Later Application of Phonograph Cylinder Technology
Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for Dictaphone and Ediphone recordings for office use for decades.
In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their DictaBelt technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by magnetic tape recording. However, cylinders for older style dictating machines continued to be available for some years, and it was not unusual to encounter cylinder dictating machines into the 1950s.
In the late 20th and early 21st century some new recordings have been made on cylinders for the novelty effect of using obsolete technology. Probably the most famous of these are by They Might Be Giants, who in 1996 recorded "I Can Hear You" and three other songs, performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. This song was released on Factory Showroom in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. The other songs recorded were "James K. Polk," "Maybe I Know," and "The Edison Museum," a song about the site of the recording. These recordings were officially released online as MP3 files in 2001.
In 2010 the British steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing released the track 'Sewer', from their debut album, Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1 on very limited edition Wax Cylinder, only 40 were made and only 30 were put on sale. The box set came with instructions on how to make your own cylinder player for less than £20. The BBC covered the release on Television on BBC Click, on BBC Online and on Radio 5 Live.
In August 2010, Ash International and PARC released the first commercially available glow in the dark phonograph cylinder, which is a work by Michael Esposito and Carl Michael von Hausswolff, entitled "The Ghosts Of Effingham". The cylinder was released in a limited edition of 150 copies, produced by Vulcan Records, Sheffield England.
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