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 ...

WEST ORANGE — Sheltered from the summer sun by the red and white tarp of a carnival tent, Jerry Fabris set his ancient machines spinning. Musicians jostled for position around him, pointing horns at a ...

It sounds primitive today, but a century ago Thomas A. Edison's cylinder phonograph was close to the state of the art. The Niagara County Historical Society received a good-as-new 1906 Edison New ...

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, ...

Imagine if your couch or your coffee maker suddenly started talking to you — or perhaps launched into the chorus of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” What would your reaction be? Consider that, ...

Engineer Duncan Miller has spent decades reviving the lost art of acoustic recording to wax cylinders, a technique pioneered by Thomas Edison. Nature finds out how his Vulcan Cylinder Record Company, ...