A tour of the archives beneath Schenectady's Museum of Innovation and Science is a journey through America's history with ...

In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) invented the tin foil phonograph – a machine that recorded sound by indenting a sheet of tin foil into a groove in a cylinder. A later wax version was ...

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 ...

To his amazement, the machine played his words back. This was the very start of recorded sound in 1878. A patent was issued on the phonograph on February 19th, 1878; the invention was highly original.

Edison’s phonograph used a needle to etch sound waves onto a rotating cylinder covered with tinfoil, allowing sound to be played back, which was a revolutionary concept in the late 19th century.