Most of us have heard of the phonograph and the gramophone.  But how about the graphophone or the phonoautograph? There were several steps between the phonograph and the CD: here are some of the prominent ones.

The Phonoautograph.  This device was invented by Leon Scott in 1957—perhaps the earliest recording device known, although it had little practical use.  A membrane vibrated in response to a sound, causing a pen to draw a line recording the sound’s waveform on a sheet of paper.  It could record, but it could not play back.

The Phonograph.  Thomas Edison’s 1877 invention is considered the true beginning of recorded sound.  The “tinfoil phonograph” relied on a rotating cylinder coated in aluminum foil.  To record a sound, a stylus drew grooves in the soft surface of the cylinder.  To play it back, a needle was traced through the grooves, and an amplifying device magnified the resulting vibrations.

The Graphophone.  This improved version of the phonograph was invented by Charles Tainter and Alexander Graham Bell in 1879.  They used paper cylinders coated with wax instead of aluminum foil.  The cylinders lasted longer—Edison’s tinfoil cylinders deteriorated severely after a few uses—and reproduced high-pitched sounds better. 

The Gramophone.  One of the problems with Edison’s and Bell’s variations on cylinder recording technology is that the cylinders couldn’t be reproduced cheaply and in large numbers. 

Emile Berliner’s gramophone solved that problem.  Instead of tracing grooves of varying depths into a cylinder, Berliner used a flat disc with grooves of varying widths and uniform depths.  The discs were much easier and cheaper to reproduce in bulk, and the gramophone was the first recording device available to the public.