Antique Cylinder Phonographs
These are just some of the antique phonographs we’ve sold over the past 22 years. If you see one you can’t live without, let us know. We might get lucky and locate its sibling.
The first cylinder phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. It’s known as the Tin Foil Phonograph because the recording medium was literally a sheet of foil wrapped around a cylindrical mandrel. A single stylus was used to both record and play back the sound etched into the foil. Edison understood the technology behind the phonograph, but its full potential eluded him for decades. It wasn’t until Columbia introduced a consumer-friendly spring-wind phonograph in the mid-1890’s (they called their machine the Graphophone) that the entertainment possibilities for recorded sound became evident to pretty much everyone.
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