Meet Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph from 1877 

Everything was impossible until someone did it.

I had a smallish collection of Edison phonographs for a number of years. Playing them and playing with them was some of the greatest fun I've ever had. Hearing 100+ year-old voices from the original recordings made the back of my neck tingle.

Thomas Edison’s hi-fi setup lol.

We were just reading about Thomas Edison in a Life of Fred math book, and your video gave us a better understanding of what the machine looked like.

This was purely Edison's. There were experiments in which a diaphragm and needle were used to make traces on lamp-black covered glass, but these were meant to help analyze sound waves, not to store sounds. A century or so later a computer was used to scan these traces and thus reproduce, after a fashion, the sounds (French words, I think) that were uttered to make them. Edison's patent utterly startled everyone, for there were no precedents whatsoever for the reproduction of sound.. He was thirty, almost deaf, but had already developed the ticker tape machine and the concept of a dedicated research lab. After his machine proved a success, it was thought that it would be used solely as a dictating machine (I think Dictaphone was Edison's company.) Music recordings were an afterthought. Edison's records would have been better if he could have heard the music, and his movies would have been better had he not developed into a first-class curmudgeon, but there is no question that he was a true genius. And no, he didn't steal any of Tesla's work: two geniuses seldom work together very well. The difference is that Tesla wandered off into mental illness by middle age (it happened to many such people who did their finest work in their youth) but for whatever reason Edison maintained his composure and productivity throughout his long life.

Earliest machine for playing back sound, not recording it. Leon Scott deserves more recognition, especially since his records have now been played back.

The phonograph and Edison deserve more recognition considering the massive impact the phonograph had on history being the very first device in all of human history to playback recorded sound, creating a revolutionary change in technology, and having a massive impact on engineering and physics....Edison should have won a Nobel prize for the phonograph

What is more cool is that despite the year it was invented, a few humans that were around when the cylinder phonograph was useful lived to see the inventions from the 2000's and half of the 2010's. Octogenarians, Nonagenarians, Centenarians, and Supercentenarians can teach you a lot about the past.

Amazing!

A beautiful machine! Could definitely use a little clean up, some oil, and a new crank handle.

can't imagine how he reached the invention without maths and physics education

Wow!

What about the 1857 Phonautograph invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville? That's where you can hear the 1860 "Au Clair de La Lune" recording.

TE didn't invent it, he just improved on scott's idea.

That machine must be worth an INSANE! amount of money

in 200 year they are going to look our technology like, saying like they used google really ?

y’know thomas edison didn’t invent sound recording

THANK YOU!!!

Could this be used again to record more recordings do you think?

fascinating

Can you kindly let me know whether Edison Amberola 30 could be use for primitive recording by wrapping a tin foil to the cylinder and use of an adaptor with a needle Are there any adaptor in the market. Thank you. Gehan

The recording when it was new would likely be better than what it is today

Awesome possum

do you know what words are recorded on the tinfoil

1877-2000s Tin foil to Hifi audio... 👍❤️

He didn’t invent it, he perfected it.

The real inventor is Leo Scott but Edison took the credits

Wrong edouard leon made this machine but some how edison gets the praise just like he did with the lighbulb

1:38 '70's music! 1870's music, to be sure, But I had some 8 Track tapes from the NINETEEN 70's that ware almost that distorted. LOL. While ol' T.A. Edison did NOT invent the light bulb, (I am from a Westinghouse family, So I heard of the "battle of the currents" for my whole life!) Edison DID give us records, that was a pretty cool thing. An overlooked thing about Edison's original phonograph, it was a RECORDER and a PLAYER. Later phonographs sold to the public were (mostly) players. While making disk records at home was a "thing" it was NOT very common, Magnetic tape would make "home recording" a more common "thing", and THAT revolution would only happen in the 1950s.

Why is the world just hearing of stuff like this? Plus how come i never in 48 years heard that in the 20"s there was a machine that talked to the dead. 😅 Used as entertainment & had its own radio program.

:)

🤓🤓🤓🤓🧪😉

0:08

İngilizce olduğuna bir halt anlamıyorum Edison un yaptığı fonografmıymış neymiş ne diyo anlamıyorum ne diyon teyzem

Odd mouth

Wrong, a French inventor beat him by more than 15 years