The Musical Telephone

Before the telephone became what we know it is today they thought it would be primarily used to play music in your home and not as a direct one-to-one communication device. Edison was no showman either and being partially deaf hated speaking before a group he could rely however upon an energetic promoter as his proxy. The big city debut of Edison's musical telephone was arranged for Philadelphia in mid-July 1877. Alexander Graham Bell's musical telephone had been eclipsed by the recent debut of a competing musical telephone developed by rival inventor Alicia Gray.