With the completion of the Phonograph
at Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory on December 6, 1877
recorded sound took an amazing step as Edison had captured
the human voice and played it back. In 1857
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville had recorded
sound with his Phonautograph, however, Scott did not conceive
or design his machine to speak back the recordings. (2)
The phonograph's first public
demonstration at the office of Scientific American
in New York City resulted in "The
Talking Phonograph," an article which explained how
the phonograph worked but also included the writer's reaction
to a machine that was changing the perception of ephemeral
sound. "It is impossible to listen to the mechanical
speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are
deceiving him."