The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

“On This Day in the History of Recorded Sound…”

December 6, 1877: John Kruesi completed the construction of the very first Phonograph. Thomas Edison adjusted a piece of tin foil to it, and spoke “Mary had a Little Lamb” into the recording phonet while turning the crank. To everyone’s amazement – including Edison’s (“I was never so taken aback in my life”), it spoke back the rhyme.

https://www.antiquephono.org/#/

The tin foil phonograph was not the first, but the best known in a series of Edison phonographs dating back to July 1877. However, earlier models were not yet stand-alone devices, but were designed as an integral part of a telegraph circuit.

Edison received his first patent, which included the phonograph, on October 20, 1877, in Canada: https://grammophon-platten.de/e107_plug ... .php?37054

The twentieth claim of this patent, which also includes six drawings of three models, describes the phonograph part: “The method herein specified for recording the undulations of the diaphragm or yielding material, and the reproduction of sound by such material acting upon a diaphragm to communicate to the same vibrations similar to the original ones ...”