Gianni Bettini

Gianni Bettini (1860, Novara – 27 February 1938, San Remo) was a gentleman inventor and a pioneer audiophile who invented several phonograph improvements.

In the 1890s he was a New York socialite, living in the swanky Central Park South neighborhood now in the center of Midtown on the edge of the Theater District.

Some of Bettini's most desirable recordings, such as those of the legendary tenor Jean de Reszke, had been made purely as an experiment and a personal favor to the inventor and were not listed, but the catalog intimated that copies of some unlisted items might be obtained by private arrangement.

Due to the combination of that loss, the very small number of copies previously produced, and the fragile and chemically unstable nature of the wax medium, Bettini cylinders are now extremely rare; a few dozen are known to exist.

Later in his career, Bettini invented an unusual motion-picture camera for amateur use which photographed the frames as an X–Y array on a flat glass plate, but it was not commercialized.