The Kind people from The Museum of Lost Interaction have published a wonderful story about musics first sampler.
The PRAT Sampler, that is the Phono, Repeating, Audio, Track, Sampler, was found in the form of blueprint drawings, original instruction manual, and some company/personal papers of Edwin J Baird, dated back to 1916.
Baird’s innovation was not well documented, or immediately further developed, but did indeed lay the foundations - and was the precursor to all modern day multi-track audio recording.
The PRAT Sampler was of course a four track wax cylinder recording and sampling machine; developed for writers and composers, allowing them to create new music, loops and compositions without the need for a full band. This domestic looking artifact comprised an input horn, a length of musical pipe, a rotating shaft, four repeater arms and sound boxes, one recording arm and an output horn.
Ediwn J Baird was surely a visionary, his invention a true treasure for us to find and resurrect to its former glory.
To see a short film and hear what the sampler sounded like has a look at :
THE PRAT SAMPLER
How very interesting…