Fig. 1. Replica of Edison's tinfoil phonograph (810681). (CSTM)

In 1877 Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the world's first sound recorder and reproducer. To make a record the user would speak into a mouthpiece, causing variations in air pressure, or sound waves, to set a small diaphragm vibrating. Attached to the diaphragm was a stylus that indented the vibration pattern in a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a rotating cylinder. To replay the record the user placed the stylus in the groove it had made and rotated the cylinder again. As the stylus rode over the "hills and dales" of the groove, the diaphragm vibrated as it had before, generating sound waves that approximated the original. This process of converting sound waves into a more or less permanent physical pattern that could be used to regenerate the original waves remains at the heart of all sound recording systems. The Museum has a replica of Edison's "tinfoil phonograph" built according to plans published in 1878.

Fig. 2. Edison's first "Spring Motor" model (760147), 1896-1901. (Peter Lindell/CSTM)

Initially, entrepreneurs sold or rented phonographs as dictating machines, but with little success. Around 1890, they discovered profits in placing coin-operated machines in bars, arcades and drugstores. Their popularity increased the demand for pre-recorded music and comedy, but it was only in 1901 that an economical method was found for making multiple copies of cylinder records. To feed the emerging market, phonograph manufacturers introduced cheaper models that were affordable to many middle-class households. Unlike the earlier electrically-driven machines (760131), these were run by spring motors wound up by hand. The Museum has 46 cylinder record players in the collection, made mainly by Edison and his chief rival, American Graphophone (later Columbia Phonograph).

Fig. 3. Graphophone Grand AG(760143), 1898 and after.(CSTM)

The Edison Opera A was the high point in the evolution of cylinder players. Combined with the new, hard celluloid Blue Amberol records, it offered the best recorded sound quality of the years before the First World War. Nevertheless, consumers increasingly rejected cylinder machines in favour of disk players after the turn of the century. Edison stopped making cylinder record players in 1929 but recording on reusable wax cylinders remained common in dictating machines until the end of the Second World War. The Museum has 31 such machines made by Edison and Dictaphone Corp (740325).

Fig. 5. Ediphone dictating machine (740326).(CSTM)

Fig. 4. Edison Opera A (760129) with wooden horn, 1911-1913. (CSTM)