Untitled

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21569, 15 February 1932, Page 8

The earliest kind of gramophone was the invention of the late Mr T. A. Edison. The famous inventor, then a young man, was experimenting with the telephone. One day he sang loudly into the instrument he was holding in his hand. The next moment he executed an involuntary jump into the air, for a small sharp projection on the case had pricked his finger. In a flash he realised that the pin had been driven into his finger through the action of sound waves on the diaphragm. “If it will prick my finger,” he said, “it can make a record of sound on something harder.” He tried it first on a sheet of thick paper, moving the telephone over it while he made various sounds. He then moved it over the paper again, not singing this time, but listening. To his astonishment he heard the sounds he had made faintly produced. In a short time Edison had produced his first phonograph with a record made on a cylinder of wax and ear-pieces like those of a doctor’s stethoscope. It was worked by turning a handle. The first record contained these words: “ Good morning. What do you think of the phonograph? ” and then “ Mary had a little lamb,” sung by Edison himself.