IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. This is an experimental sound ...

One hundred years ago on a December day in 1877, the world’s first recording session took place in a laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. It was strictly a one-man show. A 30-year-old scientist, Thomas Alva ...

It was 1877 when Thomas Edison recorded the first words ever: “Mary had a little lamb.” Now, 118 years later, people including Don Gfell are briskly trading Edison’s and other antique phonographs.

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. Photograph of Thomas Alva Edison's ...

Just the other day, I heard one of the earliest popular recorded sambas, Donga’s “Pelo Telefone,” from 1916 and released on an Edison talking record, probably a wax cylinder. A few years later the ...

Imagine if your couch or your coffee maker suddenly started talking to you — or perhaps launched into the chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” What would your reaction be? Consider that, ...

SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — It's scratchy, lasts only 78 seconds and features the world's first recorded blooper. The modern masses can now listen to what experts say is the oldest playable recording of an ...

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Milan’s most famous son and the world’s greatest inventor will receive his second Grammy. Thomas Alva Edison will receive a Special Merit Award from The Recording Academy this ...

With hundreds of antique phonographs, high quality music boxes, and vintage radios, thousands of rare records from the 1890's to the 1950's and more, the 38th Annual Phonograph and Music Box Show at ...