The development of the phonograph would have lan-
guished, but Alexander Graham Bell (who had recently
received his patent for the first practical telephone) ad-
vanced the technology. He used the money awarded by
the French Government (the Volta Prize) to continue his
research in acoustical and electrical research. Bell, along
with his cousin and a colleague, devised an improve-
ment upon Edison’s tinfoil cylinder by replacing the tinfoil
with wax. This made the phonograph more efficient
Edison with Triumph Phonograph in 1906
because the wax was more durable; the tin-
foil cylinders would break after a couple of plays.
Thomas Edison was aware of Alexander Graham Bell’s
work, and once Edison had invented the lightbulb, he
returned to his work on the phonograph, now utilizing
wax cylinders.
It was intially unclear how to market the invention.
Even though Edison first recorded himself sing-
ing, his original intention was not to record music.
Rather, he thought it’s best use was for dictating buinsess
information. This idea failed, in part, because offices
employed stenographers who reacted negatively to the
device’s introduction. Edison also toyed with the idea of
adding wax cylinders and phonograph players inside
dolls to allow them to speak, as well as creating musical
cylinders for coin-slot phonographs, precursors of the
jukebox.
Ultimately, in the 1890s, Edison started selling his
phonographs and wax cylinders for pure entertain-
ment. The cylinders contained recordings of songs
- and even comedic dialogue. The popularity of the
phonograph was growing, but the early cylinders
could only record two or three minutes of audio.
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