1877 was the year the human voice was first captured

This day in history—Edison's phonograph

With his invention of the phonograph, Edison opened the door to a future filled with recorded music, spoken word, and the captured voices of history.

Photo byLevin C. Handy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On August 12, 1877, the world of sound changed forever thanks to the ingenuity of one man—Thomas Alva Edison. A young Edison revealed to the world—maybe his most original invention—an odd-looking contraption that would soon be known as the phonograph. This invention, with its simple design, opened a new chapter in human history—one where sound could be recorded and played back.

So, how did Edison come up with this? It all started with his work on the telegraph and telephone. Edison had been experimenting with ways to transcribe telegraphic messages into a permanent record. He figured that if you could record the indentations made by a telegraph key, why not do the same with sound?

The machine was surprisingly simple in design. A piece of tinfoil was wrapped around a rotating cylinder, and when someone spoke into a mouthpiece, their voice caused a diaphragm to vibrate. This vibration moved a stylus, which in turn embossed a series of indentations into the tinfoil. To play back the sound, the process was reversed—the stylus retraced the indentations, causing the diaphragm to vibrate once more, recreating the original sound.

The first words ever recorded on the phonograph were Edison's own. He recited the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." For the first time, the spoken word had been captured—trapped like a genie in a bottle, ready to be released at will.