worked for a little while until it didn't, I couldn't find anybody to. I didn't know anybody to take it and have it fixed. I contacted someone up by where Wyatt lives, like Rochester or whatever, and I was going to drive it up there and leave it with them and let them fix it and then come back and get it. Only I didn't want to have it shipped, I didn't want to everything I didn't really know.
Speaker 2:I bought it at a auction in New Jersey that I drove to picked it up and I was, I remember that drove to picked it up and I was, I remember that day completely picking it up. It came with 10 cylinders and a reproduction horn and getting it home like I was in picking it up and I'm like cranking it up, shoving the horn on, want to put a cylinder on a list. I was so excited and the guy in the warehouse is like what are you doing? I said I just got to do that. Can you do that outside please? Okay.
Speaker 5:Another thing about diamond discs photographs is you can play a 78 record on them. Yes.
Speaker 3:You can play a 78 record on it once. That's what makes these SIGs.
Speaker 5:so great is this aftermarket thing right here. You don't have to change the speed from 78, from 80 to 78 RPM, you just throw one in.
Speaker 2:No, but you do have to adjust it a little that the arm is in the middle of the throw, or else you have a little problem at the end.
Speaker 5:I did not have a .278 on a diamond disc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny. I'm not sure I ever knew that, but I bought a I don't know if it was a Victor or Sonora at auction and it came with an adapter in it. So obviously when someone was cleaning somebody's house, they grabbed it, threw it in, thought it came with an adapter in it. So obviously when someone was cleaning somebody's house, they grabbed it, threw it in, thought it went with it, which when I saw I realized it goes on the diamond desk and couldn't wait to try it. And it works fine. The reproducer needs to be rebuilt, but on the list of things to do.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit lower than most.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and they have a volume control in them. They have that little plunger thing. I take mine out. But, Ron Delfilson, they take that out of there. It helps the sound. You can play a 78 on. That's what makes them so nice. You can have one photograph. You can play everything.
Speaker 3:And well. Sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:That sounds like a very valuable record to me. I'm kidding, I'm not kidding. It's like old school blues. Yeah, those are hard to come by. I don't have much.
Speaker 3:I don't have many. Interesting thing about a lot of those early ones was the fact that they were played through the depression with one needle. Uh-huh. And they're usually beat to hell.
Speaker 2:Now you know the reason why right.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I have and I spoke, spoke jack and I spoke about this prior and he could tell the details of it. I have an ad that I bought and had a frame that's in the other room where all where the majority of my phonographs are, and it talks about Edison going to the New York State Teachers Association and all the room full of 6,000 or 7,000 teachers and he has an Edison diamond disc on the stage where he has it behind a curtain. He's going to play the original and play the diamond disc so they can hear how full of it is. And Jack told me the story I let him tell. The story is it's and that is that the edison taught the performers to to perform like the diamond discs, not the diamond disc, to perform like the performers, so it would sound more alike. And that just sounds so much like edison and his thought process it's showmanship it's.
Speaker 3:There's no way an acoustic phonograph is going to be able to capture the full sound of a human voice, especially if they're singing full voice. So they taught them to mimic the phonograph more, and that really worked very well. Several people went to those tone tests, which is a whole chapter in itself. With the diamond disc they weren't using standard discs. They made special discs at the laboratory that were lacquered very heavily so they were absolutely silent and they could be played two or three times and then they were tossed in the garbage and as soon as the tone test was over they'd pull out the standard discs and sell them.
Speaker 3:And a lot of these tone tests were taking place in the 1918, 1919 period, when those poor records were noisier than hell. Oh yeah. And so the people like were shocked. In the case of the phonograph I purchased, they couldn't stand the records anymore, they were too noisy, and so they bought a Victor machine and put this in the back room. A lot of people stopped buying the diamond disc record during World War I because the chemicals couldn't be brought in from Germany. Germany is where all the chemicals came from, and they tried making their own synthetic copies of it and it just couldn't compare and it was on the spur of the moment and Jonas Ellsworth wasn't around to do a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 2:He was gone at this point.
Speaker 3:Those chemicals, those chemicals. With that in mind, I want to mention one other thing that's very important with the chemicals and there was a lot of nasty chemicals in the diamond disks Phenol plastics can be very explosive and they had several explosions while they were doing work on these things. I was going through some of the papers of some of the people that worked there and they said we had a blow up the other day, stuff like that, but with rejected records. What they would do? They would take them to the furnace room and burn them no-transcript. And it got so bad that people's dogs were dying if they were left outside. And they actually had a program at the Edison Company. You could bring your dead dog and they would pay you for the damage to your dog and that was from the disks. That's a very dangerous thing that they were doing.
Speaker 3:There's two different Edisons. There's Edison the inventor and Edison the industrialist. Everybody adores Edison the inventor. He is mythological, he's an amazing character. The industrialist is a very different character and in West Orange in I forget, when it was like around 1920, they were building a high school and they asked to name the high school for someone. Thomas Edison got one vote, that's it. So it's just an interesting thing to see that the two different Edisons, they never really merged. They were separate and nothing could harm the inventor. But the industrialist was fair game.
Speaker 5:And was he using the 125-foot cement horn for recording?
Speaker 3:It was brass. It was a brass horn. Yeah, they tried. I have to go back a little bit. I was going through where he was doing some research on that. He was going in mathematics books and trying to figure out the way he put it to untangle sound. Because he felt that in a recording horn if a trumpet played, if a clarinet played and, let's say, a bassoon played, the sound waves from each instrument would crash into the other and the notes would all get tangled up and you would get recorded tangled up sound, which sounds really bizarre. And he came to the concept that you needed 125 feet to untangle sound. And so what do you do? You build a 125-foot recording horn. The problem with the recording horn was it had massive echoes inside it so they had to take it apart and put baffles in it, which totally defeated the whole purpose of the 125-foot horn already. And they tried it. It was very directional, it would work well with piano and perhaps a small group of players, but it was never a success and eventually was sold for scrap during World War II. Wow, it's a fascinating period.
Speaker 3:Theodore told me he would go into the Columbia Street studio and it was all lined with cow hair to keep it dead and he said he'd walk in there and go. And he said the whistle gets sucked right into the walls. It wouldn't be any kind of echo, any kind of sound, because, edison, when he recorded the Diamond Disc, he wanted a dead studio and the idea behind the dead studio was that the machine would play the record and the sound would take on the atmosphere of the room itself rather than what victor was doing. He hated victor records, by the way, despise them, and he used to say some of them should be soaked in calcium of lime.
Speaker 3:He'd be sitting there listening to a victor record and he called it an ear tickle. He got from it and he invented a little device. It was a square piece of cardboard and he wrote on it Victor ear tickle. And whenever he would listen to a Victor record he put it over his ear when he listened so to shield out some of the high pitch sounds that came from the Victor records. And he would sit down and listen to a record that was recorded and send to his committee and say this sounds like a Victor record, this is rotten, no good, I don't want a Victor sound. Victor can have it. He would just go off the rails if something sounded like a Victor record or sounded like Caruso. He hated Caruso. He said people have to be told when a singer is good. I don't understand that at all.
Speaker 2:It's funny. Those are some of my favorite recordings is those acoustic recordings of caruso?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, obviously there's millions of them out there, because almost every victor phonograph you buy from the era that somebody has it, they go oh yeah, with these records and it's the same set of caruso records right yeah, and the thing is that Edison was sitting there shaking his fist at basically the music of the time, the entertainers of the time. He had this bizarre sensibility about music. He said Mozart. He couldn't understand why people like the music of Mozart. He said it sounds rotten to me. I'm like going what was this man hearing, or what wasn't he hearing? In that regard, yes, he could hear, but he had mastoid trouble and that's the bones of the inner ear fusing, and he had two surgeries to loosen it. In those days they basically just hit it like with a hammer, try to break the bones apart. But his hearing got worse as he got older. But everything was based going through. It had to be filtered through Edison, and so Caruso was rotten, jazz was for degenerates and nuts he had other words for it too. He recorded it, huh.
Speaker 5:Recorded a lot of jazz.
Speaker 3:Yes, he did Interesting thing. There's a point to this. He made a deal because he realized that was a cash cow, it was popular. Because he realized that was a cash cow, it was popular. So he would allow two records a month that he would not go through and you could record anything you wanted, any kind of jazz, and that's where the good stuff came out. Otherwise he would sit there and say my God, the saxophone was never designed for jazz. He would sit there and write that stuff. The comments that he put down were absolutely frightening sometimes.
Speaker 3:He did have a director of artists and repertoire. Originally it was Victor Herbert and Victor Herbert, of course the composer of operettas and all kinds of stuff went to work for Edison for a few weeks and then told Edison what to do with his attitude and his ideas on music and left and refused to ever record for Edison again. That's why he went right to Victor. He originally was making cylinders for Edison, but then he told Edison to pack it and just left. He couldn't tolerate it anymore. So it's an interesting thing. With the diamond disc you have this myriad of some really great stuff, fascinating things and then an awful lot of what's the word I want to use, kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to say junk Like weird songs Well it's just the corner street musical.
Speaker 2:Nothing really. Hawaiian music too, which was popular then, though right yeah.
Speaker 3:That didn't have a long lifespan. The Hawaiian music. It was everywhere. For a while it went through a Hawaiian craze. The other thing is just to mention something while I was thinking about it is that Red Star system that was called the Music Committee and I went through their notes at the Edison site and I was reading their reviews and they would listen to a song and each would give a vote and they say magnificent, fantastic, wonderful, great tune. And then Edison would listen to it and say rotten, and then, being total yes men, they said yes, rotten, and the whole thing. So the music committee was basically a bunch of yes men who listened to what Edison said and then voted accordingly. Very rarely did they go in a different direction and that.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry.
Speaker 5:Oh, no, you're right, but on the Red Star I found Bill Murray and Ada Jones on Red Star Diamond Discs. Yeah, and I was shocked about that. Oh, I have one of my collection.
Speaker 3:An interesting thing would be what they put on. Another thing that they did with the Red Star records is they took old stock and gave it a Red Star Because Ada Jones was dead by what? 1921. And the Red Star system didn't start till 23. And the Red Star system didn't start until 23. And so that was probably something recorded like in 1914 or something like that, and so it got a Red Star.
Speaker 2:They didn't have to pay or anything anymore.
Speaker 3:They didn't. It's interesting Going through like the cash books, you usually got paid for the record.
Speaker 2:That was it Not for this. No royalties. No, you got paid the same once.
Speaker 3:It was like doing a and you got 25 bucks. Let's say Now today you sit there and say $25. That's not, but that was not bad. If you make four records that day, it 100 bucks. That was. That was doing pretty good. The average wage in 1910 was like eight dollars a week or something. So it was making good money.
Speaker 3:Only special artists got royalties and in many respects same for Victor. Victor in many cases just paid you for the record and you didn't get royalties. It was only the special artists who had special contracts or an exclusive artist like Billy Murray became an exclusive artist for Victor and then he received royalties and also he received a certain cash payment every month and the required number of records he would make each month and stuff like that. And Edison did somewhat the same with a few artists, but not many because he was very tight with the money. He said I am not the Bank of England. He would write that constantly on his things.
Speaker 3:And the diamond disc reflected that, brilliant as it was, as magnificent as it was as a technological wonder, it had a severe anchor which was called Thomas Edison, because he was also the developer, the promoter, the savior and also the jury, judge and executioner of the Diamond Desk by 1925-26,. They were losing over a million dollars a year in 1926 dollars, and it just got worse. After that they never saw a black ink again and eventually it just died and Victor was moving in the other direction.
Speaker 3:What do you mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like they were playing all the popular songs, so more people were buying those records. Is that true?
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course. The thing is Eldridge Johnson wasn't picking the music. They had a team of music people. They had great jazz people and they said what's the best thing to sell? Their whole idea is when you make records, the whole objective is to sell as many of them as you can. That's the objective. That's why they're in business to do that. Edison had a different kind of mode, being that he invented the process. I've often thought this, that being that he invented the process, he looked at the phonograph and the record like his own child and he protected it and he guarded it like a jealous father. That's not going on my phonograph. I cracked that down many times. There was a song called by the Sea, by the Beautiful Sea. That song he wrote down. That does not go on my phonograph. That's obscene and it sounds like a jealous father saying she is not going to the dance with him.
Speaker 2:True, and there are no third-party diamond discs, right.
Speaker 3:Oh no.
Speaker 2:So you don't, which you have in every other recording. You don't have third-party diamond discs ever.
Speaker 3:No one else made them. No one else made them, no one else in many respects not a lot of people wanted to be involved with them because they had. It's sad, it's a very sad story. It had all the aspects of being so brilliant and really could have taken over the industry, had it been handled a little differently. Taken over the industry, had it been handled a little differently.
Speaker 2:So just imagine that others could have been allowed to make diamond discs. You look at, obviously, music, there are many, but think of Apple computers, right. So the money, they were great, the software was amazing. It wasn't until even iPhones, it wasn't until they allowed third party manufacturers to make apps and programs that these things took on a life of their own. And the Diamond Disk had that opportunity, giving its ability and its sophistication, that if the third parties were out there recording and playing, they would have had a much longer lifespan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's unfortunate. If you listen to an Edison disc from 1912, 1913, it is incredibly good, it's beyond incredibly good, it's frighteningly good, incredibly good, it's frighteningly good. And I find it startling me now that time, after listening to a Victor record and then listening to one of these Edison recordings, the public must have gone wow, this is the wizard. Edison had developed this amazing system. Edison had developed this amazing system and it started with this great bang and it just waffled along and by the time that Edison stopped picking the music and he got involved in goldenrod research and Charles, who loved to drink a little bit quite a bit actually he used to go to all the speakeasies in New York City, in the village and there'd be all kinds of jazz bands there and he would sit there and say my dad has a recording company and that's why you almost have a sonic history of greenwich village in the 1920s.
Speaker 3:A lot of the bands that recorded were playing in greenwich village in new york city in the 1920s. It's a bit of a sonic history and that was really an amazing thing that that. One of the things char Charles did that was really good was bringing those bands in, but they just couldn't make ends meet and I'm sorry to sit there and talk so much here. There's so much to talk about with this stuff.
Speaker 2:I know, I know Brett's probably feeling the same way I do. I never hear that stuff, but I'm glad to hear it from you than read it out of a book.
Speaker 3:I interviewed some of the people that worked in the record manufacturing plant and the work doing all that. It was so expensive to make the records. They had this profit margin. That was just this tiny little bit because all the expense in making this composite record Victor just went plop like that and you had your record. It just took 30 seconds to stamp it, if that. But we're talking several minutes with the diamond disc and half the time it wouldn't come out quite right and then they'd stamp rejected on it and it would go and get cooked. But it was extremely hot, extremely difficult, extremely smelly and a lot of people in the town didn't like the smell that was coming from. You think of all those chemicals.
Speaker 2:It must have been horrendous in that area yeah, so do you guys want to talk about the thing you're working on, or you want to leave that for another day?
Speaker 3:I guess we could talk about it right.
Speaker 2:Why not, it's related right. So there we go, you may begin. I'm sure I understand it.
Speaker 3:I'm just having a little fun, and I want to share it with Brett because let him tinker with it too, because he's Mr Wizard when it comes to phonographs and stuff. I found something that worked pretty well for old phonographs and, as I like to put it, it's like a cure for arthritis of the reproducer. In older phonographs, the diaphragm becomes very stiff and it's not like it once was, which was very pliable, and so I use coin holders, and a coin holder is very cushy and it allows the diaphragm to vibrate like it hasn't vibrated in years. The diaphragm to vibrate like it hasn't vibrated in years.
Speaker 2:And so by corn holders you mean those paper things you get at the bank.
Speaker 5:No.
Speaker 3:See, it's quite, it's not thin and it's very pliable. You can squeeze it and you can. It's hard to let me find a better one here. Sorry, I didn't. Jack sent me a couple this is how they would come to you when you would buy the coin. There's a whole big thing, fascinating thing about this. This is a coin holder, and you'll see.
Speaker 2:I have no idea what that is.
Speaker 3:I'll take it apart. This is you take the middle out of it and that's where you'd put your coin.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's a coin holder for collecting coins.
Speaker 3:Yes, and then you would put it inside your, then you would put it inside the capsule to hold the coin.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I know what it is.
Speaker 3:I have always been one to look at anything and try it once and see what happens. I even tried a thing for hair a hair band and put it in and played a record and it worked pretty good. But I tried these and I was amazed. I was amazed. I was amazed how good the sound was.
Speaker 2:So that allows more spring because it's not as restricted. Right. That's true Edison, edisonian thought process there, try everything and whatever sticks to the wall is going to work for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, why not? I've always tried to. I've been doing this In the 1990s. I have a whole notebook of various types of materials. I tried for diaphragms and stuff, and then I just put it away and stopped doing it. And then all of a sudden, now in my more mature years, I'm tinkering again. And this came up just by accident because I collect coins.
Speaker 2:So is there a what's in there? I'm sorry, I never took one apart, so there's a regular gasket and a diamond disc reproducer. Yes, ever took one apart. So there's a regular gasket and a diamond disc reproducer yes, two, one on each side that that go on both sides of the diaphragm very thin, very thin rubber.
Speaker 3:So whatever they're made of, or whatever it is, so what, that fabric allows the entire diaphragm to vibrate, so that the vibration is grander yes, and also and to share this with everybody, I'm not trying to, I don't want to make this any simple that it's a kiss method. That's the most important thing. To keep it simple, stupid, the old saying right. But the other thing is you have your restraining screw cap or whatever. What's the term for it? A?
Speaker 5:restraining thing Ring.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the restraining ring which screws on. You use that with a coin holder and the diaphragm only one. You don't need to, only one. So the first thing you put in is the coin holder, then you put the diaphragm, you put the little ring thing and then the screw on Clamp, but not tight. Here's the thing that gets rather interesting. With a Victor or Columbia or under type of reproducer for lateral, you want an airtight reproducer. I found that with a little bit of an air leak you have more bass and so you can turn that ring around and adjust it. It's almost like a tone control and so you can make it sharper or duller and, depending on the record, you can adjust it for the record. It's fun.
Speaker 2:I feel a video about this in Brett's future yep, that would be fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'd love to have you do it and see what happens.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he's going to take it to the nth degree and I want to share it with people.
Speaker 3:Let them have fun. There's nothing like having a brand new diaphragm. Okay, there's this, but a lot of times people can't afford to get all the fancy stuff or just as something to have at home and try it and be a little bit of a throw, a little Edison. They can tinker a little bit and maybe feel a little bit more with the hobby doing that Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Brett has these ideas all the time. You see him in his videos.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know.
Speaker 2:What I did here is he'd be like this piece doesn't really work. They really weren't thinking when they did it, but I made one on my lathe. That's brass and it'll last a thousand years. And now if you insert that and I'm like, yeah, brad, I have a lathe in my back bedroom and I would have cut my fingers off a long time ago anyway.
Speaker 2:And then he pulls it out like it came out of a Cracker Jack box, and then he puts it in and it goes into the thing and then he plays it. It sounds amazing.
Speaker 3:And you're like wow, I, I have learned. As I have mentioned before, when I'm having a problem with something, I sit down and look at the various videos and said what did I do with this? So I learned I was my ambrola 5. I was just absolutely mesmerized. I was watching every little thing that you were doing with that, because it helped me an awful lot with mine and I think that I think I speak for probably everyone in this community that we owe you a debt of gratitude for what you do forever yeah that.
Speaker 2:We all collect and we all feel the greatness of collecting and playing and listening and putting ourselves, but we don't all give back like you can. We don't have the ability. You have more than the ability to do these things. You have the. Everything that makes those videos great is what makes this hobby great.
Speaker 3:I have to dumb them down. Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 5:No, I have to dumb them down. My producer gets mad at me.
Speaker 2:I hear those corrections. So what is that you have in your hand?
Speaker 5:I get in trouble. I've been married 50 years, wow, congratulations.
Speaker 3:Congratulations.
Speaker 5:What did you just say no, we have to redo it. You have to do this in Dick and Jane, because they like how to. I said, okay, let's do Dick and Jane.
Speaker 2:When I did that story I told you about the diamond disc. I must have had to go back five or six times before and all it was turn a screw, pull a bar, tighten it again. And it wasn't turn a screw, it was a nut. And it just when you did it, it looked so simple. I know, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're trying those diamond discs, that that the shaft, that the whole mechanism rise on and also is attached to the horn, and you know exactly what. And, of course, better yet, I stripped the thing when I did it. So I was like, good thing it's in the position that it works now because I'm not moving it again. I was like, well, now tell Brett that I stripped it. Oh no, I did.
Speaker 5:I did the last video. I've never done like a whole ground up resto, like on this 52 humpback I'm doing slowly and I showed him how to take the corner columns off. I stripped everything down. I saw that I came back and I said this is how you do this. I said but the high glue, a lot of the high glue on the corner columns, it doesn't come off so you have to scrape it. And I did the video on how to shellac it and then fix the corner column. So when you put it back on you have the piece here and the corner column. You want it flat against the wood.
Speaker 3:You want it to look original right in three days we got over 900 views on it wow, yay the most important thing is this knowledge is not to be kept, it's to be shared, and that's the most important thing that we should do in this hobby. I have a friend here in Chicago. He's a young collector and so I said I call you my Edison and and so I said I call you my Edda's son, and I'm tutoring him and teaching him and he is fascinated with recording on wax and he is. He's starting to make wax recordings. He's bought like 30 wax cylinders so far and he's making all kinds of recordings. Now he's looking into making disc. He wants to make disc, wax recordings, he wants to. He's going to really be a fascinating character in this hobby as time goes on, because he just started, like same time as you, two years ago, and that's always good to see, and that's why we really want to share as much as we can and teach people as much as we can.
Speaker 2:You can never write it all down. You'll forget things. These videos are selfish to me. I learn and get myself involved with gentlemen like you that I have, no, no business talking to because my knowledge is limited.
Speaker 3:But a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, as the old saying goes.
Speaker 2:So well, a couple steps and tripped and falled a couple times. I was lucky that my apartment, that I have everything it was empty. When I collecting, I had a room that it was totally empty. It only had things that my ex-wife threw out on the front lawn and basically all needed to be thrown in the garbage. But I didn't have the wherewithal to go through it and when I started collecting I said I'm going to clean this room, I'll put a table, we're going to put a couch and I'll put a couple of photographs around. It'll be a nice place to sit. Now you can't walk into the room, but that's the nature of it, right?
Speaker 3:I confess, with our situation. Jason is an absolute angel with this. We're going to go out and look at some records this weekend and that's not of any interest to him, but he's willing to do that. And then we're going to go do the show in Chicago. And so he said, are you ready to go to the show? And I'm like, oh yes, I'm all excited.
Speaker 2:So it's always good to get support yeah. Brad, if you're ever looking to restore a wood horn that has cracks in it for videos, I'd love to send it to you. I'm glad to, whatever it costs, to restore it, but I don't know what to do with it. I mean, I'm sorry, victor horn.
Speaker 2:No, it's a triumph horn. Okay, I think I may have sent pictures. The elbow is peeling a little bit. When I showed it to Wyatt he goes I wouldn't touch it because it's still all original, even it's peeling, but I don't know about that. And the wood is just separated on the on where it was glued. So it's a magic. What do they call it Music? So it's a. It's a magic.
Speaker 2:what they call a music music it's a music master horn music master horn yeah, and it's in great shape, other than the thing coming apart, and I've had lots of offers of people who wanted to fix it, but I've been so hesitant because you don't know. So wanted to fix it, but I've been so hesitant because you don't know, so anyway, I think that's uh pretty much a place to end it if you feel it is. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:This was great fun yeah, I enjoyed a great deal I think all of us do.
Speaker 2:If whatever topics you want to do, this one was on Diamond Disc. I know we really didn't go through machines or anything, but I get great responses when we just talk about our experiences, because I think other collectors realize that they're having similar experiences. And even the time, brett, when we spoke to Wyatt and Joe and Tracy, that time I got great. Everybody spoke about the first machine they bought or a machine they bought, or how they chased it and fixed it and whatever, and they were telling those stories. I didn't really tell many, but they all told stories and it was a great response because other collectors are going through those first times too and they realize that people like you guys who know everything I know no one- knows everything you don't need to remind me of that but know a great deal and sometimes and also realize that you've gotten there.
Speaker 2:You started where they started. You started with a machine that looked like a look like it would never run, and now it's, and you're never going to sell it because you know that was the machine you first bought yeah, the interesting thing about knowledge is that the more you learn, the more you realize how little it's.
Speaker 3:Edison wrote about that. He said like every time I keep learning, I discover how little I know, and it's important.
Speaker 2:It's funny. You were talking about the music and the way it went down the horn and he thought it would get entangled, and I think about molecular theory and string theory and all those things that it sounded like that's what he was talking about, even though he had no idea what those things were.
Speaker 3:No, he didn't. He also was fiddling with atoms. He was doing a whole thing. He filled a whole book with his ideas of how atoms work and it's interesting stuff.
Speaker 3:There's so much about Edison that 99.9% of people don't know because it's not in what we might call the popular culture, don't know because it's not in what we might call the popular culture. When I went through the many books, I didn't want to see the successes, I wanted to see the regular stuff that was going on. That's where you learn about the people. You learn about the various things that because the success doesn't tell you anything, it tells them they were successful. But when they fail, then they sit there and now they go through things. They were coming up with gasketing material called goop, g-o-o-p, and their idea was to use goop in the diamond disc reproducer and it was Vaseline with a binder and it worked perfectly, making the ring. But then it soaked in everything and it was a bit of a. It turned into a big goop. But nonetheless I don't want to talk more because we'll get going again.
Speaker 2:We should do another of these and just talk about what was going on in the lab, things that they were doing, experiments that they were doing, because it's fascinating stuff whatever you like to talk about I'm willing to talk about, because whatever it is, I'm sure I have no idea what it is and I think others listen and others enjoy it. Certainly our other collectors do. I thank you for not only your time today but all you both do for the collecting community. Thank you. Thank you, bye-bye. Have a good one.
Speaker 1:First words I spoke in the original Thank you, bye-bye, have a good one, bye.