On what date was Thomas Edison’s phonograph patent issued?

Thomas Edison’s phonograph patent was issued on February 19, 1878.

Edison filed the phonograph application after successful experiments in late 1877, when he demonstrated that a machine could record sound and play it back. The U.S. patent described a cylinder-based system using a stylus to trace vibrations into a recording surface and then reproduce them.

The patent date is different from the date of the first successful recording and from the date of Edison’s famous public announcement. Those events occurred earlier, in 1877, which is why timelines sometimes appear to give conflicting dates.

The phonograph made Edison internationally famous because it offered a striking demonstration: a machine could preserve and reproduce human speech. Later sound-recording technologies changed the materials and formats, but the central recording-and-playback idea remained influential.