Edison Patents the Phonograph
On this day · 19 February 1878
On this day in 1878, Edison secured a patent for the first machine that could not only capture a human voice but play it back.
On February 19, 1878, the U.S. Patent Office granted Thomas A. Edison patent No. 200,521 for an “Improvement in phonograph or speaking machines.” Earlier inventors had built devices that could trace sound, but Edison’s was the first that could record a voice and then reproduce it for listening again later.
The machine worked through a tin-foil-wrapped cylinder. A needle attached to a vibrating diaphragm pressed tiny indentations into the foil as someone spoke; a second, lighter diaphragm then traced those marks back into audible sound. Edison famously tested it by reciting “Mary had a little lamb” and was stunned to hear the machine repeat his words.
“I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished.”
The patent described its aim plainly: to record in permanent characters the human voice so that such sounds “may be reproduced and rendered audible again at a future time.” The phonograph launched the recorded-sound industry and earned Edison the nickname The Wizard of Menlo Park.
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