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, ...

Aug. 12, 1877, is the date popularly given for Thomas Alva Edison’s completion of the model for the first phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders.

Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park whose genius ushered in a new era of light and sound for humankind, invented the phonograph at his New Jersey laboratory on this day in history, Aug. 12, ...

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, ...

Thomas Edison seated beside a phonograph in 1921. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need ...

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 ...

The name Edison is well known to all of us here in the Coachella Valley. As the region's largest utility, we see their trucks, use their power, and pay their bills. However, it's easy to forget the ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. Photograph of Thomas Alva Edison's ...

Phonographs were invented in 1877. The early ones had one needle for recording and another needle for playing. The music was recorded on tinfoil-coated cylinders using a needle to make tiny lines that ...