Page 139 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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Thomas Alvar Edison: Phonograph 1877
Edison is very important in any history of media innovation. He not only designed and developed several of the core media technologies (the stock-ticker, the 2-way telegraph, the phonograph, the motion-picture camera, the long-lasting electric-light bulb), but importantly, established the practice of industrialised innovation using research teams and R&D prototype engineering - his Menlo Park Laboratory in New Jersey becoming the first modern research laboratory. Edison only enjoyed 3 months of formal schooling, and completed his education as an autodidact, guided by his mother. From selling newspapers on the local train, he acquired his business-administration talents alongside his ‘natural’ entrepreneurial skills - setting up 14 companies - including the now massive General Electric. Edison’s Phonograph (aka Gramophone) was cylinder-based - a rotating wax cylinder was inscribed by a needle/stylus attached to a micro-phone diaphraghm - the vibrations caused by sound-waves hitting the diaphraghm caused the needle to inscribe an analogue of the sound-waves onto the cylinder, which later could be played-back on the same Phonograph. Edison’s innovation was to design a machine that could both record and play.
Recorded music especially would change the world of home entertainments. Now, like the privileged rich of all previous generations, anyone could afford to hear the best musicians, the best singers, orchestras, choirs and bands in their own homes. This was revolutionary, both in entertainment and in educational terms.
Thomas Alvar Edison: Gold cylinder records 1901