Until the late nineteenth century sound had always been impermanent.
Speech and music were activities that took place in real time,
and their preservation depended on the written word or musical score.
Thomas Edison’s startlingly simple tinfoil phonograph established
his public reputation as the Wizard of Menlo Park because it recorded
sound as it occurred, capturing what had previously been ephemeral.
The story of our use and development of sound recording tools - from
Edison’s first steps through to present day digital systems
– can be traced through The Henry Ford’s
Sound Reproduction collections.
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