- Students could listen to recordings of lectures, speeches, and musical performances to enhance their learning experience.
- Enabled educators to create audio resources with more variety and richness than books alone.
Preservation of music and voices:
- Allowed people to capture and reproduce performances that might otherwise have been lost, ensuring an archival value for musical and cultural preservation.
Entertainment source:
- Individuals could enjoy their favorite music at home, regardless of physical proximity to concert or performance venues.
- Enabled creation of music records that people could purchase and play on phonographs for leisure activities like dancing, parties, and social gatherings.
Medical applications:
- Used by doctors to analyze heart rate recordings.
Journalism tool:
- Reporters used early phonographs to record interviews without having to write everything down and later transcribe notes.
Additionally, it was useful for language learning purposes due to the ability to play and replay pronunciation recordings repeatedly.