Topic: Technology.

My Paternal Grandfather Alex Johnston, writing under the pen name Spartacus Smith, was a journalist with the ‘Sydney Mail’, a weekly magazine in Sydney, Australia in the twenties. Here is what he wrote about ‘The Magic Disc’ on 24 February 1926:

“Of all the inventions given a wondering world there is none more wonderful than the talking machine. When I look at that black disc with the concentric circles scratched on its face I marvel at the magic. When I once pulled a machine to pieces, I found nothing but the needle, a disc, and a sound box, or something of the kind – but there was no wonder about that. All that remained was the circular plate with the line so neatly drawn. I looked at it with a magnifying glass but saw nothing more. Take your “records” and put them in the box. Start it going, and you hear a brass band. You can distinguish the cornet, you can hear the euphonium. Put in another and it is the voice of a singer, with the accompaniment of a piano. The two together! It is astounding. ….

“I feel full of exclamation marks in writing on this subject. Two instruments always astonish me when I see them. One is the homely sewing machine … to see the sewing machine replacing the work of human fingers with perfect loops and knots at a ratio of five hundred to one never fails to draw my admiration. But the talking machine is ingenuity almost without any explanation. …

“Edison was under inspiration from many predecessors in research when he made that first phonograph. They had been trying for long to catch the voice and bottle it up….

“It is interesting to know how this century is preserving the voices of notable people. Matrices are put in hermetically sealed boxes and deposited in the British Museum, and the grand Opera in Paris, Germany, and other countries are making collections. Posterity will hear such people as Melba, Lloyd George, members of the Royal Family …. “

How Granddad would have loved a glimpse into our modern world. He had seen aeroplanes of course – but jet liners? space travel? How he would marvel at the ease with which his granddaughter is composing this on a computer! I wish he was still with us – but he would now be 156 years old.

(The full article, with beautiful illustrations, can be read at https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/160391061?searchTerm=The%20Magic%20disc)