Hear echoes of the Victorian age, captured in some of the world’s first audio recordings, in this video essay on the ...

It’s not an accident that the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys all have names typically used for people (though they’re not all named ...

He thought his device could amplify the particles, similar to how a human voice can be amplified and recorded by a phonograph. Edison wrote plans and theories for this ghost machine, but it is ...

Something similar could be (and, for all I know, may have been) done for Edison cylinder phonographs--they ran in families. Here's a quick rundown of the principal models you're likely to encounter.

Once the basic principle of the phonograph was discovered, the years of arduous work on its development by Edison and others dealt largely with the composition and handling of materials for ...

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 ...

The first was the standard disc reproducer issued with the first Edison disc phonographs in around 1913 (development and release of the disc phonographs was a complicated, lengthy, messy process). For ...

Delivered weekly. Sign Up The phonograph’s potential was immediately recognized, with Edison envisioning applications ranging from dictation and education to entertainment. However, early models were ...

Hello, and welcome back to This Week in History! Writing this column always feels like an adventure, especially after returning from nearly a two-month break.

The two American innovators – Thomas Edison, the inventor of both the electric light bulb and the phonograph, and Henry Ford, pioneer of the automobile – were good friends who built their ...

Dual flush toliets reduce water usage by about 65 percent. Wood for the high ceiling in the dining area was salvaged from an old Thomas Edison phonograph factory in Wisconson. High performance ...