Graduola Sound Controller c.1912
In 1912 Frederick James Empson from Sydney patented a sound controlling device called the Graduola.
The device allowed the tone and volume of a gramophone to be controlled via a Bowden cable (a bicycle brake cable). It was, in effect, an early remote control device.
By pulling out a plunger attached to a Bowen cable from the side of the gramophone, you can control the tone and volume of the gramophone while seated next to it.
The patent had two parts, one for the horn and one for the plugging mechanism that went into the neck of the horn. The plug was controlled by the Bowden cable, opening and closing the throat of the gramophone.
Empson took his invention to London and on January 17th 1915, persuaded the Aeolian Company to listen to his amazing invention. They were impressed enough to send him to their head office in New York, where he persuaded the company to fit their new Aeolian-Vocalion phonograph range with the ‘Graduola’.
The Aeolian advertisements of the time heaped praise on the ingenuous Australian invention. It was quite a story, but it turned into a tragic one when Empson’s wife was killed in a car crash while they were on honeymoon. One newspaper headlined its story: Dead: Girl who gave Gramophones a ‘Throat’.
