Dead
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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 03.2
Dead Medium: Phonographic Dolls
Source: AUTOMATA AND MECHANICAL TOYS, an illustrated
history by Mary Hillier. Bloomsbury Books, London 1976,
1988. ISBN 1 870630 27 0.
(((Many forms of media began as toys, magic, or parlor
amusements. Some incubate in the toy market and then move
to wider mass influence. Some stay toys indefinitely.
Some toys die. The talking head, talking doll, talking
automaton or artificial talking intelligence is an ancient
ideal which seems to have a powerful attraction for the
inventive mind.)))
(((Mary Hillier's Foreword well describes this highly
entertaining, lavishly illustrated book, which abounds in
curiosa for the enthusiast of dead mechanical tech.)))
"This book seeks to trace the history of automata and
travels through the curious realms where they were
exhibited and among some of the amazing characters
involved in their invention. The special emphasis in from
the eighteenth century onwards when the awakening of
technological interest produced both the frivolous and
luxury toys to amuse people and the clever robot machines
which eventually were to transform industry."
pages 93-94
"Inventions have often been produced by researchers
who little dreamt of the far-reaching consequences. Those
who first experimented with electricity had no inkling of
how the new-found force would one day illumine and power
the world and adapt itself for use in the manufacture of
toys. Thomas Edison, assembling his first crude
phonograph in 1877 was actually experimenting with a
machine that could reproduce the message given by a voice
on the telephone."
((( I find Hillier's assertion that the phonograph was
born as a telephone recording/answering machine to be
particularly intriguing. Was the phonograph originally a
network peripheral?)))
"Only afterward, when others recognised the
significance of significance of recording the human voice
and realised the terrific potential of such an instrument
for entertainment did he develop it further along these
very lines. It was the realization of the 'talking head'
man had dreamt of through the ages. Others researching
along similar lines exploited the talking machine. The
motorised phonograph with wax cylinders was presented to
the public and for the first time actual facsimiles of the
human voice were obtained and the 'industry of human
happiness,' as it had been called, had begun. (((Can
anyone identify the source of this astonishing quote?)))
The search for a talking doll was over: no automaton could
compete with true reproduction - however imperfect in the
earliest attempts.
"Edison first took up a patent for a phonograph
doll in 1878. (((Note how quickly Edison sought a killer
app in the children's market.))) His first idea was to
build up a doll around a phonograph, but it was obviously
more practical to use factory made doll parts and place a
miniature phonograph within. It does not seem that such a
veritable talking doll was mass-produced by his company
until 1889.
"When wound up, this precocious creature recited
nursery rhymes by virtue of a little needle tracing
grooves on a wax covered disk. The unknown girls who
recorded the words in his factory acheived a curious
immortality. The doll was made up with a steel torso
which contained the works but had a head of German bisque
and jointed wooden limbs. The Edison factory is said to
have turned out 500 such dolls a day but other
manufacturers soon entered into competition producing
similar novelties.
"In France the famous Jumeau doll-making firm produced
*Be'be' Phonographe* in 1893; her mechanism was covered by
a small plate in her chest and she was wound from the
rear. The doll herself had all the charm of the Jumeau
type with bisque head, beautiful eyes, jointed arms and
legs and the additional sophistication of speaking in
French, English or Spanish (according to changed
cylinders). She measured 25 inches as against Edison's 22
inch baby.
"At the Paris Exhibition 1900, a special room was
devoted to the Phonograph doll with girls actually
recording at benches. 'Each one sits before a large
apparatus, singing, reading, crying, reciting, talking
with all the appearance of a lunatic! She dictates to a
cylinder of wax the lesson that the little doll must
obediently repeat to the day of her death with guaranteed
fidelity.'
"Edison's phonographic doll set the fashion for dolls
with a bigger repertoire in their performance (and cheaper
imitations). The progress of talking machines outran the
patents and there was, one suspects, a good deal of
poaching of ideas on both sides of the Atlantic with all
the variations produced both before and after the 1914-
1918 war. The Jenny Lind Doll Company of Chicago produced
a doll in 1916 which could sing, talk and recite.
"Some of the dolls must have been unwieldy indeed.
The 'Primadonna' produced by the Giebeler Folk Corporation
of New York was not only made of aluminium but when the
real hair wig on the crown of her hinged head was lifted
up it contained a turntable for playing 3 1/2 inch
records! The doll was made in sizes 25 or 30 inches and
the mechanism in the body was wound from the back.
"In 1923 the Averill Manufacturing Company also
designed a phonograph doll, called Dolly Rekord, in their
famous Madame Hendren line.
"Talking dolls, one suspects, became far less of a
novelty when the radio and gramophone proper became more
generally in use, just as cinematograph toys were
displaced by television. Each phase of development
introduced its new toys. and some interesting and
ingenious working models were allied to the gramophone and
its revolving turntable. Some were actually distributed
by the company involved in producing the machines (figures
84-86)."
[FIGURE 84. Page from *Scientific American,* 1890,
showing Edison's Talking Doll and manufacturing
processes.]
[FIGURE 85. Rare phonograph doll, Siam Soo, 1909; she
shimmies and twists her head when mounted on a record
shaft, as the record revolves. "SIAM SOO She puts the O-
O in Grafonola. Strikingly new and novel. Works on any
phonograph with a Columbia Record. Patented."]
[FIGURE 86. Uncle Sam appears to chase the Mexican
bandit, Pancho Villa, as the record revolves.]
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