laser cylinder gramophone?

[AnimusDivinus]

well, i did a lot of thinking on laser LP pickups.. came to the conclusion you would need 5 of them.. 3 of them simply to track the location of the grooves in two dimensions...

so then i thought about the old cylinder gramophone... doesnt warp so you dont need something to track the height of the record surface, and the pickup is mounted on a platform that tracks its way across the surface by way of a worm gear driving it in relation to the table rotation...

because of the pickup being locked with the gearing of the platter, you could make a laser gramophone pickup just using two lasers pointed at an angle into the grooves of the music, wouldnt need to track the grooves either, and no complex circuitry would be required... laser diode + photodiode at angles pointing to the groove equal an electrical signal at the same frequency as the grooves...

now thinking about this idea got me thinking about some related ideas... gramophone cylinders were origionally made out of wax.. wax wasnt very durable and didnt last long.. but with a cold, small laser glancing across the surface of a treated, hardened wax cylinder... it would never wear, therefor wax, being the easiest to record on (as well as other soft mediums) would last no longer had they been recorded on hard plastics

should i make a device like this.. the length of a recorded song would have to be 4 minutes or less, since it is still just an old cylinder device...

now, i wonder if it would be possible to record onto the cylinders with microgroove technology and RAII equilization and get a cylinder capable of the entire length of a single side of an LP record...

now, i must explain, im not trying to make anything better, im not trying to reinvent the wheel, i like messing with old technologies, tinkering with them, and trying out some of my own ideas in an attempt to see what i come up with...

i have more ideas, and they do get stranger and stranger.. like using a laser to burn an analog audio signal into a photosensitive material that can then be coated over with a clear laquer or urethane and would never damage because scratches could always be filled in or buffed out of the surface layer of the clear coat...

but lets stick with the gramophone laser idea... anyone ever thought about something like this, just for the sake of seeing how it would work?

[Straight Tracker]

Just to keep things accurate, what you are writing about is known as a Phonogragh.
The Gramophone was invented at a later date by Emile Berliner and it plays the familiar flat disk.

Sincerely,

Ralf

[Ouroboros]

Also, don't forget that phonograph wax cylinders used "hill and dale" recording on the grooves.

[coresta]

ELP Laser Turntable: plays vinyl records without a needle

[dragonxwas]

but rather than this or that, don't mouse optical sensors give you guys an DIY idea ?? :P

[AnimusDivinus]

the ones that play LP vinyls take 5 lasers, and some programming to track the grooves... with the cylinder phonograph, many seem to be driven by a worm gear linked with the gear turning the table, so you could track the grooves entirely by mechanics.. needing only the laser to read the groove

[indianajo]

Cool, I have seen stacks of old edison cylinders in various junk shops, usually $1 each. Now comes someone to do something with them. And non-destructive, at that. Unless the laser melts the wax. The big problem, is the music that comes on wax cylinders.

[AnimusDivinus]

those wax cylinders are coated with something to harden them.. maybe a kind of laquer or resin.. if they werent they would have warped and melted long ago being in someones closet during the summer months

that being said, the lasers used arent much different than the diodes from a laser pointer, not hot enough to melt wax

[tvi]

Phonograph cylinder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"cylinder records made of celluloid, an early hard plastic, that would not break if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out"...

The Edison company then developed its own type of long-lasting cylinder, consisting of a type of plastic called Amberol (which was blue in color) around a plaster core (the plastic was a phenolic resin, similar to the contemporary "Bakelite")...

"Edison also marketed its "Fireside" model phonograph with a gearshift and a reproducer with two styli that allowed it to play both 2-minute and 4-minute cylinders."

[Pano]

The cylinders certainly solve a lot of problems, good thinking. But how you you actually read groove depth with a laser?