Thomas Edison created the phonograph, the first device to record and reproduce sound, in 1877.
Edison’s original machine recorded sound by making grooves in a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus traced the vibrations produced by the speaker’s voice, and the same stylus could later reproduce those vibrations as audible sound. Edison demonstrated the device publicly in December 1877, helping make the invention famous.
The phonograph was not the first attempt to visualize or record sound, but it was the first machine that could both record and play it back. Edison initially imagined uses including dictation, music, and preserving speech. The tinfoil recordings were fragile and could usually be played only a limited number of times.
Emile Berliner later developed the gramophone, which used flat discs rather than Edison’s cylinders and became more practical for mass production. “Phonograph” is also used broadly for later record players, although Edison’s 1877 machine was a cylinder device.