The Digital Gramophone: original design or DIY shortcut?
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 31st 2007 9:43AM
posted May 31st 2007 9:43AM
[Via Akihabara News]
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The Gramophone was NOT invented by Thomas Edison as the aticle stated. Rather, it was invented by my Great Grandfather, Emile Berliner. Do a Google search for "Who invented the Gramophone" to find out its history.
Emile Berliner invented the disc playing phonograph, Thomas Edison invented its predecessor, the cylinder-operated one.
That would be early 20th century, not 19th..
My thought exactly.
Hey Yong and Ama ... Don't call it a phonograph. Phonographs play round cylinders, not flat discs.
Why does it have a DVD recordable disc on it instead of a CD? Maybe I'm mistaken, but that looks purple, and I've never seen a purple CDR. And that cheap discman they ripped apart certainly can't play a DVD.
Or translated to standard engadget troll form:
"CDs are so 1990, make me one that plays DVD Audio and i'm in."
Yeah, it looks like a DVD-R, probably just for the sake of the picture. Purple looks way better than the greenish-yellow of CD-Rs, IMHO.
MAJOR difference from the Japanese one... that one actually works like a gramophone in that is ETCHES whatever you put on it (CDs, paper, llamas, whatever)... this one actually plays the CD using a laser. So this is essentially a stylized CD player rather than an actual mechanical etching/playback device. Once you use a CD on the Japanese one... you have some really scratched up plastic and/or llamas!
Isn't there a risk from the invisible IR radiation that the laser outputs?
there is a laser record player that uses a laser to read vinyl, but its a few $thou. id like to see a true analog optical disc.- ie- dvd recorded w/ laser but not w/ 1&0's but instead an analog wave burned on the disc. now thats a true meld of nostalgia and modern tech.