Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology

How did one of the great inventions of the nineteenth century—Thomas Edison's phonograph—eventually lead to one of the most culturally and economically significant technologies of the twentieth and twenty—first centuries? Sound Recording traces the history of the business boom and the cultural revolution that Edison's invention made possible.

Recorded sound has pervaded nearly every facet of modern life—not just popular music, but also mundane office dictation machines, radio and television...