The introduction of radio broadcasting brought massive changes to the record and phonograph industry. On the one hand, free broadcasts of live musical entertainment ate into sales of records and players. On the other, developments in microphones and vacuum tube amplifiers made it possible to record and reproduce louder and more lifelike sounds. While recording still depended on a vibrating stylus cutting a wax master and replay depended on a moving diaphragm or cone generating sound waves, electronic components provided invaluable intermediary services in picking up and boosting the signal. The first electrically recorded disks were released to the public in 1925. The Museum has an electric disk-recording "lathe" that may have been the first ever used by RCA Victor at its Montreal studios. It also has several other disk recorders like the Presto (700095), which were used by radio stations in the 1930s and 1940s to record programs for later broadcast. In addition, the Museum has several dictating machines that recorded electrically on disks.

Fig. 16 Northern Electric Audograph dictating machine (850784), patented 1944-1945.(CSTM)