Antique Phonographs and Gramophones

Before anyone owned a record player, there were wind-up machines. This gallery follows the phonographs and gramophones that carried recorded sound from Edison's workbench into parlors, trenches and coat pockets, from the tinfoil machine of 1877 to the giant-horned acoustic gramophones of the 1930s. Each photo shows one machine, most of them museum pieces. A machine earns its place by changing how sound was recorded, played or sold: cylinder or disc, outside horn or hidden one, hand crank, spring motor or loudspeaker. The order is chronological, by when each type first appeared.