14. Edison and the phonograph
Thomas Edison is credited with the invention of the phonograph, a device that he first patented in 1878. It was not the first device which was capable of recording sound, though it was the first which could faithfully reproduce the sound in the form of playback. Earlier devices recorded sound and could reproduce it visually rather than audibly. Although Edison had a reputation as an innovator in the telegraph industry prior to the invention, it was the phonograph which first placed him in the public mind as the greatest inventor in America. Using foil as the medium upon which the sound was recorded, Edison did not at first aggressively market the invention.
Nor did he and his team acknowledge the work of an earlier inventor, a Frenchman named Edouard-Leon Scot de Martinville. In 1857 de Martinville was awarded a French patent for his invention of a device which he called the phonautograph. The phonautograph mimicked the human ear in design and recorded sound by converting it to visual images, by vibrating a reed over inked paper or glass plates. De Martinville failed to create a market for his device. Though Edison and his team used a similar approach to etch sound vibrations on tinfoil, they never credited de Martinville’s invention or work as contributing to the invention of the phonograph.