Who Invented the Phonograph?

What do Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Elvis, Carl Sagan and space aliens all have in common?

The phonograph.

Edison invented the phonograph, Bell improved upon its design, Elvis recorded music for it and Sagan helped to select sounds for two phonograph records that NASA sent to the stars in the hopes that aliens would someday listen to them.

Who invented teh Phonograph - Turntable

Who invented the phonograph? Edison invented the phonograph, Bell improved upon its design.


Pretty good for a 19th century device that was simply meant to play music, huh?


Now, some of you younger readers might be asking, “What exactly is a phonograph?” The phonograph is similar to a compact disc player. Only the discs that it plays are made of wax instead of plastic and aluminum, and a needle is used to read the sound instead of a laser.


Edison didn’t have electronics or lasers when he invented the phonograph in 1877 at his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ. The “talking machine” he created recorded on a tinfoil sheet cylinder. A stylus ran over the cylinder to pick up the sounds and transfer them to a speaker. People marveled when the Wizard of Menlo Park demonstrated his invention for the first time on November 29, 1877.


There was a key problem, however; tinfoil wasn’t a very practical recording medium, and the sound came out very scratchy. To address these problems, Alexander Graham Bell and his colleagues at Volta Laboratory modified the phonograph to reproduce sounds from wax instead of tinfoil. This improved the device significantly.


At the turn of the 20th century, inventor Emile Berliner replaced the cylinder with gramophone records: two-sided, grooved discs that would dominate the music industry for the next 80 years. Phonographs became particularly handy when radio was developed, allowing for disc jockeys to play music to millions of people. When rock ’n ’roll came along later, artists like Elvis and the Beatles  sold millions of records.

The scientists at NASA thought that since humans liked records so much, that aliens might like them, too. Exactly 100 years after Edison invented the phonograph, NASA attached two 12-inch, gold-plated phonograph records to the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft that the space agency launched to explore the outer planets and interstellar space.

A team led by famed Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan chose 116 photographs, greetings in 60 languages, samples of music from around the world and various natural and man-made sounds to place on the records. The musical selections included early rock pioneer Chuck Berry and famous classical composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The records are encased aluminum covers to protect them from the effects of micrometeorites. The covers include instructions to any aliens that might find the records on how to play it.

Who invented the phonograph for Voyager 1?

Who invented the phonograph record for Voyager 1

Who invented the phonograph recording for Voyager 1 & 2? Famed Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan chose various natural and man-made sounds to place on the records.

Both Voyager spacecraft have left our Solar System and continue to send back information from interstellar space more than 34 years later. At some point, aliens may discover them in the far reaches of space and play the records that we sent them. They will owe a debt of gratitude to the man Thomas Edison, the man who invented the phonograph.

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Thomas Alva Edison

Alexander Graham Bell

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