From the blurb \"This volume traces the history of recorded sound from the invention of the phonograph and the first primitive recordings in the early 1880s through to today`s multi-billion-dollar recording industry. On the way we encounter the early inventors: Thomas Edison, Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson ; the first recording artists: Sarah Bernhardt and the music-hall performers who provided the nickelodeons with matieral ; the later revolutionary inventions such as the long-playing record, quadrophonic sound and the pop music recordings which sell in millions on an international scale. The great opera stars Caruso, Melba, Patti, Chaliapin, the early jazz giants Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller ; the stars of the twenties and thirties Josephine Baker, Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Fred Astaire, Noel Coward, Paul Robeson, Paul Whiteman, Bing Crosby - all are pictured here with a text describing their recording careers. The book then goes on to the major classical recording soloists and conductors, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter to name just a few; to the crooners: Frank Sinatra. Nat King Cole and Peggy Lee; and finally to the seventies and eighties: Maria Callas and Herbert von Karajan in classical music; the Beatles, Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones in pop music. Forty thousand words trace this history, and the graphic and photographic illustrations are based to a major degree on the archives of EMI, then and now one of the greatest record companies in the world. Many of the illustrations are rare and most have never been in a book before.\" Excellent pages with some slight edge-wear. Includes dust-jacket in good condition.