Edison, Thomas (EN)

Edison Thomas Alva, *11 February 1847 Milan (Ohio), †18 October 1931 West Orange (New Jersey), American inventor. Among his more than 1,000 inventions in various fields, the phonograph (1877) was of particular importance for the development of music, as the first device for the mechanical recording and playback of sound. Gradually improved by Edison, the phonograph made it possible to record up to four minutes of music on a cylinder covered first with tinfoil, later wax, and from 1912 celluloid, in the form of a spiral groove of varying depth. This phonograph spread worldwide and, for example, in 1904 a single French company, E. Pathé, had 12,000 titles in its catalogue and produced 50,000 phonograph cylinders daily. After 1914, the phonograph was gradually replaced by Emil Berliner’s gramophone. Edison also constructed a disc phonograph and attempted to introduce (1927) the first long-playing records.

Literature: W. Bruch Von der Tonwalze zur Bildplatte, Munich 1979; W.L. Welch From Tin Foil to Stereo, Indianapolis 1976.