Between Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877 and World War I, inventors, entrepreneurs, performers, and listeners transformed the singular talking machines of the late 1870s to the ubiquitous music machines of the twentieth century. Through selected images, objects, and links to period sounds, this essay offers a chronological glimpse of interacting social, technical, and entrepreneurial forces at work. Combining visual, aural, and material sources in this way enlarges the historian’s toolbox for understanding the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

中文翻译：

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从说话的机器到音乐机器：早期录制的声音以及图片和音频的回放

从 1877 年托马斯·爱迪生发明留声机到第一次世界大战，发明家、企业家、表演者和听众将 1870 年代末的单一说话机器转变为 20 世纪无处不在的音乐机器。通过精选的图像、物体和时代声音的链接，本文按时间顺序展示了社会、技术和创业力量在工作中的相互作用。以这种方式结合视觉、听觉和物质来源，扩大了历史学家理解十九世纪末和二十世纪初的工具箱。