LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Phonograph: Thomas Edison
built 633 days ago
The first practical phonograph was built by the American inventor Thomas Edison in 1877. Edison recorded sound on a cylinder, which was then rotated against a needle. The needle moved up and down in the grooves of the record, producing vibrations that were magnified by a small conical horn to form sound waves. Because of the vertical movement of the needle, this recording method was called the “hill-and-dale” process. Hill-and-dale Edison disks were ... developed; they continued in use for home phonographs and for radiobroadcasting in the U.S. and abroad until the late 1920s.
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The first great invention developed by Edison in Menlo Park was the tin foil phonograph. While working to improve the efficiency of a telegraph transmitter, he 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. He 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."
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The phonograph ... made Edison's reputation as the "Inventor of the Age" and led to his most famous nickname "The Wizard of Menlo Park." Newspaper reporters flocked to the Menlo Park Laboratory to see the new invention and to interview Edison. A constant stream of articles about the inventor, including anecdotes and biographical sketches, led to his becoming one of the most famous men in the world as the phonograph was exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. However, the tinfoil recordings were never entirely satisfactory, and it was another ten years before Edison produced a more commercial design using wax cylinders for recording.
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In the void left by Edison, others moved forward to improve the phonograph. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell won the Volta Prize of $10,000 from the French government for his invention of the telephone. Bell used his winnings to set up a laboratory to further electrical and acoustical research, working with his cousin Chichester A. Bell, a chemical engineer, and Charles Sumner Tainter, a scientist and instrument maker. They made some improvements on Edison's invention, chiefly by using wax in the place of tin foil and a floating stylus instead of a rigid needle which would incise, rather than indent, the cylinder. A patent was awarded to C. Bell and Tainter on May 4, 1886. The machine was exhibited to the public as the graphophone.
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In 1996, the band They Might Be Giants recorded "I Can Hear You," performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. This song was released on Factory Showroom in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. The band ... performed and recorded a song about Edison, a studio recording of which appeared on their 1999 internet-only release Long Tall Weekend and subsequently on their first album aimed towards a younger audience, No!
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The phonograph was developed as a result of Thomas Edison's work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape, which could later be sent over the telegraph repeatedly. This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could ... be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback.
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Thomas Edison