The First Format War
Edison is closely associated with the electric light bulb, which he improved, but did not invent. But Edison did make the first sound playback device. In 1877, inventor Thomas Edison etched sound waves on a fragile tinfoil cylinder; it wasn't commercially viable until he began to use wax, and found a method of duplicating cylinders instead of recording each individually. Edison continued to improve his machine throughout the rise of the flat shellac disc, but in spite of achieving superior sound, by the 1910s, the platter had prevailed.
In 1878, Edison listed ten things recorded sound might do: he envisioned an auxilary to the telephone, to capture its "fleeting communication," but it took a hundred years for the answering machine to become a common item in American homes.
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