ABSTRACT
Thomas Edison was the first to demonstratethe phonograph in public, when he took his prototype to the New York City offices of the Scientific American magazine in 1877. There, witnesses reported, the phonograph greeted them and inquired after their health. They were fascinated by the apparent simplicity of the device; it was “a little affair of a few pieces of metal,” not a complicated machine with “rubber larynx and lips.” Wrapped around a cylinder rotated by hand, the tinfoil recording surface was impressed with indentations that formed “an exact record of the sound that produced them” and comprised what was termed “the writing of the machine.” These words or “remarks” could then be “translated” or played back. Observers seemed for a time to believe that they themselves might translate, using a magnifying glass painstakingly to discern phonetic dots and dashes. But the really remarkable aspect of the device arose, one onlooker marveled, in “literally making it read itself.” It was as if “instead of perusing a book ourselves, we drop it
into a machine, set the latter in motion, and behold! The voice of the author is heard repeating his own composition.1 Edison and his appreciative audience clearly assumed that his invention would soon provide a better, more immediate means of stenography. Machinery, accurate and impartial, would objectively and materially realize the author’s voice.
