A 30-year-old scientist, Thomas ... the phonograph machine. “I was never so taken aback in my life,” he later recalled. “I was always afraid of things that worked the first time.” Edison ...

Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park whose genius ushered in a new era of light and sound for humankind, invented the phonograph at his New Jersey laboratory on this day in history ...

Thomas Edison often claimed that Oct. 22 ... along with those for the invention of the phonograph and a process for making motion pictures). Several months after the light bulb patent was filed ...

Prior to Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877, the world had no means of recording the human voice; and the enjoyment of prerecorded music was limited to the player piano.