In the New Jersey laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison, the technology that enabled the modern music industry was born, where he invented the first device capable of recording and playing back sound. On this day in 1878, he received U.S. Patent No. 200,521 for his invention…the phonograph.
Edison’s creation emerged as a byproduct of his extensive work in telephony and telegraphy. To enable the repeated sending of a single telegraph message, he devised a technique for recording Morse code as a series of indentations on a spool of paper.
Believing that a comparable function could be executed for the telephone, Edison developed a system that conveyed the vibrations of a diaphragm—i.e., sound—to an embossing point and, subsequently, mechanically on an impressionable medium. Initially using paraffin paper and later a cylinder wrapped in tin foil as he enhanced his idea, Edison and his mechanic, John Kreusi, diligently worked on the invention during the autumn of 1877, quickly producing a functional model for demonstration. It was reported on December 22, 1877, that “Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night.”
The patent granted to Edison on February 19, 1878, outlined a specific method (embossing) for recording sound onto tin-foil-covered cylinders. The subsequent significant advancement in recording technology was made by Edison’s rival in the quest to create the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell. His newly formed Bell Labs introduced a phonograph that utilized engraving on a wax cylinder, a major enhancement that directly contributed to the successful commercialization of recorded music in the 1890s and established a vocabulary for the recording industry—terms like “cutting” records and “spinning wax”—that has persisted long beyond the technology that inspired it.
