Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park whose genius ushered in a new era of light and sound for humankind, invented the phonograph at his New Jersey laboratory on this day in history, Aug. 12, ...

It's video Friday! Today, one of the documentaries in the March of Time newsreel series that was shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. This one is called In the Groove: The History of the ...

MENLO PARK, N.J. (WHTM) — We’re used to sound recordings. Music (in multiple genres), audiobooks, phone messages, recordings of family history, alert boops and beeps on our phones…even the happy ...

Just the other day, I heard one of the earliest popular recorded sambas, Donga’s “Pelo Telefone,” from 1916 and released on an Edison talking record, probably a wax cylinder. A few years later the ...

December 24, 1877. Thomas Edison files a patent for the first phonograph capable of recording and playing sound. The groundbreaking product was a byproduct of Edison’s work to improve the telegraph ...

Mark Twain wanted to bring a phonograph to Quarry Farm in Elmira during summer 1888 Twain suffered from rheumatism in his shoulder and right hand and found it difficult to write longhand Twain would ...

Which phonograph record player is best? The phonograph, or gramophone, has been around since the 1800s and has gone through many changes. The modern record player that record fans look for has many ...

Ed Fearing placed a shellac composite record on his 1905 Victor phonograph. He cranked the handle, and “Poet and Peasant Overture” began, at first a little slow and distorted, then quickly catching up ...

A new technology under development in Berkeley could help thousands of long-dead Americans to "speak" again. Almost 130 years ago, Thomas Edison and other entrepreneur-inventors popularized sound ...

Say what you will about [Thomas Edison], but it’s hard to deny the genius of his self-proclaimed personal favorite invention: the phonograph. Capturing sound as physical patterns on a malleable medium ...