The Diamond Cut Productions Edison Lateral Cut Series of CD’s

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 at his laboratory, located in Menlo Park, New Jersey.  Although it was his favorite invention, he did not commercialize it until 10 years later.  His patents contained many variations of the basic premise of sound recording, involving media such as cylinders, disc, and moving tape.  Also, he envisioned both vertical (known as hill and dale) and lateral (side to side) groove modulation methods.  Edison commercialized sound recording using the vertical modulation technique initially on cylinders, and then later on discs (Diamond Discs).  In the early years, these recordings were made acoustically (without the aid of microphones or amplifiers).  His competitors, like The Victor Talking Machine Company, used the lateral technique because lateral cut records were cheaper to produce compared with the hill and dale method.  Since they were thinner, customers could store more records in a given space.  Ultimately, the industry which Edison had created became dominated by records using the lateral cut technique, which he had invented by had not embraced for his commercial purposes.

By the mid 1920’s, Edison’s record business began to decline rapidly due to the lateral competition, and also the influence of a new means of home entertainment called Radio.  Two of Edison’s sons, Charles and Theodore, finally convinced him to go head to head with the competition by entering into the lateral market.  Edison’s lateral recordings were made electrically.  Edison felt that the greater quality and increased bass response of the electrical recordings would help sales.  This attempt to save the business failed, and Edison went out of the record business the day before the Stock Market crashed in 1929.

For almost two years prior to this, the Edison record company mastered over one thousand song titles, but only a very few were ever released.  The recordings, which are included in the Diamond Cut Edison Lateral Cut series of CD, are examples of some of these previously unreleased recordings.  Also included in the Diamond Cut CD catalog is an anthology of Diamond Disc recordings in addition to releases of material found on non-Edison labels from the early electrical time period.