In 1877, Thomas Edison began experimenting with a hybrid of the telephone and telegraph. He was hoping for a message that could be transmitted repeatedly over the telegraph. The message was to be a series of indentations on a spool of paper. This evolved into embossing on a tin foil-wrapped cylinder. He handed over the sketches to one of his workers at Menlo Park. John Kreusi built the machine in just 30 hours. He created a machine with a diaphragm with an embossing stylus that made indentations on paraffin paper when you spoke. Another stylus would play the sounds back. On Dec. 6, 1877, he brought it to the boss, Edison recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and they were shocked that it worked the very first time. However, Edison, ever the capitalist, deemed the invention to not be a potentially profitable one. His attention shifted to the light bulb. He did get a patent on Feb. 19, 1878, but it was Alexander Graham Bell who improved the invention by switching it to engraving on a wax cylinder. He called the machine a gramophone. Companies, including Edison’s, began to produce cylinders that had two minutes of music, comedy monologues, songs, etc. But Edison was sure the market would be for dictation. His usual stubbornness caused him to fall behind other companies like Victor and Columbia which developed a wax disc that became popular with the public for entertainment.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-alva-edison-patents-the-phonograph
https://blog.electrohome.com/history-of-the-phonograph/
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