If you think of records as platters, you are of a certain age. If you don’t remember records at all, you are even younger. But there was a time when audio records were not flat — they were drums, ...

But there’s one man – and a very strange invention we would likely never have listened to music without – who we have to thank for it all. The story of sound recording, and reproduction, began 143 ...

One hundred years ago on a December day in 1877, the world’s first recording session took place in a laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. It was strictly a one-man show. A 30-year-old scientist, Thomas Alva ...

On December 7, 1877 Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph at the New York City offices of the nation's leading technical weekly publication, Scientific American. The following report set off a ...

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 ...

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an ...

Imagine if your couch or your coffee maker suddenly started talking to you — or perhaps launched into the chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” What would your reaction be? Consider that, ...

Thomas Edison was America's premier inventor of new technologies. He was a genius at the work. His nearly 1,100 U.S. patents include the electric light, motion picture camera, film projector, electric ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. This is a stock certificate for 50 ...