Charles Sumner Tainter
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Charles Sumner Tainter (April 25, 1854 - April 20, 1940) was an American engineer and inventor, best known for his collaborations with Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell and his improvements to Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph, resulting in the graphophone, one version of which was the first dictaphone.
Tainter was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he went to public school. His education was modest, he acquired his knowledge mostly through self-education. In 1873, he took a job for a company producing telescopes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which got the contract for the observation of the transit of venus on December 8, 1874, and Tainter was sent with the observation expedition to New Zealand. In 1878 he opened a shop for the production of scientific instruments and a year later, Alexander Bell called him to his Volta Laboratories in Washington, D.C., where Tainter would work for the next seven years.
During this time, he worked with Bell on several inventions, amongst them the phonograph, the photophone and also the graphophone, a substantial improvement of Edison's earlier phonograph, for which he received several patents. Edison subsequently sued him for patent infringement, but the case was settled by a compromise between the two.
In 1886, he married Lila R. Munro, and over the next years worked in Washington, perfecting his graphophone and founding a company trying to market the graphophone as a dictation machine: the first dictaphone. In 1887 Tainter invented the helically wound paper tube as an improved graphophone cylinder. This design was light and strong, and came to be widely used in applications far removed from its original intent, such as mailing tubes and product containers.
His ill health (he was frequently sick with pneumonia) made him and his wife move to San Diego in 1903. After the death of his wife in 1924, he married Laura F. Onderdonk in 1928.
Tainter received several distinguished awards for his graphophone.
[edit] External links
- Charles Tainter and the Graphophone
- Plaque in Washington D.C. marking the successful Bell/Tainter photophone experiment
[edit] Patents
Patent images in TIFF format
- U.S. Patent 0235,496 Photophone Transmitter, filed September 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0235,497 Selenium Cell, filed September 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0235,616 Process Of Treating Selenium To Increase Its Electric Conductivity, filed August 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0241,909 Photophonic Receiver, filed March 1881, issued May 1881 (with Alexander Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0336,173 Telephone Transmitter (using a "jet of conductive fluid"), filed April 1885, issued February 1886
- U.S. Patent 0341,212 Reproducing Sounds from Phonograph Records (without using a stylus), filed November 1885, issued May 1886 (with Alexander and Chichester Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0341,213 Transmitting And Recording Sounds By Radiant Energy, filed November 1885, issued May 1886 (with Alexander and Chichester Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0341,214 Recording and Reproducing Speech and Other Sounds (improvements include compliant cutting head, wax surface, and constant linear velocity disk), filed June 1885, issued May 1886 (with Chichester Bell)
- U.S. Patent 0341,288 Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Sounds (wax coated cylinder, pause and reverse mechanism), filed December 1885, issued May 1886
- U.S. Patent 0374,133 Paper Cylinder for Graphophonic Records (helically wound), filed April 1887, issued November 1887
- U.S. Patent 0375,579 Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Speech and Other Sounds (with treadle drive designed for dictation), filed July 1887, issued December 1887
- U.S. Patent 0380,535 Graphophone (with duplicate transcription), filed December 1887, issued April 1888
- U.S. Patent 0421,450 Graphophone Tablet (hard "ozocerite" (carnauba wax) cylinder coating), filed November 1887, issued February 1890
- U.S. Patent 0428,646 Machine for the Manufacture of Wax-coated Tablets for Graphophones (helically wound paper tubes), filed June 1889, issued May 1890
