Edison Concert Record

This was a short-lived brand produced by Edison's National Phonograph Company between 1899 - 1904. These were large sized (5 inch diameter) "High-End" brown wax phonograph cylinders, containing approximately 2 minutes of recorded material. Edison Concert Records quickly became obsolete, in large part due to the enormous success of "Gold Moulded" black wax Cylinders. Format History (from The Cylinder Archive) : In 1898, Columbia introduced a new luxury format of cylinders with a diameter of 5". These so called Grand Graphophone cylinders required a compatible phonograph with a larger mandrel and did only provide the same playing time of 2-3 minutes - just like a standard cylinder, related to the recording speed. Because of the higher surface speed, the volume and clarity was improved and Edison stepped into this business just one year later with his identical Concert cylinders. However, this format could not achieve a wide customer acceptance as the price was over twice as much as regular cylinder record did cost plus a quite cumbersome handling. With the introduction of the Gold Moulded cylinders in 1902, the separate production of these oversized cylinders was discontinued. Also other brands such as Lambert, Pathé (France) and Edison-Bell (England) made concert cylinders for a few years but were also quite unsuccessful. In 1909 owners of concert phonographs could still order current titles, which were then custom made by the old pantographic process, of course, without any quality advantages. Trivia : During their heyday, Concert Cylinders were sold for 5$. If the price had to be adjusted for inflation, They would cost 127.70 dollars (per each song [!]).