Genesis

• John Krusei, an engineer and mechanic employed by Edison, constructed the first phonograph in slightly more than a day, working from a rough sketch and a few notes provided by his boss. Krusei presented the completed prototype to Edison on Aug. 12, 1877. He tested it by speaking a few lines from the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into the sound receiver while turning the hand crank. To everyone's pleasant shock, the machine worked perfectly the first time, clearly reproducing Edison's words.
  
  

First Phonographs

• The earliest phonographs were constructed from a wooden base, a hand crank, a metal cylinder, and a combination sound receiver/playback diaphragm. As the user turned the crank, the cylinder rotated and slowly moved along a grooved track while a sharp needle ran lightly over the surface of the cylinder. As words were spoken into the receiver, the sound waves vibrated the needle, which etched a copy of the noise onto the cylinder's coating material. Running the playback diaphragm and needle over these etchings a second time caused the sound waves to be audibly reproduced.
  
  

Cylinder Innovations

• Edison's initial test recordings used paper wrapped around the cylinder, but these recordings were extremely fragile and wore out after only a few plays. Edison achieved slightly better results by switching to tin foil, but wax-coated cylinders provided the best combination of durability and sonic fidelity. Frustrated by the relatively short recording time of his first cylinders--a mere two minutes and much too short to record most songs--Edison increased playback time to four minutes by packing more grooves onto a cylinder of the same size. As a result of these improvements, many Edison wax cylinders still exist today and frequently provide both an impressive listening experience and an important historical record of the time.
  
  

Diamond Disc

• Although Edison dominated the early days of the recording industry, many competitors soon appeared. Although a number of these companies stuck with the cylinder format that Edison had already introduced, such rivals as the Victor Talking Machine company employed a disc-based playback system that provided higher fidelity and longer playing times. Edison soon countered with his own disc format, the Diamond Disc. Unlike the thin, brittle discs of the competition, Edison's Diamond Disc were supremely durable and used a vertical stylus that provided unparalleled audio reproduction. However, Diamond Discs would not play on most non-Edison phonographs and Edison abandoned the music business on Oct. 21, 1929.
  
  

Phonograph's Later Years

• Beginning in the 1920s, the phonograph entered a period of rapid innovation. Electric playback and amplification meant that lighter needles could be used, increasing the longevity of records. Vinyl records began to appear, providing a more natural tone. The introduction of the LP format and its slower disc speed meant that multiple songs could appear on the same side of the disc. Although largely supplanted by the compact disc in the 1980s and, later, the MP3 player, the phonograph retains a small but devoted following.