INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
Tainter
Patent No. 341,288 Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Sounds
Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, Charles Sumner Tainter, a self-educated man, began working for electrical and optical instrument companies in Boson in 1870. His experience led him to establish his own business, where he worked with Alexander Graham Bell making electrical devices. After Tainter contributed to Bell's first transmission of sound, the duo created the radiophone, an instrument that used light waves and selenium cells to transmit wireless sound.
Tainter went on to invent various sound-recording instruments, including an improved version of Thomas Edison's phonograph, known as the Graphophone, the Photophone, and the Dictaphone.
Tainter collaborated with Bell and Bell's cousin, Chichester A. Bell, to develop the graphophone. The trio devised a method to photograph speech vibrations using a wax-coated cardboard cylinder and flexible recording needle, both of which were superior to Edison's phonograph. When Tainter invented the dictophone, its immediate success as a device used to record speech for later playback led to other inventors, including Edison, imitating Tainter's breakthroughs. Receiving several important patents in 1886, Tainter shaped the future of the recording industry.
Charles Tainter died on April 20, 1940.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at: http://www.invent.org
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