The phonograph was a device for the recording and reproduction of sound, originally on wax cylinders (and later, by the 1930s, on vinyl discs). The American inventor Thomas Edison had already registered a patent for his phonograph in 1878, but he did not begin commercial distribution of his invention until 1887, when he founded the Edison Phonograph Company. By the end of the nineteenth century, the first European branches of his company had opened, selling phonographs and wax cylinders with various sound recordings distributed under the Edison Record label as well as blank cylinders for self-recording. When mass production of wax cylinders became possible only a few years later, this made the recordings cheaper and thus affordable for a wider range of buyers interested in this new technology. The phonograph could not only be used to play back sound recordings, but also to record your own. The latter function soon proved particularly useful in business, where phonographs were introduced as dictation devices. From the 1910s onwards, however, phonographs using wax cylinders were increasingly replaced by gramophones using stamped disc records (which were easier to mass-produce).

The wax cylinder recording you can hear here dates from 1905 and is an advertisement for the Edison phonograph.  (It is similar to Edison’s advertising-recording in English for American listeners, although the American ad offers drama and modern entertainment, while this German version emphasizes the enjoyment of the arts.) The ad-recording lists the different types of music and entertainment that could be enjoyed without leaving one’s home thanks to the phonograph and reflects the wide range of offerings from the Edison Record label at the beginning of the twentieth century. Numerous well-known musicians, actors, and comedians began making recordings for Edison and other emerging record labels at this time.