You might be old enough to remember record platters, but you probably aren’t old enough to remember when records were cylinders. The Edison Blue Amberol records came out in 1912 and were far … ...

To operate his phonograph, Edison wrapped a sheet of tinfoil around the cylinder and set the needle so that it would etch a spiral groove into the foil as the crank was turned.

The designers concocted the Edison bottle, a simple glass beer bottle inscribed with music that can be played like a 19th-century phonograph cylinder.

It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The recording was originally made on a Thomas Edison-invented phonograph in St. Louis in 1878.

But back in 1877, the phonograph was a jaw-dropping miracle that changed the world and eventually made Thomas Edison a household name.

Edison was busy, but another inventor related to Bell created a similar system that used wax cylinders instead of foil. Edison’s vision for his invention didn’t include popular music, which ...

Then Edison switched to a metal cylinder wrapped in tinfoil, with two diaphragm-needle units: one for recording, one for playback.

His invention of the Edison Standard Phonograph brought music into the homes of countless Americans, and one of his early cylinder machines will occasionally turn up in galleries like ours.