--- title: Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine | TIME description: See (and hear) how the first phonograph recording, on a tin foil spool, earned Edison the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park” canonical: https://time.com/video/e3W59g0F/ og:title: Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine og:description: See (and hear) how the first phonograph recording, on a tin foil spool, earned Edison the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park” og:url: https://time.com/video/e3W59g0F/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/e3W59g0F/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine twitter:description: See (and hear) how the first phonograph recording, on a tin foil spool, earned Edison the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park” twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/e3W59g0F/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine [Watch (HLS stream): Thomas Edison's Incredible Talking Machine](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/e3W59g0F.m3u8) (4:10)  _Published 2010-06-30. See (and hear) how the first phonograph recording, on a tin foil spool, earned Edison the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park”_ --- Jul 27, 2023 2:22 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Thomas Edison: Movie \(and Talkie\!\) Pioneer](/video/NgmTtjP2/) ### Thomas Edison: Movie (and Talkie!) Pioneer [The Real Wizardry of Edison's Menlo Park Lab](/video/Yl6o1KIC/) ### The Real Wizardry of Edison's Menlo Park Lab [Thomas Edison and the AC/DC Battle](/video/sAl3scYg/) ### Thomas Edison and the AC/DC Battle --- ## Transcript >> I'm glad that you could capture slice at time and replay that and have it happen again. That was the jarring thing that he managed to pull off with this outrageously simple mechanism. >> The photograph is a very interesting invention. It's the closest that you ever get to that sort of eureka moment that inventors are supposed to have. One day, Edison while he's saying about telephone [ unk ] this idea and so that night, he takes a telephone diaphragm with a needle on it. As he speaks into it, he drew some waxed paper underneath and realizes he can pass or get an impression from that a sound and very confidently he says that in the future he'll be able to record and playback the human voice perfectly. Edison is always very self- confident. Within less than six months, he had invented the phonograph. >> The first words I spoke in the original phonograph. A little piece of practical poetry. May had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. >> And this astounded people because it was such a simple instrument. There were acoustic scientists trying to figure out how to make a single vowel sound and here's this fellow comes along with the simplest device you can imagine to record and repeat the human voice. >> So early today, we made a recording on this so let me rewind it and we'll play recording in Mary had a little lamb for you. >> It's a very fascinating subject and I love talking about Edison's inventions. >> And this is just like the prototype. We have a mica diaphragm and a stylus here. Just imagine what it must have been like in 1878 to see this development for the first time. Here we go. Okay, could you hear that? >> That's what gave Edison his name with this. This is when all the nicknames of Edison began to accumulate because it seemed so magnificent. >> When Edison was working on the phonograph, he was once asked about the machine he was working on and, you know, what it meant. And he said, " Well, it's my baby. It's gonna grow up and take care of me in my old age ." >> Edison, Bell in that era imagine all sorts of uses for the phonograph, but they really thought the big market would be dictation. >> His initial notion of how that might improve successful in the market place incorporated pretty much everything, but entertainment. It was kind of-- It's a little wide to the market, although that do come in-- >> With the whole notion of the phonograph as an entertainment medium grows up and Edison begins to record the first recording studio. It was actually at laboratory in West Orange which is musical. >> I'm going down to the river to take-- >> And most importantly, he figures out how to mass produce records by molding them, but it took 20 years for it to move from an invention to something that people began to have in their daily lives. >> How many people today carry a phone, carry an MP3 player, listen to the music on the radio. I mean, what would do if you couldn't listen to music? Well, without Edison and recorded sound, that won't take place. >> We absolutely take it for granted that if we wanna record sound, motion, images and have them replay as if they were happening that you can do that and that's what the phonograph could do that nothing else could. 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