If you think of records as platters, you are of a certain age. If you don’t remember records at all, you are even younger. But there was a time when audio records were not flat — they were drums, ...

You might be old enough to remember record platters, but you probably aren’t old enough to remember when records were cylinders. The Edison Blue Amberol records came out in 1912 and were far superior ...

Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park whose genius ushered in a new era of light and sound for humankind, invented the phonograph at his New Jersey laboratory on this day in history, Aug. 12, ...

MENLO PARK, N.J. (WHTM) — We’re used to sound recordings. Music (in multiple genres), audiobooks, phone messages, recordings of family history, alert boops and beeps on our phones…even the happy ...

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 ...

In the 1870s, Heinrich Beck founded what would eventually become Beck's Brewery. At about the same time, Thomas Edison was hard at work on creating the first phonograph. It's a safe bet neither man ...

Thomas Edison seated beside a phonograph in 1921. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need ...

Prior to Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877, the world had no means of recording the human voice; and the enjoyment of prerecorded music was limited to the player piano. Edison was ...