Thomas Edison’s phonograph was the earliest known modern recording device.  It was the first breakthrough in modern recording technology, perhaps one of the most important inventions of our time—and it happened almost as an afterthought.

Edison didn’t start out to “invent” the phonograph.  At the time, he was working on a machine that would record telegraphic messages through indentations in paper tape.  If the invention worked, recordings could be sent back through a telegraph machine at a later date—or at more than one time.  

While working on this new improvement to the telegraph, it occurred to Edison that telephone conversations could be recorded the same way.  To test his theory, Edison created a diaphragm with an embossing point held against wax paper.  When he spoke into the diaphragm, the point made indentations in the paper.

The soft, engraved surface had to be kept moving to work—so Edison drew plans to wrap a metal cylinder with soft tinfoil.  There was a diaphragm and needle for recording, and one for playing back.   He tested his invention by speaking the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” into the recorder.  To his amazement, it played his own voice back to him. Without realizing it, he’d invented the first tinfoil phonograph.

Edison filed a patent for his invention on December 24, 1877.  Soon other brilliant minds came along and made improvements to his invention.  Within a few years, gramophone machines based on Edison’s phonograph made their way into thousands of American homes.   

Although others were responsible for most of the improvements that made home music systems available to the public for the first time, Edison is truly the giant whose shoulders support these other inventors.