User:Fathiya04/sandbox

The story of sound recording, and reproduction, began in 1877, when the man of a thousand patents, Thomas Edison, invented the phonograph. His invention was just a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a cylindrical drum that rotated and moved laterally when twisted by a handle. It passed beneath a touching metal stylus attached to one side of a diaphragm as it moved. The operator talked into a small mouthpiece on the other side of the diaphragm. The diaphragm vibrated as a result of the sound waves focused on it, causing the stylus to change the pressure on the tinfoil.

The tinfoil was embossed with undulations that approximated the pressure patterns of the sound waves as the drum rotated and traveled across the stylus. Placing the stylus at the start of the groove created during recording and winding the cylinder along again was required for playback. The tinfoil's vibrations caused the stylus to move in and out, causing the diaphragm to vibrate, which moved the air in the mouthpiece, reproducing the sound.

Unfortunately, Edison quickly moved on to other things, including the incandescent light bulb, as is often the case with mercurial geniuses. In any case, he viewed his device primarily as a telephone repeater. He appears to have been tone deaf, if not truly hard of hearing, and recording music was not high on his priority list.