Phonographia are Connections with the Phonograph

What are Phonographia?

Phonographia are connections with the Phonograph.

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."

Visit PhonoArt, PhonoAds, Factola, Friends of the Phonograph and PhonoMultimedia to see galleries and scrapbooks of phonograph connections in popular culture -- each example a string in the evolution of the revolution of recorded sound.