Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park whose genius ushered in a new era of light and sound for humankind, invented the phonograph at his New Jersey laboratory on this day in history, Aug. 12, ...

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an ...

The first idea of a genuine talking-machine appears to belong to Thomas A. Edison, who, in 1875, took out patents upon a device intended to reproduce complex sounds, such as those of the human voice.

Ed Fearing placed a shellac composite record on his 1905 Victor phonograph. He cranked the handle, and “Poet and Peasant Overture” began, at first a little slow and distorted, then quickly catching up ...

DENVER — Whenever Gary Stone receives a delivery at his Denver home, history usually arrives. "From a historical perspective, the radios, the TVs, the phonographs, all are just so fascinating to me ...

MONTESANO — In Bob Carter’s private museum of phonographs and radios, shelves are crowded with the technology of the past. Glass vacuum tubes peek out from between wooden panels, burnished metal and ...

Imagine if your couch or your coffee maker suddenly started talking to you — or perhaps launched into the chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” What would your reaction be? Consider that, ...

DECATUR, Ga. — A bill in the legislature is getting some heat from record collectors for describing a phonograph as “anachronistic.” That word describes something as outdated, and record collectors ...