Edison’s monumental discovery of the phonograph in 1877 enabled the free recording and reproduction of sounds, while other inventors managed with their devices only to record sound, the novelty of Edison’s model was that he could also reproduce recorded voices. The first surviving recording is Edison’s recitation of the song “Mary had a little lamb”. His phonograph originally recorded the sound on tin foil wound on a rotating cylinder. The pencil that reacts to sound vibrations produced notches on the foil. However, the paper and tin foil he used to store audio information proved ineffective and too fragile. Also, the sound quality was poor, and each recording could be played only once.

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