Phonograph: Encyclopedia II - Phonograph - Terminology

Phonograph - Terminology

Usage of these terms is somewhat different in American English and British English; see usage note below. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable or record player. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the alternative term talking machine was sometimes used. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound.

The term phonograph meaning "sound writer", is derived from the Greek words φωνη (meaning sound or voice and transliterated as phone) and γραφη (meaning writing or Scripture and transliterated as graphe). Similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings. The coinage, particularly the use of the "-graph" root, may have been influenced by the then-existing words "phonographic" and "phonography," which referred to a system of phonetic shorthand; in 1852 the New York Times carried an advertisement for "Professor Webster's phonographic class," and in 1859 the New York State Teachers' Association tabled a motion to "employ a phonographic recorder" to record its meetings.

Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Terminology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki