The first remote recording of gramophone records in continental Europe (Zagreb, 1927)

Abstract

In 1926, in an alliance between the Zagreb pencil factory Penkala and the English company Edison Bell, a gramophone and gramophone record factory, was founded in Zagreb, under the name Edison Bell Penkala. In 1927 experts from that factory undertook the first remote recording of a gramophone record in continental Europe, using a telephone line. This was the third recording in the world, after the recordings in the New York Metropolitan opera house and in London’s Covent Garden. This article describes the technical recording methods used, from the microphone in Zagreb Cathedral, to the gramophone record cutting machine in a studio about 1250 m away. The recording arrangement was developed by Paul Voigt, an electrical engineer from Edison Bell Company who spent the second half of 1927 in Zagreb. It also describes the development of the necessary scientific base in Croatia from 1875 to the Second World War for such an enterprise.