Postcard Thursday: Edison's Phonograph and "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

On November 29, 1877 -- one hundred and forty-one years ago today -- Thomas Edison first demonstrated the device that he would patent seven months later as the phonograph.

Edison's first crude phonograph used tin foil and doubled as both the recording and playback instrument.

At the demonstration, Edison spoke Sarah Josepha Hale's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into a crude microphone. Flipping the phonograph into playback mode, Edison immediately played back the words he'd just recorded to the assembled audience.

And just like that, the future of entertainment was irrevocably changed.

Realizing that tin wasn't the right medium, Edison soon switched to wax cylinders (as shown in the photo of the inventor, above). Wax cylinders were then replaced by round discs and the modern record player was born.

It's a fun coincidence that November 29 is also the anniversary of the Beatles single "I Want to Hold Your Hand," the song that came out in 1963 and catapulted the group into super-stardom. The single was released in the US in December, launching Beatlemania -- and again changing popular entertainment forever.

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Happy Holidays! If you are looking for a great gifts this holiday season, Inside the Apple and Footprints in New York look great on anyone's shelves!

 

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

Postcard Thursday: Thomas Edison's Phonograph

Postcard of Thomas Edison with an early phonograph, ca. 1888.

Where would we be without Thomas Edison? As James noted over on his personal blog the other day (which you can read at http://jamesnevius.blogspot.com), Edison is responsible for so many inventions that define modern life: the light bulb, movie projector, and phonograph among them.

Today marks the anniversary of Edison's introduction of the wax cylinder phonograph in London in 1888. At a press conference there, Edison played a recording of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord," presumably on a machine very much like the one Edison is seen with in the postcard above (if not, in fact, that very machine).

A few months later, Sullivan -- infatuated with the possibilities of the new device -- made an "audio postcard" to send back to Edison in the United States. Luckily, both the original recording of Sullivan's piece (perhaps the oldest extant musical audio recording) and his message to Edison survive:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv7i-gkSWn0]

And if you want to hear a version of "The Lost Chord" in higher fidelity, here it is:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRx8-rgQyRs]

Lastly, notice that in the postcard version of Edison and the phonograph, the background has disappeared. This is the original image:

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Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,
you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or
from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.