Wax Cylinders
This famous American inventor created the phonograph, which originally recorded sound onto wax cylinders.
Who is Thomas Edison?
This portable audio format, popular in the 70s and 80s, uses magnetic tape wound between two miniature reels inside a plastic shell.
What is a cassette tape?
Unlike analog vinyl records, CDs and DVDs store information using this digital system of 1s and Os.
What is binary?
The classic Parental Advisory label warns buyers about content that contains explicit lyrics or this type of language.
What is profanity (or swearing)?
This red fruit, often mistaken for a vegetable, is legally classified as a vegetable in the US for trade purposes, but is botanically a berry.
What is a tomato?
Before they were made of durable plastic-like materials, the very first phonograph cylinders were made out of this easily shaped metal foil.
What is tinfoil?
This is the name of the sharp, diamond-tipped needle that rides inside the grooves of a vinyl record to produce sound.
What is a stylus?
A standard CD or DVD player uses this type of concentrated light beam to read the data pits on the disc.
What is a laser?
This color scheme-specifically these two colors-makes up the famous, recognizable Parental Advisory logo block.
What are black and white?
Because it never spoils due to its low moisture and high acidity, archaeologists have found thousands-of-years-old pots of this sweet substance that are still perfectly edible.
What is honey?
Because wax cylinders could only hold about this many minutes of audio, early songs had to be very short.
What is 2 to 4 minutes?
Standard full-length vinyl records are designed to spin at this many revolutions per minute (RPM).
What is 33 1/3 RPM?
Smaller vinyl records, usually containing just one single and a B-side song, are designed to spin at this RPM.
What is 45 RPM?
This organization, abbreviated as the RIAA, is responsible for introducing the standard "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label.
What is the Recording Industry Association of America?
Despite its name, this popular green "nut" is actually a seed, and it gets its bright color from chlorophyll.
What is a pistachio?
This is the specific term for the grooved, tube-shaped object used to record and play back sound on a phonograph.
What is a cylinder?
If you accidentally leave a cassette tape near this object, the magnetic data can get completely wiped or distorted.
What is a magnet?
While vinyl records capture a continuous physical wave of sound, CDs capture audio by taking thousands of these snapshots per second.
What are samples?
Formed in 1985, this committee of concerned parents (led by Tipper Gore) successfully pressured the music industry to label explicit albums.
What is the MRC (Parents Music Resource Center)?
This carbonated soft drink was originally invented by a pharmacist in 1886 as a medicine to cure headaches and fatigue.
What is Coca-Cola?
Unlike vinyl records, early wax cylinders couldn't be easily mass-printed from a master copy, meaning musicians originally had to do this to make multiple copies.
What is perform the song over and over again?
This bulky, 8-track audio format predated the compact cassette and was famous for clicking loudly when it switched between its four stereo channels.
What is an 8-track tape?
This physical flaw on the shiny side of a CD or DVD is the most common reason the laser misses data, causing the audio to skip.
What is a scratch?
This legendary country/folk artist, famous for "Rocky Mountain High," surprisingly testified against music censoring and warning labels at a 1985 Senate hearing.
Who is John Denver?
Before the 17th century, almost all cultivated varieties of this crunchy orange root vegetable were actually dark purple or yellow.
What is a carrot?