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From Vinyl to Streaming: How music formats shaped our world

Twenty Thousand Hertz

CHAPTER

The History of Tinfoil Cylinders

Thomas Edison recorded the first sound that you could listen back to. He used cylinders coated in a thin layer of tinfoil, and grooves were embossed into them. But as impressive as these cylinders were, they weren't very durable. So other inventors started improving on Edison's original idea. They included Alexander Graham Bell,. inventor of the telephone, and his cousin, Chichester Bell. What they introduced was a wax coating which was soft enough to be cut into but solid enough to be replayed. Disc recording soon became accessible for the general public. You'd go into a shop with a disc recording machine, pay a small fee, and record your own voice directly onto

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