He recorded the nursery rhyme "Mary had a little lamb," recited his own name, and played a tune. On December 24, 1877, Edison performed the first public demonstration of his phonograph using the nursery rhyme recording. Within ten years, Edison's invention made its first commercial appearance.
The phonograph is an early example of a sound-recording and reproducing device that uses a stylus or needle to record sound waves on a cylindrical or disc-shaped medium that is coated with a material (such as tinfoil) that the stylus can cut into or engrave. The phonograph reproduces sound by playing back the recorded sound waves from the medium as the stylus moves along it.