Phonautograph
The earliest known sound
recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented on March 25th 1857, as French patent #17,897/31,470
Was the invention of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (April 25th 1817 – April 26th 1879). He was a French printer and bookseller who lived in Paris.
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From 1854 he became fascinated in a mechanical means of transcribing vocal sounds. While proofreading some engravings for a physics textbook he came across
drawings of auditory anatomy. He sought to mimic the working in a mechanical device, substituting an elastic membrane for the tympanum, a series of levers for the ossicle, which moved a stylus he proposed would press on a paper, wood or glass surface covered in lampblack.
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The phonautograph used a horn to collect sound, attached to a diaphragm which vibrated a stiff bristle which inscribed an image on a lamp black coated, hand-cranked cylinder. Scott built several devices with the help of acoustic
instrument maker Rudolph Koenig. Unlike Edison's later but similar invention of 1877 , the phonograph, the phonautograph only created visual images of the sound and did not have the ability to play back its recordings. Scott de Martinville's device was used only for scientific investigations of sound waves.
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In 2008, the New York Times reported the discovery of a phonautogram from
April 9th 1860. The announcement of the discovery was accompanied by an
announcement that the visual recording was made playable "converted from squiggles on paper to sound by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California." The phonautogram was one of Leon Scott's forgotten images in Paris; they were scanned then processed by a sophisticated
computer program developed a few years earlier by the Library of Congress.
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The recording was a ten-second snippet of a singer, originally thought to be the daughter of the inventor, before it was discovered that the recording was played at twice normal speed and was probably his own voice, performing the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune". This phonautograph recording is now the earliest known recording of a human voice and music in existence, predating, by
twenty-eight years, the longest surviving Edison phonographic recording.
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EARLY CYLINDER RECORDINGS

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EARLY CYLINDER RECORDINGS
GROUP ONE
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1st Recording Ever Made (1878) (Tin Foil Cylinder) (Thomas A Edison)
Columbia, The Gem Of The Ocean (November 1900) (Edison Concert Band)
Edison Machine Rehearsal (1914) (Harry Houdini)
Hungarian Rag - One-Step (1913) (Edison Military Band)
March Of The Toys (1917) (American Symphony Orchestra)
Napoli (1921) (Imperial Marimba Band)
Old Black Joe (1902) (Arthur Collins - Byron Harlan)
Stars And Stripes Forever (1913) (John Philip Sousa Band)
Stuttering Dick (1908) (Edward Meeker)
Whistler and His Dog (1905) (Edison Military Band)

EARLY CYLINDER RECORDINGS
GROUP TWO
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A lucky Duck A Webfoot Promenade (Edison Symphony Orchestra) (April 1903)
Ach mein Otto hat 'ne Floete (Margarete Wiedeke) (May 1909)
Country Bred And Chicken Fed (Dale Wimbrow and his Rubeville Tuners)(1926)
El Capitan March (United States Marine Band) (1897)
Gasoline Gus and His Jitney Bus (Billy Murray) (June 21, 1915)
Get Out And Get Under The Moon (Frankie Marvin & His Uke) (May 12, 1928)
Good-bye Broadway Hello France (Arthur Fields With Chorus) (1917)
Let Us Not Forget - A Message To The American People (Thomas Alva Edison) (Dec 30, 1918)
Sadie Salome Go Home (Edward M. Favor) (1909)
Smokey Mokes (Peerless Orchestra)(1904)

EARLY CYLINDER RECORDINGS
GROUP THREE
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The Prisoners Song - Waltz (Kaplan's Melodists, Vernon Dalhart) (1925)
Fol-De-Rol-Lol (Edward M. Favor) (1905)
I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls (John W. Myers) (1904)
If Winter Comes (Atlantic Dance Orchestra) (July 10, 1922)
Its Hard To Kiss Your Sweetheart When The Last Kiss Means Good-bye (Arthur C. Clough) (July 1909)
Llewellyn March (William A. Moriarity) (December 1903)
Nothing Hardly Ever Troubles Me (Athur Collins & Byron G. Harlan )(1908)
Razzazza Mazzazza (Edison Concert Band) (November 1905)
Scrooges Awakening (Albert Whelan) (1904)
Thats Where I Come In (Edward M. Favor) (1909)

THOMAS EDISON
Edison's favorite invention was the phonograph. In 1877, he created a way to record sound on tinfoil cylinders by using two needles, one for recording and one for playback. The first words that Edison recorded were "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
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Ten years later, in 1887, Edison formed the Edison Phonograph Company to sell the phonograph to the public. This marked the beginning of the sound recording industry. The first records sold by the Edison and Columbia Phonograph Companies were on wax cylinders. These were brittle and broke easily. Columbia ceased production of wax cylinders in 1909 when discs became popular. The Edison National Phonograph Company continued making cylinders and discs until 1929.
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Cylinder records and other recordings made throughout the twentieth century are valuable primary resources.For the first time in political history, candidates in the 1908 presidential election (William Howard Taft, Republican and William Jennings Bryan, Democrat ) recorded speeches that were sold to the public.
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Many institutions such as the Smithsonian and Library of Congress are trying to preserve recordings such as these under a program called Saving America's Sounds.

Edison Phonograph
The phonograph was developed as a result of Thomas Edison's work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a
machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper
tape, which could later be sent over the telegraph repeatedly. This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a
similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point
and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made
indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder
with tin foil wrapped around it.
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When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale)
groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic,
John Kruesi, to build, which Kruesi supposedly did within 30 hours.
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The patent on the phonograph was issued on February 19, 1878. The invention was highly original. The only other recorded evidence of such an invention was in a
paper by French scientist Charles Cros, written on April 18, 1877. There were some differences, however, between the two men's ideas, and Cros's work remained
only a theory, since he did not produce a working model of it.
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The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established on January 24, 1878, to
exploit the new machine by exhibiting it. Edison received $10,000 for the
manufacturing and sales rights and 20% of the profits. As a novelty, the machine was an instant success, but was difficult to operate except by experts, and the tin foil would last for only a few playings.
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Eventually, the novelty of the invention wore off for the public, and Edison did
no further work on the phonograph for a while, concentrating instead on
inventing the incadescent light bulb.
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In the void left by Edison, others moved forward to improve the phonograph.
Alexander Graham Bell working with his cousin Chichester A. Bell, a chemical engineer, and Charles Sumner Tainter, a scientist and instrument maker. They made some improvements on Edison's invention, chiefly by using wax in the place of tin foil and a floating stylus instead of a rigid needle which would incise,
rather than indent, the cylinder. Bell and Tainter had representatives approach Edison to discuss a possible collaboration on the machine, but Edison refused and determined to improve the phonograph himself. At this point, he had succeeded in making the incandescent lamp and could now resume his work on the phonograph. His initial work, though, closely followed the improvements made by
Bell and Tainter, especially in its use of wax cylinders, and was called the New Phonograph.
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The Edison Phonograph Company was formed on October 8, 1887, to market Edison's
machine. He introduced the Improved Phonograph by May of 1888, shortly followed by the Perfected Phonograph. The first wax cylinders Edison used were white and
made of ceresin, beeswax, and stearic wax.
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Edison increased the entertainment offerings on his cylinders, which by 1892 were made of a wax known among collectors today as "brown wax." Although called by this name, the cylinders could range in color from off-white to light tan to dark brown. An announcement at the beginning of the cylinder would typically
indicate the title, artist, and company.