Just the other day, I heard one of the earliest popular recorded sambas, Donga’s “Pelo Telefone,” from 1916 and released on an Edison talking record, probably a wax cylinder. A few years later the ...

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, ...

“USA250: The Story of the World’s Greatest Economy” is a yearlong WSJ series examining America’s first 250 years. Read more about it from Editor in Chief Emma Tucker. Technology and entertainment in ...

"An exhibition in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the invention of the phonograph." "Catalog coedited by Iris Bodin, and Randall S. Koladis ...

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first device to ever record and play back sound. Speaking into a mouthpiece caused a metal stylus attached to a diaphragm to move up and down. The stylus made ...