Mr. Edison's Phonograph

Thomas A. Edison,
between 1900 and 1920.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920

President Harding
Speaking into Phonograph, 1922.
Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-present

August 12, 1877, is the date popularly given for Thomas Alva Edison's completion of the model for the first phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders. It is more likely, however, that work on the model was not finished until November or December of that year, since Edison did not file for the patent until December 24, 1877.

While working to improve the efficiency of a telegraph transmitter, Edison noted that the tape of the machine gave off a noise resembling spoken words when played at a high speed. This caused him to wonder if he could record a telephone message. Edison began experimenting with the diaphragm of a telephone receiver by attaching a needle to it. He reasoned that the needle could prick paper tape to record a message. His experiments led him to try a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which, to his great surprise, played back the short message he recorded, "Mary had a little lamb."

Edison's discovery was met first with incredulity, then awe, earning him the moniker "The Wizard of Menlo Park." By 1915, sound recording, which evolved from Edison's invention, was rapidly becoming established as an American industry.

As a young boy growing up on an Illinois farm in the late nineteenth century, Harry Reece remembered the invention of the phonograph as one in a series of technological marvels:

Electric lights were something to marvel at…the old Edison phonograph with its wax cylinder records and earphones was positively ghostly…and trolley cars, well they too were past understanding!
"Harry Reece,"
New York, New York, Earl Bowman, interviewer,
November 29 1938.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940

Enjoy early sound recordings and motion pictures from the Edison companies:

• Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles. Cylinder sound recordings will be added to this site in the near future. In addition, histories are given of Edison's involvement with motion pictures and sound recordings, as well as a special page focusing on the life of the great inventor.
• Listen to another sampling of early recordings produced by the Thomas Edison company and found in the American Variety Stage Audio Sampler section of Sound Recordings. It features such gems as the classic "rube" sketch "Arkansas Traveler" and Billy Murray singing George M. Cohan's World War I anthem "Over There."
• Learn more about Emile Berliner who was responsible for the development of the microphone, flat recording disc and gramophone player. Search on the term acoustical engineering in Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry to read, for example, a 1927 newspaper clipping concerning a "New Acoustic Device Shown by Berliner" in the "echo infested" auditorium of the James F. Oyster school in Washington, D.C..
• Read the Today in History feature on Edison's kinetoscope, the forerunner of the motion-picture film projector. Search the Today in History Archive on the keywords inventor or invention to find more features on creative Americans including Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel F.B. Morse, Elias Howe, and Henry Ford.
• Search across on the name Warren Harding in the collection American Leaders Speak, 1918-1920 to hear Harding speak on subjects of concern to U.S. citizens at that time. Hear Harding speak, for example, on the topic of the nation's readjustment following World War I.