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, ...

MENLO PARK, N.J. (WHTM) — We’re used to sound recordings. Music (in multiple genres), audiobooks, phone messages, recordings of family history, alert boops and beeps on our phones…even the happy ...

One hundred years ago on a December day in 1877, the world’s first recording session took place in a laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. It was strictly a one-man show. A 30-year-old scientist, Thomas Alva ...

Phonographs were invented in 1877. The early versions had one needle for recording and another needle for playing. The music was recorded on tinfoil-coated cylinders using a needle to make tiny lines ...

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, ...

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first device to ever record and play back sound. Speaking into a mouthpiece caused a metal stylus attached to a diaphragm to move up and down. The stylus made ...

Phonographs were invented in 1877. The early ones had one needle for recording and another needle for playing. The music was recorded on tinfoil-coated cylinders using a needle to make tiny lines that ...

Thomas Alva Edison’s self-proclaimed greatest invention, the phonograph, won him overnight fame. Journalists would marvel that such an acoustic revolution, adding a whole new dimension to human memory ...

Hard of hearing, Thomas Edison found a unique way to appreciate piano music. As someone played, the great inventor would lean in close to the instrument, right above the keys, and he’d bite the piano.