Although Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph—the earliest machine capable of recording and reproducing sound—others also made significant pioneering developments related to sound recordings. Some of the earliest surviving recordings include:
- Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville's Phonautograph (1857), which etched a wavy line onto a rotating glass cylinder covered in lampblack to create a visual record of sound vibrations but didn't actually play back the sound.
- Charles Cros's Paléophone (1877), which used a light-sensitive material to record sound vibrations onto a rotating cylinder covered in gelatin, but was never built.
- Alexander Graham Bell's Photophone (1880), which used a light beam and a selenium photocell to transmit and reproduce sound, but was limited by the poor sensitivity of selenium.
First commercially available sound recordings
The first commercially available sound recording was the phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. It used a cylinder coated in tinfoil to record and reproduce sound, and was sold as a novelty item until it was replaced by the gramophone in the 1880s. The first commercially available gramophone was introduced in 1888 by Emile Berliner, who used a flat disk instead of a cylinder, which allowed for longer and higher-quality recordings.
First commercial albums
The first commercial albums, in the sense of a collection of songs or pieces of music recorded together and sold as a single item, were released in the early 1900s. These early albums were typically made up of 78-rpm gramophone records, which could hold about 3 minutes of music per side. Some of the first commercial albums included:
- Victor Talking Machine Company's "Red Seal Records" (1903), which featured recordings by Enrico Caruso, Victor Herbert, and other famous artists.
- Columbia Records' "Grafonola Records" (1905), which featured recordings by Harry Lauder, George M. Cohan, and other popular performers.
- Edison Records' "Diamond Discs" (1910), which featured recordings by John Philip Sousa, Thomas Edison himself, and other musicians.
These early albums were a significant step forward in the history of recorded sound, as they allowed listeners to enjoy a longer and more varied selection of music at home. They also paved the way for the development of the modern music album, which became a staple of the music industry in the 20th century.