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, ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

When Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, he gave the world its first device that could both record and replay sound. A vibrating diaphragm pressed a stylus into soft wax, carving microscopic ...