First off, I congratulate the computer Watson for its successes on the show Jeopardy!. Watson seems to be holding Ken Jennings and the other guy who isn’t Ken Jennings at bay, just as Watson’s older brother Deep Blue took two wins against chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. Truly, the era of technology has advanced far beyond what we thought was science fiction.

But what if I told you that this run of “artificial intelligence” – in which a human is fooled into thinking that a machine actually can think and perform like a real person – had been demonstrated by Thomas Edison as far back as 90 years ago – and one of the largest demonstrations Edison ever conducted was in Albany, at the Washington Avenue Armory?

I see that I have your attention.

Let us travel back in time, to the invention of the phonograph. From the 1890’s until 1929, Thomas Edison’s company manufactured cylinder recordings, while two other music companies, Columbia and Victor, produced flat disc records. Flat disc records were more durable and easier to store than cylinder records, and the Columbia-Victor manufacturing duopoly garnered the larger share of the market, leaving Edison in the dust.

Undaunted, the Wizard of Menlo Park invented a new type of phonograph, a “Diamond Disc” phonograph. It played flat records, just like the Victor and Columbia phonographs, but an Edison Diamond Disc player had several specific incompatibilities with its phonographic brethren. The records were almost a quarter of an inch THICK – they were so durable, Captain America could have used one as a replacement shield. The records rotated at 80 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the standard 78 RPM of the day. And in another case of incompatibility, the grooves in Edison’s Diamond Disc records were “vertical cut,” in that the needle picks up the sound information on the bottom of the record’s grooves, as opposed to the “lateral cut” of other records. In fact, the diamond-tipped stylus of an Edison Diamond Disc phonograph could last for decades, while the steel needles in your average Victrola had to be replaced after EVERY PLAY.

Dozens of Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph stores popped up around the United States, including one that operated from 1917 to 1927 on 74 North Pearl Street in downtown Albany. In fact, most of the Diamond Disc phonographs still have engraved nameplates inside their lids – nameplates of the stores from where they first originated.

Now back to Edison. To promote his revolutionary phonograph, Edison took his product through several promotional “tone tests.” People were invited to a concert hall. Edison would have one of his vocalists perform a song, and halfway through the song the vocalist would stop singing – but the phonograph next to that singer would continue playing the record, with that artist’s vocals on it. Many attendees of tone tests claimed (at least according to Edison’s advertising campaigns) that they could not tell the difference between a live vocalist and a phonograph record – thus passing what would later become the Turing Test. Edison used these claims to promote the superior sound quality of his Diamond Discs over his competition’s products.

One of Edison’s most successful tone tests occurred on November 25, 1919. At the time, the New York State Teachers Association was in the midst of their annual convention, and 10,000 teachers and principals came to Albany for the three-day event. During the convention, 6,000 members of the NYSTA crammed into the Washington Avenue Armory to hear Metropolitan Opera baritone Mario Laurenti perform alongside a Diamond Disc phonograph. Again, it was reported at the time that the audience could not tell the difference between the flesh-and-blood baritone and the mahogany-and-brass machine.

Edison used the tone test, along with a letter of praise and endorsement from Dr. John Finley, President of the State University of New York, in advertisements for years, along with calling his music player a “phonograph with a soul.” Yeah, it’s probably a stretch to equate a record player to Pinocchio, or even Motoko Kusanagi, but at the time Edison’s Diamond Disc player was truly a viable listening alternative.

But if the records were superior in quality to whatever Victor and Columbia were producing, what happened?

Well, a few things happened. Edison had to approve every recording, and his love of Victorian parlour ballads and “old home” songs didn’t match with the rise of early jazz and orchestral music. And when you’re asking a man who was almost stone deaf to act as your record company’s A&R man, well…

Also, as more record companies came into existence, they chose to use the Columbia-Victor phonograph format, leaving Edison behind.

And as the sales for Edison Diamond Discs began to wane, the dealerships closed up. The shop at 74 North Pearl Street? It became a shoe store in 1927. And by 1929, Edison stopped production of the Diamond Disc phonograph. Perhaps it was the Betamax of its time – or maybe even the HD DVD of the Roaring 20’s, a superior format that lost out to its competition.

But on that night in November 1919, Edison’s Diamond Disc player was able to fool an audience of 6,000 teachers, principals and administrators into believing that it produced not a recording, but the actual living voice of a famous opera singer.

And maybe 90 years from now, someone will too look back at our time and marvel at how quaint it was that a computer competed on a quiz show.

We’ll check back on this in the year 2101.

NOTE: Edison Diamond Disc graphics above came from the eBay auction at this link.