sts, could be adjusted vertically so that several records could be
cut on the same 3/16-inch strip.

While this machine was never developed commercially, it is an
interesting ancestor of the modern tape recorder, which it resembles
somewhat in design. How practical it was or just why it was built we do
not know. The tape is now brittle, the heavy paper reels warped, and the
reproducing head missing. Otherwise, with some reconditioning, it could
be put into working condition.

Most of the disc machines designed by the Volta associates had the disc
mounted vertically (see figs. 5 and 6). The explanation is that in the
early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop
lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the
complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables.

[Illustration: Figure 8.--ANOTHER PAGE OF THE PLANS SHOWN IN FIGURE 7.
The experimental Graphophone built from these plans is in the U. S.
National Museum (_cat. no. 287665_).]

An interesting exception has a horizontal 7-inch turntable (see figs. 7
and 8). This machine, although made in 1886, is a duplicate of one made
earlier but taken to Europe by Chichester Bell. Tainter was granted U.
S. patent 385886 for it on July 10, 1888.

The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90
degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position.
While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved
laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150
grooves to the inch.

The Bell and Tainter records, preserved at the Smithsonian, are both of
the lateral cut and "hill-and-dale" types. Edison for many years used
the "hill-and-dale" method with both cylinder and disc records, and
Emile Berliner is credited with the invention of the lateral cut
Gramophone record in 1887. The Volta associates, however, had been
experimenting with both types, as early as 1881, as is shown by the
following quotation from Tainter:[9]

The record on the electro-type in the Smithsonian package is of the
other form, where the vibrations are impressed _parallel_ to the
surface of the recording material, as was done in the old Scott
Phonautograph of 1857, thus forming a groove of uniform depth, but
of wavy character, in which the _sides_ of the groove act upon the
tracing point instead of the bottom, as is the case in the vertical