1918 Yellow Curtiss JN-4 1:24 Scale Model Plane

In 1894 or 95, a German immigrant to the U.S. named Emile Berliner introduced a commercial version of the record player he had been developing since about 1887. The player used a disc instead of a cylinder (although Edison, Tainter, Cros, and others had anticipated the use of the disc). The record was made on a zinc disc coated with wax. Once a recording was carved into the wax, the disc was dipped in an acid solution, which ate away the disc under the groove and etched the recording into the surface of the zinc. Then, using an electroplating process, the zinc disc was turned into a stamper that could be used to produce the final recordings in large numbers by pressing the stamper into a ball of "Vulcanite" (hard rubber). He called it the "gramophone."