Thomas Edison, The First to Realize the Dream Seeing the vibration of a wire attached to a telephone drove Thomas Edison to theorize that sound could be played back. He first conceived of his mechanical sound reproduction device as a proto-answering or solicitation machine and he contemplated attaching it to Alexander Graham Bell’s invention to make a more affordable version of the telephone available to the public. Edison was a telegraph operator before he created his first invention; a repeater, so that he could sleep on the job. The repeater was an automatic relay, which was essential to forming unmanned switching stations or exchanges. Newly laid telegraph lines across treacherous terrain made it possible to send messages long distance. Edison's automatic repeater transmitted the message from one line to another, making the early patchwork telegraph network practical. He was part of an elite group who had an intimate relationship with the first medium of the Information Age. Edison’s original phonograph design used paraffin paper, a waxy sort of paper that was used in Scott's phonautograph. But the final prototype, completed by a group of his assistants, had a metal cylinder with tin-foil wrapped on the outside surface. Intended for recording the human voice, Edison’s invention had a mouthpiece which would relay sound vibration through a diaphragm to a needle recording the sound in a vertical (hill and dale) method. Sound data was played back through a separate needle and diaphragm attached to a cone for amplification. Cathryn Carroll and Susan M. Mather describe the birth of phonography: “What’s it for?” the assistant asked Edison. “This machine is going to talk,” Edison told the astonished man. Then Edison shouted into the machine: “Mary had a little lamb.” He wound it back and the machine repeated Edison’s words. Of course Edison heard nothing. He shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and wondered how he would make his machine a success. Then he looked up. He saw his assistants had turned white and were staring at the new machine as if it were a ghost. They had just heard the machine repeat Edison’s words in a high fuzzy whine. “Mary had a little lamb,” it had squeaked. Edison was the first person to make a copy of human sounds in history—and his assistants were the first people to hear it. The portrait of the first instance of recorded sound contained in Carroll and Mather’s inspiring collection of biographies of deaf innovators implies among other things the irony inherent in Edison’s creation. It was an epochal event in the history of sound, a new era had begun, mankind had reached the end of one sonic quest and started out on a new journey, in pursuit of other long sought after questions. Edison was the first sound artist, he was the producer and engineer of the first sound recordings that were played back. A visionary by nature, he foresaw many uses for his phonograph: talking dolls, phonographic books for the blind, recording of lectures for education with the professor absent, talking clocks, recording individual family history and tradition—especially elder family members who were dying, reproducing musical performances, and more. Despite Edison’s appreciation of the many uses and benefits of the phonograph, and the miraculous nature of the reception it received, his invention was not yet commercially viable and he shifted his attention to the invention of the incandescent light bulb. Given his background as a telegraph operator it is no surprise that Edison was the father of the art of sound and he always kept a special place in his heart and mind for the phonograph, tracking its evolution throughout his lifetime.