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How To Listen to 10,000 of the First Phonograph Recordings Ever Made

By Madeleine Muzdakis on March 12, 2023

Listen to 10,000 of the First Wax Cylinder Recordings, or Phonographs, Ever Made

An Edison Gold Moulded Cylinder Record, circa 1904. (Photo: Phonatic via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Want to hear history? Through the University of California Santa Barbara Cylinder Audio Archive, the tunes and voices of over a hundred years ago can be projected from your computer or phone. The internet archive compiled over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings—known as phonograph cylinders—from the earliest years of sound recordings. Invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, the phonograph became a vehicle for late 19th and very early 20th-century sound.

The wax cylinders recorded sound through engravings on their surfaces. The sound could then be played back on a phonograph, a machine similar to a modern record player with a large horn. Companies began to mass produce cylinders that recorded songs and orchestras played live. Those who happened to own their own recording equipment could even make home recordings. All these genres can be found in the UCSB archives. From the 1890s to the late 1910s when disc format began to be used, this dominant medium captured the sounds of turn-of-the-century America.

Try exploring perky polkas, ragtime, and even yodeling. You can listen to cylinders in Welsh or Yiddish, or specifically search for harmonica melodies. Playlists will take you through Central Europe or the work of Black artists and composers. The early speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, Ernest Shackleton, Sarah Bernhardt, William Howard Taft, and others are also preserved. Whatever you're looking for, you will probably find it in the annals of audio history.