It manufactured and advertised both gramophones and records. When he resumed work on the phonograph nearly 10 years later, another inventor had moved it one step closer to the record player.īerliner's company merged with that of inventor Eldridge Johnson to become the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1901.
Edison put it aside to pursue work on other inventions. Interest in the machine waned as its applications proved impractical in its current state. He considered applying the technology to toys such as talking dolls and music boxes.īut the phonograph proved too difficult for most people to use, and the tinfoil on which the recordings were made did not last. Edison originally thought that the phonograph would be useful in offices for dictation, for families to record their history or for teachers to record lessons. The phonograph was a breakthrough, as it had the ability not only to record sound, but to play it back. When the cylinder was set to the beginning and the needle placed in the grooves, the original sound was reproduced as the vibrations were amplified.Įdison created his first voice recording by shouting the words to "Mary had a little lamb" into a mouthpiece, causing the sound waves to vibrate a needle and etch the nursery rhyme into tinfoil for playback. A second needle and an amplifier were on the other side. When sound waves were forced into the receiving end, it caused the membrane to vibrate and the needle to etch a groove into the foil as the cylinder was being turned by the crank, thus recording sound. On one side was a diaphragm, or very thin membrane, connected to a needle. He eventually designed a device he called the phonograph that had a brass cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, which rotated and moved lengthwise when turned by a hand crank.
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