Edison was nevertheless working on a telephone-related idea when he accidentally discovered sound reproduction. His idea was to get a machine that would help extend the range of phone lines (as voices could only travel a few kilometers at the time before the signal became too faint.) He had invented something similar to the Phonautograph for telegraphs, whereby incoming Morse code messages were punched into strips of paper, and then fed back into a telegraph. This repeater allowed for messages to be re-sent intact numerous times, extending the range of transmission indefinitely.
Edison was apparently working on a similar device for telephones, which could repeat and re-send phone signals, when he pricked his finger with one of the cactus needles he used as part of his sound-graphing device. The resulting curse he shouted was lightly engraved into the paper strip he was etching the phone signal onto, and when backing up the device, Edison heard the faintest reproduction of his swear word. I don’t think anyone ever found out what exact curse ended up being the first sound recording in history…
This was in 1877. In the same year, a French scientist already conceived of a full working phonograph and even patented it. He never built it, however, and so usually the credit for inventing the phonograph goes to Edison. This was mainly because of Edison’s well-marketed public unveiling of his device, during which he said “Mary had a little lamb” into his device and replayed it to the astonishment of an invited crowd. People had just gotten used to the previously insane notion that a voice could become detached and float far beyond the range of the human voice (with the telephone); now, they were confronted with voices being captured for posterity, as photographs had done for sights. (The word “phonograph” means “sound-writing.”) The sound quality was horrible at first (as it was for telephones in their early years), and Edison soon stopped working on phonographs, focusing instead on inventing the light bulb. He did plan on getting back to it, though, and envisioned three storage formats for sound: tape (actually long strips of coated paper), cylinders and flat discs. He also made a list of possible uses for this invention, which downplayed the potential for making them play music (because of the poor sound quality of the time), but emphasized such uses as recording books for the blind, having families preserve the voices of elderly relatives, as dictating devices for businesses, for the teaching of proper elocution as well as school subjects, as clocks that talk (for example, announcing lunchtime in a factory), combined with phones so people could record messages or conversations, etc. etc.
As with the birth of film about 20 years later, many other inventors came up with working sound reproducers more or less at the same time as Edison. Most early devices used cylinders covered in tinfoil—not the most durable of media. Each time you played it, the sound would get worse, until the indentations on the foil was totally smoothed out.
The first commercial version of a phonograph sold to the public was as a dictation device. Cylinder dictating machines were relatively popular by the end of the 1880s, used by the well-to-do and businesses. Such machines actually stayed in use well into the 1950s, when dictaphones using wire or tape instead of wax cylinders replaced them.
An article from Harper’s Magazine from 1886 on phonographs says a lot about their early stages. The author refers to the initial buzz and then tapering off of interest in Edison’s first phonograph, explaining that although several hundred were sold early on, they “failed to make a success, for the reason that the machine was not only a clumsy piece of mechanism, frequently getting out of adjustment, but more especially because the surface upon which the record was made was pliable, and likely to be obliterated by a mere accidental pressure on it.” This writer goes on to describe a new, improved kind of phonograph, invented by Chichester Bell (related to Alexander) and Sumner Tainter. The Bell-Tainter “graphophone” (essentially the word “phonograph” inverted) used a wax instead of a tinfoil surface. The wax was soft when the record was cut, and would be hardened afterwards. They also pioneered having the groove run side-to-side instead of up and down (as Edison’s record grooves did), and also unveiled a disc version of their new records to go with their new cylinders. The Harper’s author astutely pointed out that the new disc format could potentially be stamped on a press instead of cut one by one as cylinders were. He also mentions the possibility of voice-mail– literally, by sending a cylinder through the mail to someone who also has a graphophone.

A one-sided 7-inch record circa 1899-1901

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