Phonographs: What are they?

Speech serves as humanity's greatest asset maybe aside from opposable thumbs. Speech, gestures, sounds are all methods of communicating our thoughts in order to coordinate actions with others. There are some things that people may struggle to convey through conventional means of communication though. Many have found their outlets in the arts; music, dance, physical art. All serve as profound and sufficient means to tell a story. Music serves as one of the most powerful means of communication. A song can tell the hardest stories of one's life all the while showing the very real emotions behind the story. Music has served as one of the world's most beloved methodologies of subverted communication but was confined to technological shortcomings up until beloved American inventor Thomas Edison created the very first phonograph. Edison's vision was a product that could deliver music to every home in the world allowing those unable to go to live showcases to indulge in musical deliverance without having to play or leave to listen.

The phonograph was/is a device that uses a needle on wax discs to reproduce a recorded sound. The original design utilized tin foil to create sound. While many know the phonograph was one of the first autonomous music delivery systems, it was an offshoot of other technologies that served as blueprints or inspirations. Devices like music boxes and ridged music turnstiles gave Edison hope to add on to devices previously made or at least incepted such as the paleophone or the phonautograph. One was a visual recording device with flawed calibrations that weren't actually perfected until this century whilst the other was strictly conceptual. There was no device that could both record and reproduce music other than humanity at the time.

The phonograph was and is something for America to be immensely proud of. Without the hardware Alexander Graham Bell's telephone concepts would be drastically different and the hardware near unrecognizable. Bell improved upon and altered the phonograph to create a device through his laboratory that would be able to have alternating wax discs allowing swift change from sounds and were also more durable than the heavily damageable foil sheets.

The phonograph gave way for the evolution of musical performance. Artists were given more power than ever before to speak their truths in manners that could reach all corners of the American and soon global public. Music is a universal concept that is completely subjective. Whether or not an aspect of it is negative is completely up to the listener at that point in time.

Edison's idea was to bring a phonograph to every home in America to indulge the people in what he thought was entitled culture and shared experience. America in modern day may be able to say we made at least one founding father's dreams a reality with the existence of technologies that give the people these abilities through smartphones, computers, and all other streaming devices. All in all, the creation of the phonograph and its offshoots gave way for groups of people who have no idea the others exist to share in a conveyed emotion and truly communicate in a way that simple speech or actions could never do successfully. Below are some great articles about what the phonograph did for not only Americans but human civilization as a whole!